Splinterlands BATTLE MAGE SECRETS Featuring Armored Up

Featuring Bronze League Summoner and Monsters in Action!

Was excited this week to share another battle where I'm using my bronze League account card caps to show off my strategy and line up in its successful victory over my opponent. This week's challenge of armored up provides a unique ruleset where all monsters get a plus two armor buff at the beginning of the game. This makes melee and range attacks much more difficult and really increases the power of pierce, magic and blast.

CHALLENGE RULES

RULESET: Armored Up

Description: All monsters get a +2 armor buff at the beginning of the game.

Reasons Why I like it

The Matchup - Where Rules Sets, Splinters and Mana Collide

The Rule Sets

Watch the Match Here

https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_66dec4f195cf1e7ee37416725f86b74e&ref=senstless

MANA: 13

Ruleset: Armored Up: All monsters get a +2 armor buff at the beginning of the game.

Ruleset: Little League: Only monsters and summoners which have a mana cost of 4 or less may be used.

SPLINTERS: Water, Earth, Life, Death, Dragon

Initial Rule Set and Mana Gameplay Thoughts

**Mana **
I always have struggled with low mana matches. 13 is as low as you can go pretty much and it really hampers your ability to pick a team that is optimized. Many times the team you pick is completely one-sided and if your opponent plays the counter there's nothing that you can do. I think with the 13 mana rule set will be looking towards something with a healer or heavy magic.

Rule sets
Armored up and put the league prison sent a real challenge. Having armor but restricting to low man of cards means there's not very many cards that are going to play well. The few options are for healing will have reduced melee attack and have armor to prevent any damage for the first two rounds. I expect the Little League match to be either deaf or Earth. Death will subtract yet another health from cards that already have a little help, and Earth will likely be a magic boost to cut away the low health of the cards.

Splinter
Expensive choice is fairly robust the only one missing is fire. I anticipate the choices did go between the two counters that typically play of Earth and death. These two seem to be the usual suspects in these types of matches for me at least.

• Summoner OBSIDIAN I know it's boost is likely to be countered by death, but at this point I think I just have to go with it either way. If it is countered then at least I should be back to neutral overall.

• First Position HILL GIANT everyone's favorite little league tank, for only three mana it gives you a robust seven health and now that it has armor it's looking even stronger.

• Second Position FUNGUS FIEND
  Just a classic zero man to play, I put it here to protect my magic cards as long as possible to have them keep dropping some heavy damage

• Third Position QUEEN MYCELIA I figured if a little armor was good even more armor is better. Hopefully my magic will stay boosted to two and it can do some good work.

• Fourth Position KHMER PRICESS
  A two-man of magic card, that if it's boosted and sticks will also be doing two damage. The armor should help it stick around and not go out on the first time it's attacked.

Opponent Lineup & Match Play

• Summoner OBSIDEIAN looks like a very similar strategy to mine, going after the magic play.
• MYCELIC MORPHOID interesting first card, but maybe they were hoping to face a more melee heavy matchup. The thorns plus armor is a nice combination as it will eat away my armor or health.
• FUNGUS FIEND was fully expecting to see whatever is your romantic card they had for their splinter
• VENARI SPELLSMITH an interesting choice, and I understand as it has both dispel and amplify. Which means it should help to pick away whatever perks my cards are getting, will also dealing heavy magic damage.
• QUEEN MYCELIA
  Very similar thoughts to my own lineup, magic plus protect is just an easy choice.

Round 1

Looking at the lineups, I noticed that some of their cards and summoner are level 4 or five, and mine are only still level twos. This means that strictly based on the level of cards I'm more than likely severely outranked, but I'm feeling fairly confident by just looking at the carts chosen

The round starts and the biggest takeaways are that while I take some hefty damage, I'm able to secure two different knockouts in a severely hamper the other team.

Round 2

The round starts with me losing Hill giant, but I am quick to turn the tables and knock out Venrai Spellsmith. This leaves them with only one monster and I am guaranteed a victory. I'm actually surprised at how quickly this match is going

Round 3

The round starts and I'm guaranteed a victory no matter the attack order. I secure the victory before the round ends in round 3. This is probably one of the quicker matches but not surprising considering it's only 13 mana and there is not much you can do to heal and repair cards with such limited mana.

Thoughts - and Chances to Win Again

I wanted to go over and check out a chances to win to see if there was any way I could lose this match up again. It appears that I chose a perfect matchup for my opponents lineup and I am guaranteed a victory 100% of the time. While I feel like this could easily be tweaked to where I lose, especially if they were to mimic my Hill Giant with Venrai Spellsmith things could get interesting as I lose my boosts. I'll have to play around with using cards that have the dispellability a bit more

I was very happy to have queen Mycelia at my disposal. This is one of the new cards I added in March that has been extremely beneficial. I went on a shopping spree so I am pulling together my new collection and can share what I was able to purchase this month to help fill out my teams.

I always struggle with matches this lone mana, and I'm often regret my lineup before the match even starts. I often look at my opponents lineup and wonder how I couldn't think of it because it's so simple and so effective. I hope to continue my good luck throughout the rest of this season.
~~@senstless

#sbi-skip