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BATTLE LINK -- February 1, 2025 -- Day 32 of 365 vs. @davegkugler
Back to the Modern Ranked grind as I bring you this Champion League battle from Saturday. The 51-mana battle had three rulesets: Lost Magic, Even Stevens, and Healed Out. Two elements were excluded: Life and Death.
Interestingly, neither of us chose to pair Dragon with another element or to use a Fire-Earth dual-element summoner. Instead, my opponent chose Lorkus with only Fire and I chose Cryptic with only Water.
I was a bit puzzled by my opponent's selection of Lorkus in a battle with no magic attacks, and doubly so when they still used the life leech tactic instead of the trample tactic. They also brought two backline range monsters for their swiftness boosts even though they did not benefit from Lorkus's static ability buffs.
One monster that did benefit from +1 melee was Night Stalker, who brought big blast damage to my backline. Thankfully, I had some decent armor defenses set up at the back to survive a few attacks, but Night Stalker was still a problem.
Countess Sinash was another blast monster that gave my lineup issues. I didn't bring any taunt monsters, so Sinash's opportunity attacks targeted my weakest monster, Drybone Bowdog. With its placement in 4th position, the blast damage from Sinash spread to two other monsters for each attack. That is the benefit of pairing opportunity and blast.
My featured card, the Chaos Legion Water common Deeplurker, also takes advantage of the powerful opportunity ability. In addition to opportunity, Deeplurker has demoralize to weaken opposing melee attacks and the poison ability. Although I had four range monsters in the back of my lineup, Deeplurker did the heavy lifting in this battle. Most of my range monsters were blown out of the battlefield by the end of Round 2.
However, Deeplurker couldn't do it alone. Commander Slade is weak to magic because it doesn't have phase but in a no-magic battle, Slade is a powerful evasive tank. Although my opponent brought three speed boosts that made most of his attackers faster than Slade, it still had the blind and dodge abilities to help it evade the frontline melee attacks.
Crucially, Deeplurker attacked their Night Stalker at the end of Round 2 and managed to land the poison that took it out before it could attack in Round 3. Phew... that was close! Slade dodged a few more attacks and my backline even landed a few range attacks to finish the battle.
The lesson I took from this battle was to be more disciplined when designing my lineup to account for sneak and opportunity attacks, especially in no-magic battles. I nearly lost because my sneak defenses were slow and my weakest target for opportunity was in the middle of my lineup. Luckily, Deeplurker's beefy attacks and Slade's evasive abilities helped me to take down the W.
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