Hello splinterlanders and hope you are having a wonderful day!

As a newbie who's climbing his way through bronze, all the matches are playing in a standard ruleset which means all summoners are available and you can pick whoever you want. So by having some good cards, you can easily go on a massive winning streak and nothing can stop you

However starting from a certain rating, new rulesets are introduced and this is where the fun begins (maybe just for me >.<)

Among the most impactful rulesets, there is Noxious Fumes

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Noxious Fumes

All monsters start the battle poisoned

Poison does automatic damage to the target at the beginning of each round after the poison is applied

To be more precise, poison does 2 damage affected directly health and bypass armor (armor is useless against poison).

The goal for this match is not to beat down the opponent but it's more like survival to the fittest.

Check this Battle as an exemple

Before we start, enemy last 4 matches are water deck with Alric as a summoner so I decided to go for Bortus to tone down the magic damage. Even though he unexpectedly picked earth deck, this is a perfect example of why my picks are doing a great job.

More health

The golden rule: the more healthy the more you can survive (even in real life!)

Among the high health monsters I had are Spineback Turtle (6 health) and Peaceful giant (8 health), enough to take on the damage from enemy monsters and poison for at least 3 rounds

Self-heal > Tank heal

Taking tank heal is for the sake of keeping the tank alive thus protecting the other monsters on the team. However, in noxious fumes, starting from round 2 every monster get hit by poison, the tank healer, usually having low health, won't survive more than a couple of rounds.

Having self heal in the backline allows the monster to stay survive long enough the poison while dealing damage.

That's why I went for water elemental instead of crustacean king

Scavenger: Gelatinous Cube is MVP

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Noxious fumes are literally made for Gelatinous Cube. I played against it under the same ruleset before and it was so frustrating. What makes it perfect are his high health and most importantly scavenger ability:

Gain 1 max health each time any monster dies

• At level 1-5, Gelatinous cube should be placed at the backline as it can't sustain enemy monsters' and poison damage, if 2 monster dies in a given round (mostly starting round 3) it's mathematically as if it skipped a poison round or even out-heal the damage if more monsters are dead!
• Level 6+, gets heal, Great for Tank or 2nd tank position. More maximum health = More heal = survivability. Enemy is desperately trying to get past the cube when their death is right around the corner!

PS: At level 1, both Ant miner and Venari Seedsmith have scavenger ability, but with respectively 1 and 2 health, they can't even survive round 2 if no monster dies.

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Conclusion

If I choose this team in a standart ruleset, I will obviously get destroyed even if enemy picks only 2 monsters. However, we should adapt to specific rulesets as they influence the battle way more than our opponents by picking the most suitable monsters for the chosen ruleset. I hope this blog post comes in handy for those who read it

A special Thank you to @ecoinstant for pinpointing my mistakes and giving me precious hints about splinterlands battles! Check out his awesome contents here

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