This weeks Battle Mage Challenge is about the Noxious Fumes rule.

Splinterlands tells us this about the Noxious Fumes rule:

All units are Poisoned at the start of the game.

    Units with Immunity are not poisoned.
    This is a one-time application - units that are cleansed, resurrected or rebirthed
    will not be re-applied with poison.
   
    Enrage is triggered by Poison application.

Noxious Fumes is very often about simply surviving longer than your opponent. A good strategy for this is to have either a unit with Immunity, or use a combination of Cleanse, Tank Heal, Heal and Triage to keep units alive.

Scarred Llama Mage is the king of this rule, as I'm sure many players have experienced themselves. Combining a Cleanse every round for the frontline unit in addition to giving Last Stand is just perfect for winning Noxious Fumes matches. Byzantine Kitty is also ideal, with its Tank Heal keeping the frontline units alive at least from the Noxious Fumes damage. Furthermore, it is worth mentioning that Skargore, who gives all her units Enrage, can dish out enormous amounts of damage if this rule is combined with one of the melee-unit favoring rules such as Super Sneak, Equal Opportunity or Melee Mayhem.

Incompatible Rules

Noxious fumes is compatible with all other rules.

Desirable Abilities

(Immunity, Cleanse, Heal, Tank Heal, Triage, Resurrect Rebirth )

Any ability that counteracts some of the damage done by Noxious Fumes is extremely good for this rule. Top among the abilities though, is Immunity. That one ensures that the unit will not be affected by this rule at all. Healing can be achieved with Tank Heal, Heal, or Triage, and the poison can be removed with Cleanse, Resurrect or Rebirth. Finally, since the rule is sure to kill off weak units quickly, Martyr can be used with great control, buffing up the units we plan to keep alive.

Advantaged Summoners

Desirable Monsters

Based on which abilities we want to include, there are the following numbers of particularly attractive monsters in each splinter:

Fire	Water	Earth	Life	Death	Dragon	Neutral
8	14	15	17	10	7	9

This is clearly a rule that generally favors Water, Earth and Life. However, it is worth noting that Forgotten One is often an extremely powerful pick in this rule, and so is Harklaw + Revealer.

The monsters are:

Disadvantaged Monsters

The disadvantaged monsters in this rule are mainly those with low health and those with Poison. The poison units are:

My Battle : Noxious Fumes battle

My Battle had the following configuration: Modern Champion league, 57 mana, rules: Counterspell, Noxious Fumes, and Armored Up. The available splinters were Water, Earth, Life and Death.

Counterspell and Armored Up are somewhat conflicting rulesets, which makes this battle interesting. Extra armor is going to be annoying because we don't want to play too many magic units. Apart from that, the fact that its a high mana match means that we have to deal with very high health monsters.

My lineup

I chose to go for Possibilus for this match because he adds +2 health to every monster, and the modern Water deck features some very beefy monsters. Since this is so high mana, I expect high incoming damage, and I went for a frontline with 2x Forcefield. I also added Wave Brood as a backline tank because of its high health and effectiveness versus ranged attackers. I had rented an Azmare Harpoonist which I included here just for fun. Finally, I put in a Baakjira, and rounded out the lineup with a Deeplurker, which is just generally an excellent card in any Possibilus lineup.

Opponent's lineup

My opponent went for a speed + ranged return damage build. With Iziar in the second position here, the idea is to buff up Coeurl Luker and Cave Slug so that the former dodges a few hits, while the slug gets a little extra boost to its damage and health, allowing it to stay alive longer and leech more health from Scavenger. The rest of the lineup is relatively high ranged damage and a Sand Worm. I suppose the idea is that the Sand Worm will be able to kill off a big taunt minion even if it has support.

Battle progress and Result

Initially, I'm not quite sure who has the advantage for this battle. On one hand, my opponent has a nice setup based on the Iziar Martyr buffing up the Coeurl Luker and the Cave Slug, in addition a to quite high damage damage backline. However, I do have a Return Fire Taunt to absorb some of that, and I have a double Forcefield frontline with high health. Finally, I have the Baakjira designed to outlast my opponent.

In round one, Coeurl Lurker does what it likes to do, namely dodges three of my hits. My Wave Brood tanks the ranged and magic damage, and returns some damage to the rangers. At the end of the round its left with a sliver of health, but will die from poison.

In round two, poison activates the Enrage on my Arkemis, and he takes a huge chunk of the Coeurl Lurker's health. It still manages to dodge a few hits, but the Deeplurker hits, and Trample activates to hit the Iziar also. The Azmare Harpoonist gets hit by the Sand Worm and then lands a hit on Iziar, and the return damage kills my unit.

In round 3, we're beginning to feel the poison hurting, and most units are beginning to be pretty low on health. Oshannus falls immediately from a hit by the War Pegasus, but Arkemis takes revenge and finishes the Iziar and tramples onto the cave slug. The Halving is pretty effective in limiting the attack of the Cave Slug too. My Deeplurker dies from the Sand Worm before hitting, and Arkemis luckily dodges the hit from the Evangelist.

Now its not looking very good for me. Round 4 starts by War Pegasus finishing Arkemis, and I'm left with only the Baakjira. The hope now is that it is big enough to outlast my opponent for long enough that the poison can finish them off. After taking the full set of hits in round 4, it is left with 1 health before healing itself for 6 to start the next round with 7 health.

Critically, the when the Evangelist dies from poison, my Baakjira regains two armor here (the Rust is gone). That armor absorbs the hit from the War Pegasus, and after the Cave Slug hits, Baakjira is back at one health before healing itself.

Now that its only the Cave Slug left, the Baakjira has exactly enough health to live through its hit and take the poison damage. This goes on for a few rounds, before the poison at last kills the cave slug, and victory is mine!

Alternative lineups

Grandmaster Rathe

Immortalis

Lorna Shine

Scarred LLama Mage

Lir Deepswimmer

I hope you found this post interesting. If you did, you might also enjoy my other content.

Battle mage challenges

Battle Mage Challenge: Melee Mayhem
Battle Mage Challenge: Lost Magic
Battle Mage Challenge: Lost Legendaries
Battle Mage Challenge: Little League
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

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Kalkulus