Card Highlights #19: Temporal Master

“Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.” - Aristotle
The new abilities in Splinterlands are quite tricky to use but using it appropriately provide immense advantages. Recharge, specifically is very tricky as if you lose your tanks early, you just technically lose the game as the monster attacks every other turn. Patience is the key as you make a calm decision on how you abuse this strong ability. But once you did, the fruit of success will be nothing but sweet.

Lore

The horologe node is the first focus. The annulus scepter the second. But to ascend to the highest levels of the craft the anachron time mage must abandon talismans and operate by mind alone. For the rare adept blessed by visions of the turning wheel they can shift the flow of siphilum in time's flow by sheer force of will.
It is these Temporal Masters that advised the great council until the highest in their order, the High Magus Obin Anvaras, betrayed them. Those that remain hunger for a chance to reknit time and erase the chaos heresy that brought the Legion to the Splinterlands.

Rental Cost

Temporal Mage is not free to play and thus, renting one to test is expected. The rental is not steep by any means and it's good to try it a few games before considering to buy one. The abilitity of Temporal Mage is quite tricky but is powerful when combined with other cards like a summoner that increases magic damage.

Buy/Sell Cost

This may be cheap for others but I consider Temporal Mage's cost quite high right now resting a little bit less than a dollar. The reason why I said this is high is because you may want multiple cards to level up this card and buying a few of the same card can rack up the price. You can also just buy one for testing before investing as you need to either rent or own your copy of Temporal Mage to use him in battle.

Card Stats

Temporal Master's stats are absurdly low for a 3 mana cost. He has 2 health and 1 damage but everything is negated by one thing, Recharge Ability. This ability spikes his damage to 3 but every other turn. Any above magic damage above 1 at 3 mana is deadly. With Recharge, Temporal Master theoretically has 1.5 magic damage per round. This makes him very deadly especially on lower league.

Card Effect

|| This Monster attacks every other round but does 3x damage.
A very powerful ability because triples damage every other turn rather than double it. The damage type also takes the form of the damage so if the damage is a magic damage, the tripled damage is also magic type.

|| When a Monster with Stun hits a target, it has 50% chance to stun the target causing it to skip its next turn.
Stun is an ability that looks good on paper but something I don't like. There's a lot of problems with this ability but since Temporal Master's damage type is magic and cannot miss, you have a 50% chance of having this ability applied every other turn theoretically giving you a free charge round whenever you hit your opponent.

When to use

|| Monsters get +2 added to their armor stat.
Being magic damage type, Armored Up provides only but buff. Magic damage passes through armor so there's even with Armored Up, Temporal Master doesn't care.

|| The initial Health of all Monsters is equal to that of the Monster on either team with the highest base Health.
Due to Temporal Master's low health and Recharge mechanic, any increase in sustainability is a huge buff. The longer you can delay the game, the higher the chance of you winning.

|| All monsters get the Blast Ability which does additional damage to Monsters adjacent to the target Monster. Additional damage is equivalent to main damage/2 rounded up.
Temporal Master's Recharge Ability multiplies by thrice every other turn. This in turn provides also insane blast damage as the blast damage is 50% of your damage rounded up. If Temporal Master gains even a single point of damage, Blast damage increases by 2.

When not to use

|| Monsters lose their own abilities. Summoner effects such as those that give abilities to monsters still take effect. || Monsters lose their own abilities. Summoner effects such as those that give abilities to monsters still take effect.
Due to low stats, prohibiting Temporal Master of his amazing Recharge ability just outright destroys his usefulness in battle making Back to Basics one of the crucial Rule Set that you must avoid.

|| Only Common and Rare Monsters may be used in battles. Make a well balanced team. Tank > Magic > Ranged Find you a nice tank with heal to lead your lineup. Try to focus your attack on a specific part of there team. Spreading out your attack thinly over their team is not a good idea.
This is a prohibiting Rule set that allows only common and rare monsters. Temporal Master is neither so you're not allowed to use him in this rule set.

|| Magic attacks hit Armor before reducing Health.
A little debuff for Temporal Master but not the worst. The rule set allows monsters with armor to block magic damage with their armor. Theoretically speaking, this Rule set provides the same effect of Void Armor Ability to all monsters which hinders the effectiveness of Magid damage types. Again, it's not the worst since you can still use all your abilities but the pass through damage on armors for Magic damage is a definite debuff.

Battle

Click here to view the replay

This is the positioning I used for this battle:

During this battle, I decided to use light mages with the protection of Truthseeker and Cave Slug and Soul Fiend as soft tanks.

Round 1

By end of Round 1, as expected, Soul Fiend had died already. It is to be expected and with that, his job is done. Cave Slug now goes to front to block some pesky attacks while Temporal Master takes the kill every other turn.

Round 2

By end of Round 2, it's time to release Temporal Master's attack killing Chaos Knight bypassing her armor. With the death of Chaos Knight, I get access to their back line killing Celestial Harpy also in the process.

Round 3

By end of Round 3, Cave Slug goes down so it's a showdown now between the two Time Mages. This round, Temporal Mage charges for next round.

Round 4

By end of Round 4, my opponent's time mages dies first with an attack from Temporal Mage. Truthseeker's Protect also blocks Herbalist's range damage allowing my Time Mage to be safe from Herbalist's damage this turn.

Round 5

By end of Round 5, Herbalist lives as my damage is not enough to kill him. The main reason fro that is that this round is the charging time for Temporal Mage.

Round 6

By end of Round 6, game ended when my Temporal Mage does a charge attack decimating Herbalist in the process.

Disclaimer

• Battle photos are taken from Splinterlands in-game website. To view the full game, click on this link.

• I do not own any of the animated pictures. Visit Giphy to get more information.
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