Battle Mage Secrets - Noxious Fumes

For this Battle Mage Challenge we have the Noxiuos Fumes ruleset. After many battles, I finally came across a couple that are worth showing.

Noxious Fumes

With this rule, every Monster starts the battle poisoned, which means that after every round your Monsters are damaged by two. There plenty of different ways you can deal with this rule, and in this case, if you’re new to the game and you’re reading this, remember: sometimes you don’t need to beat your opponent’s team, you just have to survive. This is especially true in the Bronze and low Silver Leagues, where Monster abilities are more scarce.

Now, the first way, and I would say the ideal way, if you have the cards, is using Monsters with Immunity, especially those with an attack. Immunity makes you immune, obviously, to negative status effects, so you don’t start the battle poisoned, and your Monster can just wait till everyone falls. Two great Monsters with Immunity that you should acquire are the Forgotten One and Harklaw at level two.

If you don’t have Immunity Monsters, you can use cards which possess the Cleanse ability, which removes negative status effects. Of course this only applies to the tank, so you gotta be very wise in your tank of choice here. My favourites tanks are the fast ones, strengthen by a Martyr. Also, you could use cards with the Resurrect ability, since the resurrected Monster respawns without poison.

Another alternative is by using effects that muffle the poison; the first option being Monsters with the capacity of healing themselves, which you can combine with Cleanse. Another option could be Monsters with the Life Leech ability, which increase their health everytime they damage an unit’s health by half the damage dealt or effects like Scavenge. And of course, Gladiators; they kill and all of their stats, including health increase by one.

Here’s an example with the Madcap Magus: Healing was not allowed. The idea here was to surround the Magus with two Martyrs which would’ve increased it’s attack up to four, allowing him to increase it’s health by two points with each attack. I was able to use this card because of the Equelizer rule, but you get the idea… find the right scenario.

Lineup & Strategy

The main battle featured in this post was done in a Bronze tournament, Legendaries not allowed. In this battle only the Life Splinter was allowed and besides the Noxious Fumes rule, we had the “Tis But Scratches” one, which gives the Cripple ability to all Monsters (units lose one max health point when hit by a Monster with Cripple), making the battle a little bit more challenging. We also had the Amplify effect rule. 45 Mana cap.

• Under normal circumstances I would’ve probably used Sloan as my Summoner, but because of the venom, I went for a opted for a more defensive strategy, so I picked the new Reward Summoner, Franz Ruffmane, which besides of that extra point of Armor, also allows me to summon a Gladiator. Didn’t mention it before, but a Summoner that gives you Armor or a Void Armor, such as Rathe, could help quite a lot in a poison battle.

• As our tank, both me and my opponent chose the Drybone Barbarian. I think it’s an okay tank for this ruleset because of it’s amount of health points. I assume my opponent had a similar thought.

• As a probable survivor I picked the Xenith Monk. At level two he has the ability to heal, which makes him a great option for either the Poison or the Little League rules. My opponent dealt too much damage and he didn’t survive long though.

• In third position the Marksrat. A Martyr to feed Monk and my Gladiator.

• Next, one great Gladius, Captain Katie. She’s very likely to kill an enemy card in every combat, because of her strong Magic Sniping attack, making her Bloodlust effect quite useful in this ruleset.

• Another new card, Evelyn Auvera, who has the Immunity effect. Wasn’t quite sure of using her, since she doesn’t have an attack, but she survived without a single scratch.

• At last the Shieldbearer. I barely use him nowadays, because of the new cards, but in this ruleset his Taunt ability proves very useful; your tank last longer and you distract possible attackers from your back line.

Battle Link

Battle Analysis

Something I learned about the Noxious Fumes rule over time, is that the unorthodox lineups work much better than the classical ones, with the typical tank, with the healer behind and some other strong attackers.

You’re much better off with a Champion, so to speak, a strong enough card, or two, to give your opponent something to be busy with. In this case I had two, the Barbarian and the Shieldbearer. Champions usually fall.

In between the Champions, you position the Survivors. Cards with a high probability of making it to the end; cards with Immunity, self healing Monsters, Gladiators likely to kill with high health and Life Leechers. In my case the Xenith Monk, Katie and Aureva. Recently a new variable was introduced in the form of Martyrs, which could assist either the Champions or the Survivors. In this battle my opponent had a very strong lineup for a regular battle, but quite useless for this ruleset. He had a card with Cleanse, but the Barbarian is not a tank meant to last, since it doesn’t have any defensive traits like Shield or Void. He also had a couple of Ranged attackers, but Captain Katie killed two of them, and also his two tanks.

I’d say that besides his Summoner, my opponent made a poor card election; no Martyrs, no likely to survive card, not even Ranged attackers with high Health, nothing.

That’s it guys, thanks for reading!

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