Card Highlights #22: Centauri Mage

"Never try an' get a straight answer out of a centaur. Ruddy stargazers. Not interested in anythin' closer'n the moon." — Rubeus Hagrid from Harry Potter
Centauri Mage is a bit tricky to use. She looks like strong at times and yet weak at others. Her high health makes her look like a strong tank but in reality, she isn't. However, she's still one of the best Light Splinter counters out there due to her Return Fire ability on early levels.

Lore

The magic of the Centauri people of northern Anumün is so secretive that it is a wonder their Mages make any demonstrations of their powers in the Mount Mox Arena at all. The audiences are always thrilled to see their magic attacks, especially at dusk and sunset, when they create a chillingly beautiful (and deadly) green light show. Not only does this magic rain green fire onto the enemy, but with proper concentration from the Mage, it also refortifies the defenses of the friendly team. Among the Centaurs, those who practice these ancient ways of magic are extremely rare. They spend most of their time close to Kron, protecting him from all the wild creatures outside his Citadel.

Rental Cost

The rental price of Centauri Mage is a bit on the low side right now due to the high supply. Centauri Mage is not commonly used as well due to her high mana cost and lack of defensive abilities and thus the supply is quite high.

Buy/Sell Cost

For only $2.55, you can get your hands in one which should be a good specific counter for Light Splinters. Having your hands in a variety of cards would prove useful in higher league as you can have multiple strategies set at different times.

Card Stats

Centauri Mage's starts are low at early levels. Her health is high but I don't use her as a tank as she doesn't have any defensive abilities and her high mana cost isn't worth to sacrifice her as a tank. Centauri Mage's damage type is quite good due to Obsidian making her a decent mage with Obsidian. Other than that, I just pick her to counter Light Splinters positioning her right behind the main tank as the Snipe ability targets the first non-melee type on your opponent's field.

Card Effect

Return Fire || When hit with a Ranged attack, Monsters with Return Fire will return reduced damage back to their attacker equal to the damage of attacker divided by 2, rounded up.
With Return Fire, this makes Centauri Mage a really great Sniper and Range counters. By positioning right behind the melee tank, this prioritizes her on the Snipe list making her return some of the damage from these Ranged users.

Repair || Restores some armor to the friendly Monster whose armor has taken the most damage.
Repair is a good bonus ability for Centauri Mage. It allows you to add sustain to her kit and in higher league, these Repair ability racks up increasing your whole team survivability.

When to use

|| 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.
Magic damage is the best damage type for Blast ability. The Blast ability takes in the form of the Magic Damage, which means the Blast damage also passes through armor and does not miss. This allows your blast ability to act like secondary mages per magic user you have which is deadly when you spam mages.

|| All Ranged and Magic attack Monsters have the Snipe ability.
Another major magic damage type buff. Normally, you protect the back line with Protect Ability which adds 2 armor to them but with Magic Snipers, they passes through armor eliminating the Protect Ability.

Armored Up
https://images.hive.blog
/DQmNQV7R4scGaCMcLLR6ZGNVoWeNbCNefe8ntxm9iE4X5BD/Armored%20Up.PNG || Monsters get +2 added to their armor stat.
Armored Up is a bonus if you're running a full mage composition. As mentioned, the magic damage type passes through armor which means the Armored Up Rule Set does not provide advantages to the opponent side while benefiting your team alone.

When not to use

|| Monsters do not have any armor and do not get armor from Abilities or Summoner Buffs. || Monsters do not have any armor and do not get armor from Abilities or Summoner Buffs.
Unprotected is a negative due to how Armor provides advantage to you and what bonuses it provides for Magic damage types. With Unprotected Rule Set, the Protect ability is nullified reducing survivability for your back line magic damage dealers.

|| No monsters with ranged will be available to choose from.
With Return Fire online, the Broken Arrows disables this ability altogether. An ability that returns range damage is useless when there's no range damage to inflict in the first place. With broken arrows, it prohibits the usage of archers and range damage which the Return Fire counters.

|| Magic attacks hit Armor before reducing Health.
Weak Magic is a negative for magic damage user as it eliminates the magic damage's characteristic to pass through armor. It's not the worse but still a bad thing altogether.

Battle

Click here to view the replay

This is the positioning I used for this battle:

In this battle, I use Centauri Mage as my main tank as the mana cost is not enough to put a real one. I was hoping my opponent to use a lot of range units but this didn't happen, unfortunately.

Round 1

By end of Round 1, Mycelic Morphoid dies making my Centauri Mage the main front line.

Round 2

By end of Round 2, damage was made all around and Return Fire inflicts 1 damage to Child of the Forest as well.

Round 3

By end of Round 3, Unicorn Mustang dies along with Elven Mystic.

Round 4

Game ended on Round 4 with the death of my Goblin Psychic and opponnt's Khmer Princess and Child of the Forest.

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.
  Happy Holidays. Good luck. Have fun.