This week's battle challenge is the Time Mage.

Lets start by examining the card.

This card is a four mana life rare magic card from the chaos edition. This card is one of my staples in the life splinter because of the her slow ability. She will slow your opponent by one speed allowing you to get out in front of a lot of the other cards for your life splinter to do damage before they start or get to attack. She can also buy time for you healer to heal up your tank be it takes a kill shot helping keep it around longer. At level 5 the time mage gets rust which reduces the max armor of the opposing team by 2. This is a great ability allowing to negate some or remove all their armor.

Usage:

Ruleset	Explanation
Overall	This card can be use in pretty much any rule set besides reverse speed. Even in higher mana matches you can use this card to slow down the opponent allowing you to use other higher mana cards with it.
Reverse Speeed	Be very care and use it with purpose here. In reverse speed this card actually speed up the enemy team and should be avoided.
Explosive Weaponry	Magic cards in general benefit from blast hitting under shield, with the time mage you'll slow your enemy down and do that nice damage to their health.
Little League	At four mana and with the slow it makes this card great to use in little league battles. The magic damage will help take out low health cards and / or get some extra damage on the tank.

Card:

The Time mage gain Rust at level 5.

Battle

For this battle it was a 34 mana battle with Stampede where trample would trigger more than once. All splinters were open and since leveling my life cards I've been enjoying using the in 35ish mana battles. In silver it is easy to ignore the Stampede ruleset as not many cards have it.

The line up I have here this battle:

• My tank is ShieldBearer who is a great tank and with taunt forcing everyone to attack him protecting all your other cards while he is a live.
• I have the Soul Fiend in second position to eat up a hit after my ShieldBearer goes down.
• I have my Time mage in third position so it can still attack once the ShieldBearer and Soul Fiend are dead giving my range hopefully a couple turns to do some damage before she dies.
• I have my Venari Crystalsmith to heal my ShieldBearer and keep him alive at three speed she will sadly go before my opponents cards but she will be there to heal him up at the start of each round after.
• I have my Pelacor Arbalest which is a great range card with it's double strike
• I round it out with the Prismologist which is a great three damage range card with blast allowing me to hit additional cards. In this match my opponent played the Slipspawn in position two which allowed me to hit three cards with my blast.

Link to the Battle

Round 1

• My opponent played the Earth splinter with his own taunting monster and healer. The Slipspawn in position two though allows my Prismologist to hit him, the tank, and the healer each round. This means I can kill the healer before I even kill the tank. My opponent does have a sneak card but it will be forced to attack my ShieldBearer.
• The first round both sides are forced to attack the taunting card. My Prismologist gets 2 damage on the Unicorn and the Psychic and my Arbalest kills off the Slipspawn with his first attack and get 2 damage on the Unicorn.

Round 2

• As we start round two my ShieldBearer is down to 4 health the Unicorn down to 6.
• While my opponents cards a slow my Time mage ensure they are even slows. The Unicorn is the only card with more than one speed because of the the Time Mage and it's damage isn't enough to kill my ShieldBearer not to mention my Crystalsmith will go first to heal my ShieldBearer. They get the Unicorn down to 4 health before it goes and hits my Sheild Bearer bringing him back down to 4 health having been healed for 3.
• The Prismologist goes killing the Unicorn and the Psychic due to the blast damage.
• My Arbalest kills off the Princess and the Thief with the ShieldBearer killing off last weeks challenge card of the Mycelic Morphoid.

Conclusion:

I love the Time Mage, the slow ability it has is a great tool in the splinterlands toolbox slowing down the opponents cards and / or negating the opponents swiftness ability. She is a very fast card with good magic damage to boot making her a great addition to any life splinter team. In this battle has she not been there I had enough health to survive the hit from the Unicorn which would have went before my Crystalsmith at it's original four speed before being reduced to three by the Time Mage. But if my opponent had play any other fast cards my ShieldBearer could have die which can easily be the house of cards folding for a life splinter.

Come join me in Splinterlands.