Hello there.

Today I'll share my battle under the Equal Opportunity ruleset. But first, I will share some of my thoughts regarding it. With this ruleset, all monsters gain the Opportunity ability. This lets monsters attack the lowest HP monster they can. For monsters with other targeting abilities, like Sneak, Snipe, and Scattershot, those take priority over Opportunity.

In this ruleset, the first thing that comes to my mind is, Quora. If Quora is not available, I look at Double Strike monsters, and monsters with two attack types. Drybone Raider is actually a card that has both of these, and can be very powerful in this ruleset as well.

I made this meme from https://imgflip.com/memegenerator

Apart from the attack types and abilities, this ruleset also encourages the use of Martyr cards. Because Martyrs usually have low HP, they will be targeted first and grant their Martyr stacks early. Together with this, the Protect ability can be helpful in helping to protect the team, while also adding more armor because of the martyr stack. If the battle is high mana, I might even include a Taunt monster to try and delay the opponent from killing my monsters, while I take a few of theirs down.

I believe that being flexible in battle is the ideal strategy. Check the opponent's history, check what they are most likely to use, and counter it. But always pick teams that can also counter different strategies.

Without further ado, let's get into the battle.

The Ruleset

This was a tournament battle, so it was a Bronze battle with Stampede, Equal Opportunity, and Unprotected Rulesets. A 41 mana battle is on the high amount, and only the Water element is not available. I can think of a lot of different strategies for each so I will try to counter as much as I can.

The ideal team for Fire is a Melee team with two martyr monsters. They can use Helios Matriarch with Gorth, or Tinderlock. Disintegrator can be an option to try and lessen some melee damage.

For Earth, Quora between two martyr monsters is the best. Not only does Quora have two attack types so it can kill two enemies in one round, but it can ramp up its stacks more quickly.

For Life, Drybone Barbarian get stronger here because its high attack can immediately damage the monster because of Unprotected. Unfortunately, Life has a lot of strong monsters with armor that just lost their armor because of the ruleset. Iziar is an option, but it can be a bit high cost, and the team might lack some damage.

For Death, Thaddius with Willowisp is an option to really lower the enemy team's HP. Cards like Possessed puppet can then deal a lot of damage. Add to that Skok Duskblight and RIftwing, and there is good survivability there. It is weak to a Thaddius mirror though.

Dragon can use Helios to add Gladiator cards that can get stronger as the battle continues. The additional speed helps them attack earlier.

The Lineup

For me, between the lineups I mentioned above, I'd rather go with a Quora team. Unprotected means that Quora's attacks will always hit the opponent's HP, so there is a higher chance of getting a kill. Terraceous Grunt is there to buy a lot of time and keep Quora in the backline. Xenith Monk is just a filler card, while Slipspawn is good to try and delay my opponent from killing my other backline.

The Battle

Link to the Battle

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The Matchup

My opponent decided to go with a similar Quora team as well. Quora between two martyr monsters is really strong in these rulesets. The difference though is, they opted to use Drybone Raider and Desert Dragon compared to my Slipspawn and Terraceous Grunt. I think mine is Quora focused, while theirs is a bit balanced. Their Quora is level 2 though, so it has +1 HP, and will attack first if the speed of our Quoras are the same.

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End of Round 1

My Quora was able to make two quick kills, and got stacks. The Drybone Raider is dealing a lot of damage because of the Martyr, and my Slipspawn died too quickly. I have more monsters at the moment though, so I think so far, so good.

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End of Round 2

Their Quora got two quick kills on my martyr monsters. Both Quoras got stacks from this, but I can't help feel that their Quora wasted their high attack on weak monsters. As the rest of the round unfolded, my Quora got another kill, and the rest of their monsters died, leaving only Quora left. Seeing that my Quora is 1 speed faster, and has enough damage to kill the opponent Quora, I can see that this battle is over.

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End of the Battle

I will have to say that I was happy that I won that battle. It feels nice to see that using Taunt helped me buy more time to get my Quora going, while also delaying the opponent's Quora stacking. It was really cool to see the power of Double attack type + Double Strike, but unfortunately it wasn't enough for my opponent to win. A lot of times, it is better to focus on just letting Quora get the kills, and become a monster. My opponent spread their damage, and some kills were stolen from the Quora.

The Result

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Conclusion

In tournaments where there are additional limitations on top of the Rulesets and banned elements, I try to make it a point to look at the possible teams and imagine them fighting against one another. I will then choose the team which I think is best. For this specific battle, my opponent used a similar team composition. We both opted for a Quora team, but they mixed their damage source, and it ended up working against them. I mostly focused on my Quora, and I came out with the win.