Battel Mage Secrets For the Little League Ruleset

Here's the ruleset for this week's battle

In the Little League ruleset, you can only use monsters and summoners with mana cost 4 or less. It's interesting that the mana cap for these battles still run up as high as 99. With just 7 slots between your summoner and monsters, the highest effective mana cap is 28 and because there are so many options for mana cap between 28 and 99, you'll get to use your favorite Little League lineup about half of the time. Sometimes you'll get a lower mana cap like the one here in which case you may need to revise your team and utilize things like some 0 and 1 mana monsters. With monsters that only cost 4 mana or less it's not common to have many monsters dealing more than 2 damage per turn. It's also not common to have monsters with starting health over 4, so it's significant if your monsters can withstand a second hit. These unique constraints take the protect ability from very valuable to critical. Not all monsters with the protect ability cost 4 mana or less, but Queen Mycelia is 4 mana and so is the much newer Ravenhood Warden. Dealing 2 damage with magic is also that much more important because magic attacks get under the now critical covering from the protect ability.
If you followed all of that then you may have already guessed that my favorite summoner to work with in the little league ruleset is Obsidian and Obsidian is the summoner that I expect to face on the other side of the battlefield most often, followed by Thaddius Brood and Quix the Devious.

The healed out ruleset simply takes away the healing abilities on monsters, so if you were trying to decide between 2 monsters and one had healing, that would no longer be an advantage in this ruleset. There's a great example of this that comes up frequently in little league. Xenith Monk is probably the most commonly used tank for little league because of the 6th health which means it can frequently take a third or even 4th hit in little league. Xenith Monk picks up the heal ability at level 2. Xenith Monk and Hill Giant are probably the most commonly seen tanks for the earth splinter for their 6 or 7 health. Xenith monk is faster and comes with the heal ability, but the absolute health on Hill Giant along with a second melee damage when you start to level up make this another popular options. When I play little league the Xenith Monk is usually my choice, but Hill Giant would win out in this healed out ruleset if there were enough mana for me to want it.

In this battle I'm expecting to see Obsidian or possibly Thaddius and if my opponent goes with Obsidian then I'm expecting to see Hill Giant as their tank. I also expect them to use Queen Mycelia if they know what's good for them.

Here's the starting frame

My predictions here were pretty good. You'll notice that I opted for more magic firepower over the Hill Giant for my mana. I do like that they put a martyr in front of their Biljka. That's pretty clever if I have sneak attackers as it would preferentially boost their camouflaged Djinn and the monster in front of the martyr.

Think about how this battle might play out before clicking the link

https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_7a63dd1c7119db4c4a8759cee7feca88&ref=

Lets talk about my lineup

Summoner: Obsidian

Obsidian buffs my magic attacks, so all of my little magic monsters are dealing 2 damage.

Tank: Mycelic Morphoid

Mycelic Morphoid is likely to deal more damage with thorns than it does attacking. I talked a little about Xenith Monk vs Hill Giant and I think Hill Giant was a better option between those 2 for this mana cap and ruleset, but because the mana cap is so low I opted to put more magic firepower on my back line. As it stands I expected to face an obsidian lineup where this would likely go down on the first shot from my opponent.

1st position: Fungus Fiend

The Fungus Fiend costs 0 mana and is here to take up 1 hit.

2nd position: Queen Mycelia

Queen Mycelia brings the protect ability that I talked about being so critical in the little league ruleset. The protect ability has the potential to allow any number of my monsters to last through 1 or even 2 more hits than they otherwise would.

3rd position: Spirit Hoarder

Spirit Hoarder is a magic attacker with 3 health for 3 mana which is an incredible rate for this ruleset. Even without the triage ability Spirit Hoarder's raw stats are good for this battle.

4th position: Khmer Princess

Another magic attacker for just 2 mana is incredible for this match. This turned out to be well worth leaving out my Hill Giant.

5th position (rear tank): Chaos Agent

With the dodge ability Chaos agent has the potential to dodge a sneak attack. If sneak attackers connect, it still soaks up 2 hits.

Did we win?

Yes. with 6 consistent magic damage each turn my little league lineup did well.

What will I try differently next time?

Not much. I frequently put Spirit Hoarder in Front of Queen Mycelia in case there are sneak attackers, that way Spirit Hoarder has the potential to support Queen Mycelia with triage while Queen Mycelia supports Spirit Hoarder with protect. It wasn't relevant because of the healed out ruleset.
I also think it's worth commenting on the role of Madcap Magus in little league. Madcap Magus has everything you want in a magic attacker for little league with 1 magic attack to consistently deal 2 damage and if you can get to level 2 or 3 it's likely to survive an attack or 2 (sometimes more with the life leech ability). I prefer to not use Madcap Magus because of the unpredictability of Scattershot. It has the potential to take out a monster like Khmer Princess ahead of schedule, but it's more likely to damage something in the back line at a time when it would do better to hit the monster right in front.

Thanks for reading and thanks for all the upvotes, reblogs, comments and follows. I'll see you in the game. I hope the updated format that I'm using is helpful. Feel free to share any specific feedback in the comments.