Battle Mage Secrets: Reflective!

This week's Battle Mage rule set challenge was Magic Reflect in which all monsters get the REFLECT ability, meaning magic attacks get an automatic penalty!

Reflect general strategy....

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

1. As a general rule AVOID magic attacks, especially high power MAGIC attacks!
2. There's no point playing anything with reflect or void already, you are wasting your mana, unless it's an obvious card for other rule sets.
3. Because you can expect your opponent to play either ranged or melee, then shields would be a good idea, along with repair.
4. The same goes for anything with counter measures to the other two attacks - like thorns and return fire!

REFLECT battle exemplar

The battle below shows a battle in which I mostly avoid playing magic emphasising self-heal and high health over attack power.

• Mana 36
• Rulesets - reflect, snipe, unprotected

• Summoner: Scarred Lama Mage

1. Flesh Golem: standard high health self-heal tank
2. Cornealus - for some snipe protection and return fire.
3. Earth Elemental - VERY respectable damage and health and more self-heal for the mana!
4. Goblin Chef - poison and afflict, love those abilities.
5. Wood Nymph - tank heal and strengthen
6. Vulture - opportunity and scavenge and flying to dodge sneaky attacks!

The battle...

• round 1 - My combined snipers (snipe rule set) take out the Djinn!
• round 2 - I take out my opponents Ant Miners and Radiated Brute but I lose my Wood Nymph
• round 3 - I take out the Countess and the Opportunity monster, ouch!
• round 4 - now with the Tendyl Striker the only card left it's all over, I have FIVE cards standing!

Final battle analysis

My general strategy was to focus on healing and high health, leaving the opportunistic scavenging Vulture to possibly kill anything left with a Last Stand from the Lama Mage.

It turned out this wasn't necessary as my opponent's split attacks meant he didn't have the power round on round to kill anything before my cards healed.

The only card I lost was in fact the Wood Nymph Healer, testimony to the damage playing a magic card with the reflect rule set can do (although also she did suffer from an opportunity attack!

I actually wasted maybe some mana by playing void and reflect with the front two cards respectively, these weren't needed!

NB this was combined with a no shields rule set, had that not been in place I would have played SHIELDS and repair all the way with this!