Never Tell Me The Odds - Battling with Even Stevens!

This week's Battle Mage Secrets challenge features the Even Stevens ruleset! Even Stevens is not one of my favorite rulesets to play with, as it eliminates what is essentially half of the usable monsters in your deck. While that in itself is manageable, with three different rulesets in play, an Even Stevens battle can very easily leave you with only a handful of monsters to choose from, and very limited strategic options.

Even Stevens is just about what it sounds like - even mana costed monsters only! There are a pair of very clearly impacted groups here - even mana costed monsters win because they are playable, and odd mana costed monsters are big losers since they can't be used at all. The other winners and losers really depend on the format you are playing in, and figuring them out requires knowledge of the meta you are playing in. For example, you may know that a particular strategy uses a lot of odd costed monsters. In that case, you may have to worry less about your opponent choosing that route when you are selecting your own team. On the reverse side, strategies which make use of mostly even costed monsters are stronger in Even Stevens, and more likely to see play.

If you wanted to jump right to the action, the Battle Link is right here. Want to hear some more about the lineup? Read on further!

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Here is the ruleset for our battle. Of course, we have the Even Stevens ruleset, which means that we can only choose monsters with an even mana cost for our team. We also have Close Range and Briar Patch. This allows ranged monsters to attack from the first position, and gives every monster Thorns. Other notable aspects of the battle conditions are that we have a very high mana cap, with 60 mana, and only a single splinter to play with - Life.

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While taking a look at the rules I noticed that the combination of Briar Patch and Close Range strongly discourage the use of melee attackers, while giving ranged monsters a bit of a boost. When you also consider the fact that Life has plenty of solid ranged attackers with an even mana cost and it seemed very likely that there would be a lot of ranged damage involved in this battle. Ilthain's summoner ability of Return Fire is incredible in situations like these - so much so that Ilthain is often worth using even if you only have a lower level copy of it, which is the case with my deck.

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I started my team with my tank and secondary tank. Keeping in mind that Briar Patch is in play, I wanted to make sure that I had some monsters which could deal with that at least a little bit. Arkemis the Bear has a whole lot of health to offset some of that Thorns damage, as well as granting my team extra armor. Corsair Bosun can attack out of the second position thanks to Reach, and can bypass Thorns completely with his Reflection Shield ability.

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Up next were Supply Runner and Shieldbearer. Supply Runner is a solid ranged attacker who can attack even if he gets to the front on account of the Close Range ruleset in this battle. Shieldbearer is in a slightly unusual position, but we are battling in the Briar Patch, so we really don't want him to be attacking at all if we can get away with it. This means positioning him a little farther back than we normally would.

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Finally, we'll round out our team with as much damage as we can fit in. Pelacor Arbalest and Prismologist are both high damage ranged attackers, and conveniently have even mana costs. The gameplan is for these two to do the bulk of the damage to the enemy team, while my frontline tanks stall for as long as possible.

With the lineup set, it's off into battle! When I see the selected teams I am not sure what to think = on one hand, my strategy is perfectly positioned to counter the enemy team, with Ilthain's Return Fire looking to be a very nice selection. On the other hand, I am at a serious level disadvantage - my opponent's team is close to the Gold league level cap, while my low level Ilthain has resulted in capping my monsters at some decidedly lower monster levels.

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In the first round of battle things get off to a great start for my team. Return Fire results in all of my opponent's ranged attackers taking heavy damage, with their Pelacor Arbalest even getting knocked out of the fight after just a single round. My Arkemis at the front line has taken heavy damage as well, but so far I like what I am seeing.

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One more round and the battle is nearly won - Return Fire does even more damage to the opposing monsters, and at this point the enemy team has lost the majority of its damage output. There are still a couple of bulky monsters on the other side of the battlefield, but the combination of Briar Patch and Close Range rulesets mean that my monsters don't have a whole lot to worry about.

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By the start of round 4 my team was poised to take the victory. With just a single melee monster remaining on my opponent's team and Briar Patch in play, this game was well in hand for me. And again, if you wanted to see the whole battle for yourself, you can see it right here.

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My strategy for this battle worked out perfectly. With the rulesets in play there was one particular strategy that was highly likely to be used, and Ilthain was the perfect counter for this fight. Even at a severe level disadvantage, Ilthain's summoner ability was powerful enough to overcome the difference in raw stats in order to pull off the victory.

Thank you so much for reading all the way to the end. Interested in seeing some more of my writing in the future? Be sure to give me a follow! In the meantime, if you'd like to see some of my recent posts:

• What's that Smell? - Battling with Noxious Fumes! - A Splinterlands battle analysis, featuring Noxious Fumes!

• Splinterlands Economics: Causation - A look at causation, and how we can apply it to Splinterlands!

• Splinterlands Economics: Ceteris Paribus - An introduction to the concept of Ceteris Paribus, and how we can apply it to Splinterlands!

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All images used in this article are open source and obtained from Pixabay or Unsplash. Thumbnails borrowed with permission from the Splinterlands team or made in Canva.