This week's battle challenge features Time Mage, a really solid Chaos Legion Rare monster from the Life splinter that has really nice utility with just about any team you put her on making her a nice support character.
In this episode we'll dive into her lore, stats, and abilities so we can learn as much as we can about this new monster and figure out the right times to use her and maybe even times to avoid playing her.
Let's dive into the Lore!
Lore
"Time Mages are members of the Order of the Silver Shield and close associates of the Wizards' Council. They are trusted to peer through the fabric of time and reality to foretell the future or manipulate the present by slowing the flow of time. They can also speed up the aging process of armor, causing it to rust prematurely.
However, with such power also comes great risk. The future is ever-changing, and the ripples of time can affect everyone. Time Mages must undergo strict training to ensure they don't abuse their power and use it only for the most dire of circumstances.
“It’s your kids, Marten! something’s gotta be done about your kids!”
--Time Mage to Marten Paragon, Father of Dax Paragon, 25 years prior to the Chaos Legion invasion
It's nice to know the Time Mages are good guys, a lot of the Chaos Legion cards tend to be murderers, flesh hungry monstrosity's, mad scientists, and so on.
It must be tempting to use their power for their own personal gain or abuse it in other ways so Time Mages must have great restraint and focus on the greater good!
The lore definitely explains why Time Mages have the abilities that they do and we'll go over them along with the stats next!
Stats and Abilities
Time Mage is very useful right out of the gate at level 1.
She starts with one magic damage which can increase to two at level 3 and three at level 8 which makes her a pretty significant source of damage for only four mana. She is also pretty fast at 4 speed which increases to 5 speed as she levels up.
Time Mages don't have any armor and they also have fairly low health at 3 HP while only ever getting up to a max of 4 health at the highest levels so make sure to keep your Time Mage safe and away from the front line.
Slow pairs really well with the new Life summoner General Sloan as a lot of the best ranged cards tend to be pretty slow themselves so reducing the speed of the enemy team tends to be really important and can bring things back to an even playing field speed wise. This ability is generally good no matter who she plays with though.
At level five Time Mages get the Rust ability which removes two armor from any monster on the enemy team that has armor. Once again this synergizes well with General Sloan who favors Archery monsters over magic and if armor gets reduced / removed they'll have a much easier time defeating the enemy.
As far as rulesets go, Time Mage see's a boost in armored up once she has the Rust ability to remove armor while you should avoid playing her in Reverse Speed as you'll actually increase the enemy teams effectiveness by making them slower!
The Lineup
General Sloan
Is my summoner of choice for this battle and I talked about the great synergy Time Mage has with this summoner a bit already.
We'll be using a couple archery monsters to make use of the +1 ranged attack buff Sloan provides to her team.
That doesn't mean we will only play Archery monsters though as you'll see soon!
Crystal Jaguar
Is a basic tank for four mana.
It doesn't have any abilities at this level but sometimes you just need a body to take some hits.
It was one of the options least affected by the Unarmored special rule.
Xenith Monk
Is a neutral monster that I've included.
I like to run a second tank in the little league ruleset as the first one tends to go down pretty quick.
This way, even though it seems kind of counter intuitive my damage dealers will have more time to do their thing.
Time Mage
Is our featured monster and she plays an important role here slowing down the enemy team.
Combined with some relatively fast monsters on our side, we should be able to strike first giving me an edge if we can eliminate foes before they have a chance to act themselves.
Light Elemental
Is our fourth monster and will be one of the primary damage dealers with it's strong magic attack.
It has the flying ability so it might be able to get a lucky miss or two but otherwise we hope it never gets attacked in the first place.
Thunderbird
Is another flying monster, this time with ranged attack.
A nice fit with General Sloan as it's ranged attack will be buffed up to two damage instead of one.
It's a little more durable than the Light Elemental at 4 HP.
Tower Gryphon
Is a neutral monster that fits on our team because it deals ranged damage and qualifies for little league.
It's too bad the battle I'll show you didn't have earthquake as a rule since this is another flying monster!
I never really noticed it before but the art on this one is really good!
Rules of the Battle
Unprotected - Monsters do not have any armor and do not get armor from Abilities or Summoner Buffs
Little League - Only Monsters & Summoners that cost 4 Mana or less may be used in battles.
50 Mana - Earth, Life, Death, and Dragon Splinters.
The Battle
I set my team up to have two good tanks in the first and second position as I did not want my front line collapsing quickly and exposing my damage dealers. When you look at my opponents team, they also have two frontline monsters but when you add up the HP I have 11 and they have 7 which is quite a big difference.
I also have two ranged monsters buffed by General Sloan while they only have one. Their damage will be split which is another plus for me as the Celestial Harpy will go for my Light Elemental, the Stitch Leach will go for the back, and the rest of the enemy team will attack the front.
We also have a pretty big speed advantage in our favor as after the buffs and debuffs go out, most of the enemy team will be at 1 speed.
Let's hope it's enough to get a win as this is a battle from the Kobold Miner SPS tournament!
In the end, it's a pretty convincing victory with my strategy working perfectly because my front line was still in tact at the end of the battle and my opponents sneak and opportunity didn't really pay off.
Conclusion
I wouldn't change anything about my team or strategy as everything played out well for me.
Time Mage is a very solid card that can tip the balance in your favor through the reduction of your opponents speed, allowing you to strike first and have the first shot at taking out your opponent before they can act.
Thanks for checking out my battle recap, I hope you enjoyed it and see how impactful Time Mages can be!
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Start Date January 7th 2022 Initial Investment $3,500 Estimated Account Value $3,144 Card Power 102,795 Target Account Value $10,000 Target Card Power 250,000 End Date : Unknown
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Cya next time!