Hi, Everyone 👋

In the last post, I showed battles with Lux Vega and Fire monsters. In this post I'll show battles with Earth monsters.

Questions

Before I look for battles with Lux Vega and Earth monsters, I had these questions.

• How good Lux Vega is compared to other Earth summoners like Mylor, Prince Renynn, Scarred Llama Mage?

• How good is Lux Vega + Earth monsters compared to other meta including other splinters?

I hope this article answers these 2 questions.

Let's look at battles!

21 mana, Standard (vs Mylor)
https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_4d6a3f813ce7669dcd2fe63febc3d34a

Earth has two 3 mana opportunity monsters, Screeching Vulture and Venari Scout, usually they wouldn't last so long against Mylor but extra armor protecting them helps them survive longer.

In this battle, the Mylor team didn't have Queen Mycelia. If they had Queen Mycelia, the bottom team still had 1 armor from Lux Vega. That extra armor is big against Mylor because it means those melee monsters can stay alive 1 turn longer.

21 mana, briar patch, heavy hitter (vs Rennyn)
https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_3e4a3006b8c9210289e76f20176e1862

Prince Rennyn team looks powerful. 3 good archers with +1 archery buff. 2 armor left after rust.

The Lux Vega team had 2 weaken monsters reducing the opponent's monsters health, which made it so easy to go through the first 3 monsters. The bottom team got lucky by Djinn Biljka hitting Chaos Agent for the first time, Acid Shooter hitting Queen Mycelia for the first time. However, even with that the Lux Vega team had 78% win rate according to splintertools.io.

29 mana, back to basics, stampede (vs Rennyn)
https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_a271fc09254a8c8ca9f5178ac9c62105

Prince Rennyn is strong in back to basics. When I think of back to basics ruleset, I think of Yodin, Vulnamor, Prince Rennyn or Lorna in low mana ruleset.

When Yodin, Vulnamor is not available in mid mana back to basics, Prince Rennyn is usually goto summoner.

However, Lux Vega is simply a great counter against Prince Rennyn. It is huge that 1 armor from Lux taking 1 archery damage. Also, adding +1 hp, +1 speed is great in back to basics ruleset.

21 mana, back to basics, holy protection (vs Yodin)
https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_b5e347dff700a50992a4baff8f01c788

I was simply surprised by this! Yodin is great in back to basic ruleset and holy protection ruleset. So Yodin is supposed to be "the best" summoner in this ruleset especially when return fire summoners are not available.

Goblin Dartling is doing a great job attacking first and removing the divine shield of monsters. Then the rest of the team finish off monsters faster than most of the Yodin team.

27 mana, heavy hitter, counterspell (vs kitty earth)
https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_65699f025e2eebc060ef0b2311c1e99a

Lux Vega's armor worked well again in this battle.

The Kitty team had rust from scale doctor so that the opportunity monsters can attack monsters' hp rather than armor. However, the rust just took the armors from Queen Mycelia, couldn't take out 1 armor from Lux Vega. The Kitty team has 2 armor repair but since they don't have any armor, the abilities are wasted.

The bottom team has armors and Epona keeps repairing her armor while Queen Mycelia healing Epona's hp. Epona is acting like a tank in this battle.
The bottom team has more damage output overall as well.

99 mana, lost legendaries, fire & regret (vs Llama)
https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_0a562e9585bc7863bf84f19f94c8a34d

They have similar teams in this battle. Both sides have the same 4 monsters, Grand, Mycelic Slipspawn, Goblin Psychic, Supply runner.

It seems to me that the biggest difference is the speed. Since Lux Vega adds +1 speed, most of the monsters in Lux Vega team attacked before Llama's team.

19 mana, odd ones out, holy protection (vs Crypt Mancer)
https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_048e3fb20ccb3db1d55bb679a6122223

Crypto Mancer and the death sneak team is a great team in odd ones out ruleset. There are more odd mana sneak monsters than even mana sneak monsters. 1 mana inspire from Shadowy Presence is boosting the damage of already good sneak monsters.

However, what we see here is the resiliency of the backline monsters in Lux Vega's team with Epona's repair and evasiveness by the extra speed from Lux Vega and Brownie. While the backline and the tank taking damage, Djinn Biljka and screeching vulture are slowly killing the opponent monsters.

What I wanted to show here is that crypto mancer + death sneak monsters are very strong but Lux Vega and earth teams can fight well against them in odd ones out ruleset without special anti-sneak monsters in the back.

20 mana, heal out, earthquake (vs Yodin)
https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_68af80285ada42acfbdd5dbc7b543df3

This was another surprising battle to me because Yodin is usually a good choice in heal out or earthquake ruleset in mid-low mana battles. Yodin team like this is popular in earthquake ruleset.

In this case though, Lux Vega + earth monsters have a lot more hit points than Yodin team. Lux Vega, Queen Mycelia, and tower griffin adding +5 armors to all friendly monsters. That itself gives 3 free rounds from earthquake damage. Queen Mycelia removing the enemies' armors is huge as well.

Answer to the questions

From watching these battles, I can clearly state below

• Lux Vega can be a very good choice even compared to other popular earth summoners like Mylor, Llama, Prince Rennyn.

• Lux Vega team can also do well against other legendary summoners like Kitty, Yodin, Crypto Mancer etc.

Earth monsters that are good with Lux Vega

1. Epona

Epona is just 1 mana but it can heal armor that Lux Vega provides. It also add +1 hp to all friendly monsters. You'll increase +2 hp of everyone just with Lux Vega and Epona.

2.Queen Mycelia

Adds +2 armor to friendly monsters and removes 2 armors from the enemy monsters. If you use Lux Vega and Queen Mycelia, and the opponent also uses Queen Mycelia, you still have 1 armor left from Lux Vega.

She also has triage, and triage becomes more powerful if monsters have more hp. Let's say you use Lux Vega, Failed summoner, Epona, Queen Mycelia, Mycelic slipspawn in the back. That is +3 hp to Mycelic slipspawn. The hp of Mycelic slipspawn becomes 15 and triage heals 5 hp instead of 4.

3.Failed Summoner

The reason why I listed failed summoner here is because of the hp. Naturally, it will have 10 hp including its own strength ability.

Lux Vega adds +1 hp. If you bring one more strength like Epona, Supply runner etc, the hp becomes 12 and it heals 4 instead of 3. Obviously, that can be a big difference in low mana matches.

Thoughts on Lux Vega + Earth monsters

Lux Vega added a lot more ways to win against the existing meta. For example, Lux Vega vs Yodin or Prince Rennyn in back to basics ruleset. Another example is that you can win against Mylor with melee monsters.

Melee monsters in earth was not very popular because no earth summoner had a great synergy with melee monsters. Also, Mylor was simply strong and popular to counter melee attacks. Now, Lux Vega adds great benefits to earth melee monsters, allowing them to attack faster, protecting them from thorns with more hp and armor.
I can see that earth melee monsters will be used more often.

Lux Vega has good synergies with already strong low mana monsters like failed summoner, Epona, Queen Mycelia. Since earth has a lot of healing monsters, adding more hp is always good.

Lux Vega is still under utilized

If you don't own or don't want to rent expensive legendary summoners that cost thousands of DEC each, Lux Vega is a great choice to counter those expensive legendary summoners and you can use Lux Vega in most of the ruleset!

Another great thing about Lux Vega is that there's not a definitive way to counter Lux Vega. You can't assume any attack type from Lux Vega. The best you can do is to add speed buffs/debuffs, or add rust to remove their armor.

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