Battle Mage Secrets: Equaliser

This week's Battle Mage rule set challenge was Equaliser in which all monsters receive the health of the highest health monster on either team.

Equaliser general strategy....

There are a few basics to get right I think, not necessarily in this order:

1. Play the lowest health monsters possible to take advantage of all the other bonuses, and leave open the opportunity for your opponent to gift you higher health. I mean think about it, it's always a trade off, why opt for higher health at the expense of attack power or buffs when you've nothing to gain?
2. Play strengthen as much as possible, or summoners with plus one health, this doesn't help your opponent.
3. Heal and triage are essential, they are worth more with higher health.
4. Scavenge and Life Leach are great - these battles tend to last longer.
5. Affliction and poison also, especially affliction, and for that matter: cleanse!
6. I generally find splitting attacks into snipe and sneak and so on doesn't work - all monsters hitting one monster, otherwise it takes too long to take anything down!

Equaliser battle exemplar

The battle below shows a battle in which my opponent gets it ALL wrong!

Ruleset = just equaliser an 30 MANA.

Summoner - Lilly for the plus one health and triage

• Flesh Golem - higher health than I'd have liked, but a decent self heal option as tank
• Chicken - now high health soaker
• Serpentine Mystic - for affliction
• Goblin Psychic - tank heal and decent attack
• Mittica Headhunter - my main attack card
• Brownie - sneak soak and swiften.

The battle...

• round 1 - we trade blows for no losses, it's usually the way with high health
• round 2 - I take out my opponent's Cruel Sethropod. Already, see: all wrong!
• Round 3 - I take out Osheanus
• Round 4 - I lose my Stone Golem, damn!
• Round 6 - The Deeplurker goes
• Round 8 - The Archer goes, I'm safe!
• Round 12 - it takes me another four rounds to finish off my opponent, and I'm 5/6 at the end.

Final battle analysis

A great example of me getting it mostly right and my opponent getting it entirely wrong, with no heal and splitting his attacks.

In retrospect I wouldn't have gone for Lilly with the Camo, it would have been better to play life splinter with shields and triage and just let 3-4 damage from opportunity be wasted by triaging it every round.

I didn't need affliction as my opponent played no heal.

I was even unlucky with my opponent's shields - my 4 damage from Mitica usually hit shields, but I still crushed my opponent!

Equaliser final thoughts...

Follow as much of the above advice as possible!