This week's prompt for the Battle Mage Secrets Weekly Challenge is one of my favourites...
Blast! Blast everywhere!!
In this ruleset, every cards gets the blast ability, meaning they will also cause aditional damage to the cards next to the first target, a.k.a. damage mayhem!! We can use a few strategies to maximize damage, such as using cards with snipe and opportunity: since they will likely target cards in the middle of the lineup, the blast damage will be spread on two cards, instead of just another one, if only the tank card is targeted.
Of course, there are also ways to minimize the damage, and how you position your cards is even more important in this particular ruleset, to avoid getting obliterated: using cards with taunt is a good way to direct damage and try to protect your weaker cards, and cards with reflection shield ability are a great way to diminish that damage even more, since they aren't affected by blast damage.
Here's a battle where both attack and defense tactics I just mentioned were put to use:
One of my favourite summoners in this ruleset is the fire summoner Conqueror Jacek, due to the scattershot ability, that makes taunts unusable for ranged attacks. Since only water and earth were available, it's another battle where I went with the water splinter.
Two more rulesets in this battle: only neutrals could be used (one of the new rulesets!), and no ranged cards could be used, so I could only expect magic and melee damage.
My strategy and lineup:
- Possibilus as the summoner: reach and trample means even more extra damage due to blast, unless the opponent has a card with reflection shield on the second position
- Arkemis the Bear as tank: a lot of HP, shield to help contain some of the blast damage, and the halving ability to reduce damage from the attacking tank
- Goblin Mech: a lot of armor and hp to sustain damage, and a big melee damage dealer, that with this summoner can attack in this position
- Runi: it has the reflection shield ability, that provides blast damage protection, and opportunity to target the opponent's weakest card; besides, although slow, it never misses target due to the true strile ability
- Prismatic Energy: great magic damage dealer and high hp; and good protection for magic attacks as well, given the reflect and void abilities
- Venator kinjo: here to slow the other team but mainly because of my backline strategy, given the reflection shield ability making it immune to blast.
- Coeurl Lurker: fast taunt: making the opposite team target my last card and protecting the other ones with venator kinjo would mean a lot less damage to my tank and offtank, giving them more time to damage the main tank.
My opponent went with a similar strategy: Leggionaire Alvar in the front provided a great protection against magic damage while reducing my melee attack, with Arkemis in the offtank position; two magic damage dealers, and Dr. Blight in the backline protected by a gelatinous cube. No taunts in the team meant that my Runi was open to attack whichever weakest card he had in the lineup.
My strategy to taunt the backline worked well, although Dr. Blight was able to poison my Lurker right on the first round; still, a few attacks missed the target, and kinjo controled the damage from the ones that landed. meanwhile, on the second round, my Goblin Mech cleared the tank and trampled Arkemis next.
Later in the same round, it's my Arkemis that delivers the killing blow on the opponent's Arkemis, trampling prismatic energy next. My taunt still had 7 hp, so still able to soak more damage and buy time for my tank and offtank to do their job.
Halfway in round 3, Mech's clears both prismatic energy and magi of chaos (who had very low hp due to blast), damaging the gelatinous cube in the process. And although due to scavenge, both the cube and dr. Blight had decent amounts of hp, I still had all my damage dealers, so it was a sure win from there.
It was my slowest card, the Runi, that delivered the killing blows. You can see the whole battle here!
How about your strategies in this ruleset? Any favourites you'd like to share? Let me know in the comments!
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For this next giveaway, the card that will be switching hands is...
Rules:
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