Hello there.

Today I'll share my battle under the Silenced Summoners ruleset. But first, I will share some of my thoughts regarding it. With the Silenced Summoners ruleset, all summoners lose their abilities. Monsters still retain their abilities, they just don't gain anything from the summoners.

In this ruleset, a lot of my usual teams are affected. I usually use the Reward card summoners to use gladiator cards, but they are now disabled. I also don't have any 2-4 mana summoners that are leveled, so I already have a disadvantage. I need to use a 6 mana summoner to use my leveled cards, while my opponent can use the 2 cost summoners to maximize their mana.

My problems don't end there. Since we can have up to 3 rulesets in a battle, I need my best teams to win. My usual teams are too dependent on my summoners most of the time. I will just have to stick to the basics like using taunt monsters, try to use heals and sustain my team, then focus my attacks to quickly eliminate the enemy's monsters.

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 Aim True, Silenced Summoners, and Heavy Hitters Rulesets. A 47 mana battle is on the high amount. Fire, Water, and Death are the elements 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 mix of melee and magic monsters. They have a few good ones like Djinn Apprentice and Technowizologist. Together with Septic Slime, they can trigger the Heavy hitters a lot. The only problem is that they are a bit slow, has lower damage, and the magic monsters have low HP. For Water, they have a few good opportunity monsters available to attack the backline. It can also trigger Heavy hitters with the Water Caller, but the other monsters need to be fast to attack first, since Water Caller only has 1 speed.

For Death, Revealer is a must add. I also expect Cursed Windeku and a few good ranged monsters to be included. Since no summoner abilities are active, they can also use their many magic monsters.

The Lineup

Card	Ability	Comments
	Increases the HP of ally monsters by 1 and has Conscript	I wanted to go Water, and this is my only leveled up summoner. Good thing it is a high mana battle and I can take the 2 extra mana tax.
	Protect	It is more likely to face physical damage so I wanted to add more armor with Protect. Arkemis can also serve as my primary tank.
	Rust	Noa's rust is the backbone of this team. I need to remove my opponent's armor so my opportunity monsters can quickly kill the backline.
	Weapons Training, Opportunity	My main damage dealer. The Weapons Training helps make Noa even more useful once it gets to the first position.
	Opportunity	My second damage dealer. I'm hoping Deeplurker can finish off any monster that survives the Kulu's initial attack.
	Repair	My main support monster. I have Protect so the Repair works perfectly with that. Noa is my second tank and has its own armor, so Repair will still work once Arkemis goes down.
	-	My opportunity and sneak bait. It was added last to just fill up the team and maximize my mana consumption.

For me, between the lineups I mentioned above, I'd rather go with a Water Opportunity team. I didn't make use of the Heavy Hitters ruleset, but I think that is a bait. A lot of monsters with Stun have low HP, so hopefully my Opportunity can quickly dispose of them. Noa counters a lot of teams that might use Protect, and if they don't, then it's easy pickings. My only concern is a similar Opportunity team. If they also use Noa, Arkemis and Swamp Spitter will become useless.

The Battle

Link to the Battle

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The Matchup

My opponent decided to go with a mixed damage Death team which I considererd. They had a level 2 Dallan so they were able to use a fully maxed level team [level 2 Epics can use level 3 rare monsters]. Level wise they have the advantage, but damage output wise, it looks a bit even,

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End of Round 1

Their Revealer was lucky and immediately stunned my Arkemis on its first attack. They also had a really good attack order, with 3 monsters able to attack after the Revealer and make use of the Heavy Hitters. My Arkemis instantly died, and my Noa is now in front.

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End of Round 2

Because of the Aim True ruleset, my Noa can't evade any attacks. The Swamp Spitter is doing work by repairing its armor but it will only be a matter of time. We were able to kill Kain Hace who is dealing a lot of damage, but Queen of Crows still has a lot of HP, and they still have a lot of damage potential.

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End of Round 3

My Kulu was able to kill the Ravenhood before the Dhampir Stalker can kill my Noa. Losing my Rust at that point was ok, since they no longer have Protect. This Revealer is insanely lucky, since it was able to stun my Kulu. I still have a good amount of monsters at the back, so it is looking fine for now.

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End of Round 4

I got confused by the Stun Status recovery. I expected my Kulu to not attack, but remove its Stun Status after its turn. But what happened was it still had the Stun Status, and the Dhampir was able to kill it with the Heavy Hitters buff. I asked in discord, and one player said the status will persist throughout round 4. Thinking about it, I think it will stay on until the Revealer's next attack, so it has a chance of reapplying it. Luckily it wasn't able to stun my Deeplurker this time around.

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End of Round 5

My Deeplurker not getting stunned last round was so important. I was able to kill the Queen of Crows and Revealer because of it. With just the Dhampir remaining, and it being unable to attack, this battle is over.

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End of the Battle

I will have to say that battle was closer than I would have wanted. They took advantage of the Heavy Hitters ruleset, and almost won because of it. It is good to see that my strategy of going for the backline was rewarded. Kane Hace was going to do a lot of damage if I wasn't able to kill it early.

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 team composition that I was expecting, but wasn't ready for. They had a lot of high level monsters, and they took advantage of the heavy hitters ruleset. I think the winner of the battle came down to Stun RNG, and luckily it was on my side this battle.