Welcome back to our Weekly Battle Mage Secrets!
This week, we are featuring the Even Stevens ruleset.

Even Stevens:

• Only units with even mana costs may be used.
• This rule does not apply to summoners.

Even Stevens doesn't really have much of a Synergy or Counter strategy to play, so in this section, we'll dive in to some value add you can build off of. The strategy part will come to play more depending on what this ruleset gets partnered with.

Synergies
Heal	Heal is of course used for more tankability and survivability. Whenever you can fit a healer in, it will be a great value add to make your tanks or secondary tanks with reach last longer. Baakjira and Quora, for example, are good even mana cost cards that can tank.
Protect	As you all know by now, I'm a big fan of armor and if paired with Rathe for void armor, even better. If you go up against a team with very similar lineups and you have protect and they don't, that could be a game winner. For high mana matches, Arkemis The Bear would be ideal.
Double Strike	The first two had more to do with survivability, this one though deals more damage as much as possible with double strike. Depending on the paired rulesets, try to slot more DPS in as much as you can. The new Soulbound Reward card Coastal Sentry is also an even mana card.

Counters
Headwinds	Any of the three debuffs will be helpful if you can find them in this ruleset. Headwinds, together with any combination with Demoralize or Silence will help reduce damage towards your lineup.
Weaken	Weaken will always be a good addition for your debuffs to use against any opponent. It's not only a safe choice, it's also a very effective one. The faster you mow them down, the more likely your win.
Halving	This is a rarer ability overall but with the recent addition of Arkemis The Bear, you now have a card to use that can take advantage of this ability. Granted, it's not a low mana card, but the ability itself will more than make up for it. 12 mana is also even so that means you can bring this along.

This week's feature is from a regular match in Diamond League. Rulesets are as follows:

• Even Stevens
• Heavy Hitters
• Healed Out

This time, we're graced with a max mana match so we can run wild! We aren't necessarily spoiled for choice since the odd cards aren't available but it's nice to have a high mana match for a change.

Round 1

With the high mana cards we can use, we are able to get some good options in. My opponent decided to go with a 4 melee, 2 ranged combo while I tried to do a good mix instead.

The opponent used a lot of the suggestions I made like Protect, Halving, and Double Strike but the problem with a three melee lineup without reach is that the second and third position don't necessarily do damage until later on.

Round 2

The start of round 2 shows us the edge we made because everyone in the backline aside from Baakjira the secondary tank were able to get hits in. Another notable thing here is that while the Diemonshark will get enraged and get more damage, it gets halved instead due to Arkemis The Bear which further limits the opponent's DPS.

Round 3

The middle of round 3 has us eliminating the Diemonshark and going up against the enemy Arkemis. While that's a pretty strong card in the first slot, Baakjira is no slouch either. Even without the heal, it can tank quite a hefty chunk of damage.

Round 5

Round 5 is pretty much the beginning of the end for the enemy. The 2 ranged backlines will be in for some trouble after we get rid of the now front line Deep Lurker. Our own Djinn Oshannus can also tank quite a bit and has high speed to help dodge.

Results

GG! Finally, we break the 2 week lose streak! Max mana matches can be very hit or miss because it depends on what you have available. I was also somewhat lucky in this match as the melee lineup didn't do much in the early rounds and that helped me get a lot of DPS pumping out.

That's it for this one and see you next week!

Full battle here.

Images provided by Splinterlands in game and via Weekly Battle Mage Challenge post.

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