This Splinterlands Social Media challenge post features a battle with the Noxious Fumes ruleset! Today's ruleset was a massive headache to me when I was a new player. It is incredibly demoralizing to carefully select your lineup and charge into battle, only to see all of your monsters immediately begin to start losing health every turn. However, careful use and selection of monsters with the proper abilities can dramatically change your experience in these fights.
In Noxious Fumes fights, every monster will start off the battle with the Poison condition. This means that at the start of every round beginning with round 2, monsters will take two damage per turn. There is an exception to this, which shows us one of the winners in this ruleset - monsters with Immunity can't be poisoned in the first place, and are therefore unaffected by the damage. As you may guess, there are a few other abilities which are also very helpful here - Cleanse (or its Rearguard variant!) can remove that pesky Poison condition, and recovery abilities such as Tank Heal or Triage can offset the Poison damage and help your monsters to survive that much longer.
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!
Here are the rules for our battle. In addition to Noxious Fumes which we discussed above, we also have Fog of War and Weak Magic. This removes the Sneak, Snipe, and Opportunity abilities from the battle, and makes armor effective against magic attacks. There is also a medium-lowish mana cap of 24, and have only the Water, Life, and Dragon splinters to choose between.
Prophet Rosa is one of my favorite Rebellion summoners - her Tactics abilities can both be useful depending on the battle conditions, and can have a particularly large impact in low or medium mana cap battles. For this battle I am planning on using the Shield ability, but having the option to add 2 ranged damage to a monster is also a powerful alternative to have in your toolkit.
I led off my lineup with Sea Dog of Eight. Sea Dog of Eight is great in low mana battles, since lower mana caps make it more likely that less damage will be on the battlefield - that means that you are likely to be able to get more milage out of the Heal ability. In this battle I am also planning on using Prophet Rosa's Shield summoner ability on Sea Dog of Eight in order to give it even more bulk and survivability.
Up next was Anasth Soothsayer, who offers some support with a pair of abilities which are very helpful in the Noxious Fumes ruleset. Anasth Soothsayer has Cleanse and Tank Heal, both of which will be welcome on Sea Dog of Eight. In a single turn, Anasth Soothsayer will be able to Cleanse the Poison off of my Sea Dog, while also topping up its health with Tank Heal. That, combined with Sea Dog of Eight's Heal, gives me a front line tank with double healing - not to mention Shield!
I finished off my team with another Noxious Fumes star - Sanctus Vicar, one of the recently added Hall of Legends cards. Sanctus Vicar brings along Cleanse Rearguard, which cleanses your team starting from the back - given enough time, he can clean off your entire team! If things go according to plan in this battle, Anasth Soothsayer will Cleanse the Sea Dog and Sanctus Vicar will take care of my back line.
With the lineup set, it's off into battle! When I see the selected teams I feel pretty good about my chances. The enemy team has quite a bit of a stat advantage thanks to their higher levels. But looking through their roster I don't see a single Cleanse option on the other side of the battlefield. That means that if my team can survive through the first couple of rounds, then I have a good chance of being able to outlast the enemy monsters and let the Poison damage finish them off.
Through the first couple of rounds of the fight, things go according to plan. My Shielded and double Healed Sea Dog of Eight is standing up well to the enemy team's attacks, and that Poison damage is beginning to add up.
By the beginning of round 4, there is a little bit of a complication as the opposing team's Venari Marksrat is able to use its Martyr ability to give the opposing monsters some very welcome stat boosts. This significantly increases the amount of magic damage hitting my Sea Dog of Eight. But with the enemy ranged attackers already on their last legs it was too little, too late.
By the beginning of round 6 the battle was just about over - one more round of Poison and a couple of quick attacks sent the enemy team to the showers! And again, if you wanted to see the whole battle for yourself, you can see it right here.
This battle showed the importance of playing to the ruleset. Noxious Fumes is a particularly impactful ruleset, which means that choosing monsters with the proper abilities makes a huge difference. In this fight, my monster selection allowed me to clear all of the Poison off of my team while my opponent's were still taking damage every round.
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:
Going for the Hard Counter - Battling with Melee Mayhem! - A Splinterlands battle analysis, featuring Melee Mayhem!
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.