Weekly Battle Challenge - Tenyii Striker

Tenyii Tournament Style

The battle that I chose to feature Tenyii Striker in was from a novice, Chaos only, no legendaries tournament so all of the monsters are capped level 1 and there are very limited cards that can be used. It is a simple way to practice predicting what an opponent could play and guarding against it or just optimizing a lineup. I enjoy tournaments for this reason, especially the more limited ones because it is an easy incubator to help you become more familiar with the function of the rulesets and abilities (and you can win DEC and SPS without driving down your ECR!).

I also really liked the lore for the Tenyii Striker(s) even though I wanted more, it is a compelling introduction. Here's a clip:

By twelve moonlit blades was our honor restored. By twelve blades were fifty heads taken, the rest thrown into the midden crevasse, the skulls returned as a sign. Losing one hand he offers the other, threatening us with fire. As a gift we offer those same twelve blades of which I am one.
We sail the void and cross the rift, biding our time and feigning service but there will be a reckoning. We shall have his head and the heads of all those who dared stir us from our mountain home.
--- Jin Mayumi

So it seems the Tenyii are a collection of twelve warriors sent to appease an angry Khan, and Jin Mayumi is one of those and perhaps the featured visage as well? Either way the warriors are biding their time until they can fight their way out of the empire. The Tenyii Strike Back?

Abilities

Tenyii Striker is a rare five mana chaos edition card, which is awesome even at level 1. He does two damage (+1 when paired with Tarsa), has two speed and six health.

He starts with the sneak ability and gains dodge, and backfire as he levels. I currently only have this card at the second level, but hope to get him up to at least level 4 in the near future.

Strategy

The ruleset for this tournament battle was all monsters had equal opportunity and there was a mana cap of 48 and the available splinters were fire, life, and death.

The equal opportunity means whichever monster has the lowest health will be targeted so my initial reaction to this ruleset is usually: Can I redirect the attacks via a taunt to spare my glass canons? In chaos only earth (Mycelic Slipspawn) and water (Wave Brood) have taunt ability so this was off the table.

Because I couldn't place a taunt I knew that the weakest monster would be targeted first, and it will be important to order them correctly so that the sequence of targeting will spare the most valuable attackers. Additionally, out of all the splinters I wanted to use whichever had the most life (limit the health floor).

Finally, there is an order to the way that the abilities are triggered. When I was first learning I used Ueyuey's priority of abilities post to figure out the epistasis for stealth rulesets. Sneak will take priority over Opportunity, meaning that any monsters with the sneak ability will maintain that ability in an equal Opportunity battle. Opportunity overrides Reach and Melee Mayhem, meaning that Sneak has the highest priority, followed by Opportunity, Reach and finally Melee Mayhem.

Lineup

With those considerations of strategy in mind I decided that Tarsa and the fire splinter would be the best summoner for this battle. She will add health to the lowest health monster, and also boost melee damage against the opponent's lowest health monster. You will see I also made good use of the Chaos neutral monsters in this battle.

I chose to put Tusk the Wide up front. He has a lot of health, but does not do a lot of damage. Also the magic attackers available were not very strong, and void could soak up these attacks just in case the opponent decided to put magic upfront.

Forgotten One is in the second position, he has a heavy attack and is well armored, but his high health ensures that he will not be chosen as a first victim.

When there is sufficient mana to make use of it the Disintegrator is great in both equal Opportunity and Super Sneak battles because of his Demoralize ability which decreases each of the opponents attacks by 1. He is also going to be the first monster targeted, but his armor will absorb some of the initial damage hopefully from large attacks.

In the fourth position I have the featured Tenyii Striker. He will maintain his sneak ability. The reason I wanted to add him here was that I thought there may be some weaker monsters toward the back of the lineup because of the ruleset that would allow me to weaken the team even though it would spread out my damage a little.

Magi of Chaos was my highest health magic attacker, and with him I was hoping slip some damage underneath the opponent's shields.

Finally I completed the lineup with Xenith Monk, who unfortunately does not have his heal at level 1, but was still the best monster for the mana that I had remaining and gets a stats boost from Tarsa.

Analysis

My opponent also chose to play Tarsa in this battle, and because of the limited options we ended up with a lot of lineup similarities. However, they chose a full melee lineup and I also a magic attacker.

Watch the Battle!

The magic attack paid off in round one, because it went directly to health bypassing armor and the Shield ability of Antoid Platoon that the melee attackers are subject to. This was also the target for Tenyii Striker because he is still doing his Sneak attack. The concentrated effort helped remove Antoid Platoon early on despite the Shield ability and melee nerf.

In round two Radiated Brute was targeted and eliminated by my monsters, but I lost Disintegrator and Demoralize. Tenyii removed the opponents Disintegrator in round two, which was the target for opportunity attacks in the third round.

The opponent's Disintegrator was removed from the battle in the third round, and my Tenyii was spared because of both Xenith Monk and Magi of Chaos. The opponent's Tenyii was then the concentrated target for both Sneak and Opportunity.

By the sixth round maintaining my Tenyii Striker was advantageous because he has such a heavy melee attack and was paired with (and against) Forgotten One. This battle also illustrated how sometimes spreading out your attacks during equal Opportunity ruleset can be harmful because I benefitted directly from the concentrated effort of my monsters, while at the same time my opponent suffered from his attacks being spread out too thinly.

In round eight Tenyii landed the final blow against Forgotten One leading to a tournament battle victory!

Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed learning a little bit about tournaments, priority of abilities, and the Tenyii Striker!