Splinterlands Community Engagement Challenge: Arena Architect

The core structure of my team revolves around, of course, Heloise the Hollow. Let's first have a look at Heloise and her abilities at different levels (mind you while she comes maxed right out of the box, she is still playable at lower league levels where she, of course, loses some of her abilities).

Heloise is a dual-element card - Death/Earth. At max level she has the following stats: 8 Melee Attack, 7 HP, 3 Speed, 0 Armor. She has the following abilities Taunt (Draws the attacks of enemy units. Does not affect Reach, Scattershot, Wingbreak, or enemy units in the first position), Opportunity, Spite ( When defeated, 100% chance to counterattack), Soul Siphon (As long as there is a non-Weary allied unit, self-resurrects with 100% armor and 50% of max health, rounded down. All magic debuffs are removed, and all magic buffs are reapplied. Inflicts Weary on the non-Weary allied unit with the highest health and reduces their health by 50%, rounded up) and Last Word (Provides immunity to Final Rest (allied and enemy abilities that trigger on defeat cannot activate)). Heloise did not have Last Word initially but with the introduction of Craniax and his signature ability - Final Rest (Allied and enemy abilities that trigger on defeat cannot activate), the team deemed it necessary to boost Heloise a bit a make her a viable play option when Craniax is on the board. This is also why you'll see the two of them, on the same team, in the battle I'm about to showcase. As for playing Heloise at lower league levels, she's not that great to be honest. At level one she has 7 Melee Attack, 3 Speed, 0 Armor and 4 HP as well as Taunt and Opportunity in the abilities department. At level 2 she has 1 more HP, and an additional ability - Spite. At level 3 she gains an additional Melee Attack point for a total of 8, as well as 1 HP point for a total of 6.

Heloise is the cornerstone of this particular team setup but there are also a few additional elements that vary in accordance with the mana cap and the modifiers. But generally what you want to bring to the battle with her are units with the Rust Ability (-2 armor to all enemy units).

In the current Modern format the best element to use in order to stack at least 2 Rust units are Earth and Death. I prefer to use Earth since I can also pair that with Risqruel Drath, who has the perfect kit for a Heloise team (more about that in a bit). The 2 Rust units are Lord Thanalor and Fenmoor Platypus. The reason to use them with Heloise is that, in order to make her effective, Heloise needs to be able to inflict maximum damage to the enemy line-up each time she attacks and if the enemy units have Armor, that basically shuts down the whole strategy. The rest of the line-up is very flexible but you need to remember you always need to have the maximum amount of extra bodies on your side of the board possible. That is obviously 5 without counting Heloise. Having the extra bodies is more important than what they actually are since if you run a line-up with fewer but beefier units for instance, you will get less Heloise revivals and that will probably end in you losing the battle since your units, even if they are powerful, will gain Weary (at the beginning of round 1, Weary units have a 10% chance to become Exhausted. This chance increases by 10% every round, up to a maximum of 80%. Exhausted units skip their turn and cannot Retaliate) stacks pretty quickly and that will render them useless.

🔧 Why This Team Works in Specific Modifiers

The best Modifiers for this team to work even better than at its base power level, are the following:

Aim True is really helpful for Heloise since her missing an enemy unit is fatal in most circumstances, you cannot afford her missing her Spite counterattacks since that brings a huge downside to your team. That's why you need to wait for the Tactics stage of the battle, see the enemy team and decided which Risqruel Drath's ability to choose to use. If the enemy team is fast and the Aim True modifier is not in play, you definitely need to give Heloise True Strike, if the Aim True modifier is active, you always go with the other option - Redemption + Taunt.

Reverse Speed is another modifier that is very beneficial for Heloise, again it almost acts in the same way as the Aim True modifier since Heloise has relatively low Speed (3), she is a lot more likely to hit the enemies when the Reverse Speed ruleset is active, of course if you're facing an enemy line-up consisting of mostly 1-Speed units and the enemy is also running Blind, then you will most likely be better off going with True Strike just in case, but generally I'd favor Redemption + Taunt.

Unprotected is another very important modifier, when Unprotected is active, you no longer need to stack Rust in your line-up, so this allows you to have a lot more flexibility. The best combination for the Heloise line-up in general is Aim True + Unprotected. This combo spells a lot of trouble for your opponent and there is a high probably that you will win the battle.

Honorable mentions:

**What Doesn't Kill You **is a modifier which could also boost Heloise a lot. She is usually at low health after her first resurrection, so she is perma-enraged, which means she deals massive damage to the enemy line-up. You can decide to go with just her enrage as a means to improve her hit chances, however, depending on the situation, giving her True Strike is probably a better idea. Moreover Redemption would trigger Enrage on the whole enemy team, and that might not work out great in the end.

Explosive Weaponry is also great, as when Heloise hits the enemy backline, she will do a lot of damage to the units on both sides of the target, which is usually devastating for the enemy unless they are playing the Hippo archon which grants Deflect to all units.

Finally - Holy Protection. It's a nice modifier to have since every time Heloise revives, she'll gain Divine Shield again, and if you pair that with Drath's Redemption + Taunt, the Redemption will remove all the Divine Shields of the enemy team, so you will not have to worry about that. Of course, if the enemy team is very fast, then she might have trouble hitting the enemy units. You will always want to play Redemption in this case though, as Heloise counterattacking a unit which still has Divine Shield on is a total waste.

Now for the BATTLE itself.

It's a partial mirror battle. And what I've found out in Heloise mirrors is that playing Slow on your side is not a good idea. You want your Heloise to be dying first and not the enemy one because then you risk losing the bodies on your side of the board and that means less Heloise resurrections which in turn means you will probably lose in the end. Bulldog has a new shiny toy, I won't have access to any time soon:

Her kit definitely fits the Heloise line-up nicely.

As you can see it was a fairly even battle, however, my Lord Thanalor ended up with a lot more health than his, so from here on it's a matter of who attacks and who doesn't but I still have a lot higher chance to win the battle.

Finally at Round 15 - I had enough attacks to kill his Thanalor. Mine ends the battle at 17 HP.

Over and Out,

Referral