Hello, Splinterfamily!
For the past couple of weeks, I have increased my activity considerably in . Yes, DEC has been burned to get more , more battles to play, and chests have been opened to find more or less good stuff but all in all, it's been fun and I'm quite excited at the moment!
One reason for that is my decision to switch from for the ongoing season. prices have increased and battles have been more meaningful when I'm up against humans instead of an army of bots.
obviously add that extra excitement and I did particularly well in the ongoing one(7-2). This weeks Battle Mage Secrets Weekly Challenge featured a ruleset that has been somewhat tricky for me - Little League
Rules are very straightforward: Only units and summoners with a mana cost of 4 or less may be used.
To be honest, I have been neglecting the small ones when building my deck and instead bought powerful dragons and such. Still, I think I have a few aces in my sleeve so jump onboard and find out how this goes!
Things to consider when playing a Little League battle:
- Advantage. Since monsters typically have low health with this ruleset, you might want to be the first to strike and perhaps take out some lethal enemy monster. So speed is good.
- AbilitiesOpportunity is one of my favourite abilities when playing Little League - since the monster who has that will target the weakest monster, there's a good chance of removing an important piece of the puzzle straight from the start.
- That being said, monsters with the ability are a good way to counter this and if well-positioned, can make little fellows much stronger.
Entering The Arena
In this Brawl battle, there were a total of three rulesets: Weak Magic, and Little League of course. Ironically, the mana cap was set at 99 which kinda felt like a waste of a good 99 brawl.
From the available Splinters, I would have probably gone with but because of the Weak Magic, I felt confident enough to try my chances with This was mainly because I had a certain tank unit in mind.
As a summoner, I chose the fierce who will boost my troops with two buffs: +1 attack to all melee units and +1 health addition to all my monsters.
ETERNAN BRUTE is always a good option but was excluded because of the Little League rule. costs even less mana than Tarsa and would have given a speed buff(+1) which is quite handy in little league battles but in this case, Tarsa's buffs gave a bit more weight.
The Platoon
This will be the day of the Platoon!
What a perfect battle for my favourite small tank unit. ANTOID PLATOON is a perfect fit for this one having a base health of 4 plus armour (2) on top of that. If the opponent would choose to use magic, they'd have to go through that first.
Besides that, Antoid Platoon has the ability which reduces Melee and Ranged damage so it's safe to say we were prepared for almost anything.
Behind the Platoon I placed BATTERING RAM who I think would be relatively safe there. Well, relatively because there is that rule which means it could easily get hit with a scattershot and that would probably be that then cos of its low health.
But if the Ram should be lucky enough to survive, it'll make those Opportunity attacks targeting the weak links among opponent ranks.
Rat Pack
Ok, first I have to get this off my chest - I made a mistake with EXPLODING RATS. For some reason, I thought that because of the Aimless ruleset, Exploding Rats would be able to attack from behind. This obviously wasn't true... The idea of course would have been to cause mayhem in the middle of enemy ranks with the ability.
Again, placing VENARI MARKSRAT here wasn't really thought through either. Usually, I use it as a sort of sacrificial lamb to increase the stats of others with Martyr ability. Since more than one friendly monsters have lower health than the Rat, the opponent's Opportunity monsters will target them.
But oh, there's still the Aimless rule in play so maybe there is a chance that the Venari Marksrat will be able to do what it knows best.
The Striking Force
Since this is a Brawl battle I'm allowed to use a monster and in this battle, it happens to the perfect little league guy - ORELLA ABADON. Even before Sarsa's buffs, this gold foil monster has pretty impressive stats for someone costing only 2 mana points.
In addition to that, and to ability, Orella has the dreaded Bloodlust ability which I'm really counting on to turn this battle in my favour. Orella's speed(3) is also crucial to get that first kill and move from there to annihilate the whole back row in his bloodlust. Well, we'll see.
the loyal snake is in the last spot to do the same deeds as Orella with its Sneak ability. Besides that, it has another task which is to protect Orella from enemy Sneak monsters. Uraeus' armour should come in handy in this job as it should kinda give it a second life.
Final Moments Before The Battle
All the cards have been laid on the table and all the summoner buffs have been played and this is how the setup for the battle looks like.
At first glance, my opponent doesn't seem that formidable having only level 1 monsters and a summoner. Yet there were a few things that got me a bit worried.
First of all, their summoner, KELYA FRENDUL, will provide armour for monsters and secondly, there seems to be a SCAVO HIRELING there to fix the most damaged armour of a friendly unit. This can prove to be frustrating if we cannot put Scavo down.
Showdown!
to find out how it all went down or/and continue reading my battle report.
The first round was definitely ours. Some of my ideas worked very well like putting Uraeus and its armor in the back to protect Orella. We also got the feared Scavo Hireling to fix his own armour and meanwhile got to reduce the health of Merdhampir. Battering Ram also managed to dodge an attack which probably saved its life.
In the second round, Orella got his first kill(Merdhampir) and cos of the bloodlust, got all his stats increased to 4. Now he would be a force to reckon with.
We also got rid of the Hireling which was another major victory - now there wouldn't be anyone to repair their armour. Unfortunately, we also lost Battering Ram but I guess that was inevitable.
The enemy kept performing useless attacks against The Platoon which seemed indestructible at this point with their Shield. Such a great little big monster for Little League. With the help of Orella, managed to defeat the opponent Feasting Seaweed - offensively the most menacing monster on the enemy team.
ROUND 4 & 5
We lost Uraeus in round 4 but it had served well so it wasn't a major setback. Going to round 5, Orella took out the opponent Uraes who was the only one posing a threat to him. In fact, since the remaining two monsters were targeting the Platoon and had only one melee attack which was reduced to zero cos of the Platoons shield, I would declare a victory at this point!
When it comes to little guys my dec is still way under construction. In this battle, I didn't face a strong opponent and perhaps the Fire splinter is the most ready when considering monsters under 5 mana points.
Little League rules are simple and straightforward but it allows much more strategies than you'd first think of. I remember when playing it the first time, my thought was just to put the strongest ones out there. Since then, and since the Martyr monsters first appeared in the arena, I have come up with some pretty cunning tactics and even though they didn't completely work out today, they will someday. So beware.
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