In the spirit of the new weekly Battle Mage Secrets challenges, I would like to take a look at a Splinterlands battle with a particular focus on a ruleset. Our ruleset today is one that is the bane of many a new Splinterlands player. After all, nobody likes to charge into battle only to see their monsters immediately start losing health every turn! Today, we will be taking a look at a battle with the Noxious Fumes ruleset!
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 a bit of an exception to this, which does reveal one of the winners in this ruleset - monsters with Immunity can't be poisoned, and are therefore unaffected. As you may imagine, there are a few other abilities which are very helpful here - Cleanse can remove that pesky Poison condition, and healing abilities such as Tank Heal or Triage can offset the Poison damage to a degree.
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 is the ruleset for our battle. As you may expect, we have the dreaded Noxious Fumes rule. We also have What Doesn't Kill You, which sets up an interesting interaction - any monsters which take damage from Poison will become Enraged and get some additional stats. At least until they die to Poison or enemy attacks, of course.
Kelya Frendul is a great all-around summoner, and in this medium mana cap battle she is a fine choice. Her buffs to armor and speed are nearly always welcome in a fight, and her 4 mana cost gives us plenty of room to spend most of our available mana on monsters.
I started my team with Djinn Oshannus. Bulky monsters with plenty of health are great in Noxious Fumes battles because their high health totals mean that they can survive a lot of Poison damage. As you will see I have a plan to deal with Poison, but Djinn Oshannus' combination of health and high speed result in a monster with great survivability, both in regular battles and in Noxious Fumes fights. In fact, Djinn Oshannus is such a solid monster that bulk of our strategy will involve him surviving through the entire battle.
As I previously mentioned, our strategy for this battle will revolve around Djinn Oshannus. So my next monsters were included mainly to provide support for him. Venari Marksrat is a great monster, providing a teeny tiny amount of ranged damage to go along with the Martyr ability. Really, all I cared about here was Martyr - the idea was for the Marksrat to die relatively quickly to Poison, and then buff Oshannus thanks to Martyr. Next up was River Nymph. River Nymph is great in Noxious Fumes thanks to her Cleanse ability, which can remove the Poison condition. She is likely to die herself soon after, but my hope was that she would be able to use Cleanse on Djinn Oshannus before having to leave the battlefield.
Finally we have Scavo Hireling. I really didn't expect Scavo Hireling to be able to do much in this battle, but most 3 mana monsters don't have enough health to survive even a single turn of Poison. With 3 health, Scavo Hireling can survive for at least a round. And with Repair he might even be able to help out Djinn Oshannus with a bit of extra armor.
With the lineup set, it's off into battle! When I see the selected teams I am a little concerned - my opponent has brought their own Immunity monster, with a Harklaw up front. They even have a Venari Bonesmith which could re-apply Poison after my River Nymph cleanses it. And Thaddius Brood will both debuff Oshannus' attack and result in my backline monsters dying a turn faster than I was hoping.
The battle gets off to a bit of a slow start, but by the start of round 3 most of the lower health monsters have been eliminated. Luckily for me, my opponent's Venari Bonesmith's Poison ability didn't trigger and Djinn Oshannus is free of any pesky conditions.
One more round and we have a bit of a funny looking situation. My Venari Marksrat dies and buffs Oshannus, and combined with Enrage I suddenly have an 11 speed monster on my side of the field! With the enemy Silent Sha-vi about to die to Poison damage, I have a very favorable position on the battlefield.
By the start of the 5th round the battle was just about wrapped up. While both Harklaw and Djinn Oshannus were Poison-free, Harklaw was considerably worse for the wear and my Djinn was poised to finish him off for the victory. And again, if you wanted to see the whole battle for yourself, you can see it right here.
My strategy for this battle worked out perfectly. Although my opponent selected an excellent summoner for the situation, my combination of monsters were able to pull off the victory. Identifying how the combination of rulesets in this battle encouraged the use of a strong single monster was the key to this fight - Djinn Oshannus and a collection of support monsters were able to form a wrecking ball that my opponent's lineup was not able to handle.
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:
An Opportune Summoner - Battling with Equal Opportunity! - A Splinterlands battle analysis, featuring Equal Opportunity!
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!
Thinking about giving Splinterlands a try but haven't signed up yet? Feel free to use my referral link: https://splinterlands.com?ref=bteim, and be sure to reach out to me if you have any questions!
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.