This weeks Battle Mage Challenge is about the Little League rule.
Splinterlands tells us this about the Little League rule:
Only units and summoners with a mana cost of 4 or less may be used.
Simple stuff. A large number of monsters and summoners are excluded.
Summoners
- All Rare and Epic summoners can be played
- All commons and legendary summoners are exlucded, except for these:
Monsters
The little league monsters are a little under half of all monsters currently in play in Splinterlands (209/490)
These are distributed among the Splinters the following way:
| Fire | Water | Earth | Life | Death | Dragon | Neutral |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30 | 31 | 32 | 32 | 34 | 15 | 29 |
Incompatible Rules
(Ferocity, Stampede)
Little League is incompatible with Ferocity and Stampede. There are no units with Taunt available in Little Leauge, and none with Trample, so these rules would do nothing.
Desirable Abilities
Magic Reflect, Return Fire, Thorns, Poison, Redemption, Divine Shield
The reason why I value these abilities is that they to some extent do a set amount of damage, or in the case of Divine Shield, protect against all damage from one attack. Monsters in Little League generally do not have a large amount of health, and any of the return damage variants, poison and redemption, are therefore relatively dangerous abilities. It matters much more to take 2 return damage for a 4 health monster than for a 10 health monster.
My Battle : Little League battle
My battle had the following configuration: Modern Diamond League, 44 mana, rules: Little League, Holy Protection, Lost Magic. Fire, Earth, Life and Death available.
For this match, I immediately discarded the idea of playing Earth, because my only appropriately leveled summoner for earth in Little League is Obsidian (lost magic...). Death is also low on my priority list; with a deck mostly consisting of Chaos Legion cards, Death just isn't that strong in Lost Magic. It has some good cards for this match, but I'm not so eager to play it. So my choices were mainly Fire and Life. Both are good, but I opted for Fire because I want to have a Redemption to clear the Divine Shields, and also the Antoid Platoon is just too good to pass on in Little League+Lost Magic. I chose to go for Tarsa as my summoner because I want to play Exploding Rats, but Skargore could also have been a good option.
My lineup
My lineup consists of a sacrificial frontline with Exploding Rats, followed by the Antoid Platoon who is my real tank in this match. The rats are usually going to get in a single strike before dying, unless they manage to dodge several hits. If that happens, it will just be a bonus. Uraeus is a standard high-value pick for Tarsa, and Scavo Firebolt packs a lot of damage, so I'm usually going to include that one too for such matches. The two last picks are not so obvious. I was slightly concerned about facing a martyr+Antoid Platoon or a martyr+Pelacor Conjurer / Stitch Leech, so I included a Dispel with the Pyrewatch Devil. The final choice is Venari Heatsmith, which I included because I expect at least a sneak or two in this match.
Opponent's lineup
My opponent had basically the same idea as me. They swapped my Venari Heathsmith for a Lava Spider, otherwise it is the same setup. They did not bother protecting their backline against a sneak unit though. With the amount of sneak units available for this match, that is a questionable move.
Battle progress and Result
In round one, both the Exploding Rats take their hits before being killed off by the Scavo Firebolts. Rng was fair to us both. Their Lava spider lands a poison on my Pyrewatch Devil, but the Uraeus did not poison my Venari Heatsmith. My Uraeus lands a poison on the Scavo Firebolt, but that is of little consequence since it will die by the second hit regardless of the poison. Round two starts off like this:
Round 2 is quite straightforward. The enemy Uraeus still doesn't land the poison, so now its clear that it is going to die from Thorns the next round. In round 3 we have the following situation:
The round starts with my Pyrewatch Devil dying from poison, and the Venari Heathsmith being exchanged for the Uraeus. The Lava Spider still doesn't land and Poison, while my Uraeus does - however it is once again irrelevant because the next hit would kill the Pyrewatch Devil anyway. Round 4 starts like this:
Here, the match is decided, because both the Antoid platoon and the Pyrewatch Devil will die from my units. Once they do, the Lava Spider is left helpless in the frontline. Quite close match, and with other rng outcomes, perhaps my opponent could secure the win.
At current SPS prices, I earned 0.067$ from this battle.
Alternative lineups
Thaddius Brood
General Sloan
Ilthain
Thaddius Brood (protect and ranged focus)
I hope you found this post interesting. If you did, you might also enjoy my other content.
Battle mage challenges
Battle Mage Challenge: Keep Your Distance
Battle Mage Challenge: Holy Protection
Battle Mage Challenge: Healed Out
Battle Mage Challenge: Going the Distance
Battle Mage Challenge: Ferocity
Battle Mage Challenge: Fog of War
Battle Mage Challenge: Fire & Regret
Battle Mage Challenge: Explosive weaponry
Game system analysis
Optimizing Soulbound card farming
A problem with the staked-SPS reward system
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Best of luck in Splinterlands!
Kalkulus