Hello there, this is my entry to the new "Battle Mage Secret Weekly Challenge!". If you want to participate or know more about the challenge, click here. This week we have to formulate a strategy with the Reverse Speed ruleset.
RULESET: Odd Ones Out
With the Reverse Speed ruleset, units with lower speed will attack before units with higher speeds and the attack miss chances are also reversed.
The 'Reverse Speed' ruleset is easy to understand as the units with lower speeds become more powerful now as they will attack first and also have better chances to dodge attacks. All the attack miss calculations get reversed so having lower speed units is better in this ruleset.
One must avoid abilities or summoners which increase our speed or decrease our opponent's speed during the battle.
Let's see how this ruleset affects my lineup and how I strategies for the battle.
My Lineup
This is my lineup for the battle
This was just a 13 mana cap battle and only had the 'Reverse Speed'.
To make matters worse, we only had 'Water' and 'Death' active elements in this battle. I usually struggle with lower mana cap battles and this time I went with Keyla Frendul as my summoner even though it increased the speed which is not a good thing in this ruleset and I advised not to use it but I had little to no options and I wanted to have that extra armour.
That's the only reason I went with this summoner.
I used the Torrent Fiend in the first position just because it was a zero mana-costing unit and it dealt melee attacks. I didn't expect much from this but if I am lucky it can take a couple of hits and slow down the attackers.
The most important part of my lineup is the inclusion of Djinn Oshannus. I had all my bets on this unit just because of its 2 magic attack damage and huge health. Its speed was not helping in this ruleset but being a magic attacker its attacks won't be missed unless they have a monster with 'phase' ability which is not that common. Also, its 'void' ability helps in reducing magic damage and is a very useful ability.
Most of my mana was used for the above unit and I had just 1 mana leftover which I used to place Two Gun Pete. It deals 1 range attack damage and can sometimes come in handy. It only comes with 2 health points though which is not bad for a unit costing just 1 mana.
Sadly, that's all the mana I had in this battle and I used most of it on my Djinn Oshannus.
Now that my lineup is set let's talk about my strategy for this game.
My Strategy
My strategy during this ruleset usually is just comparing units with similar styles and attack patterns and using the one with less speed. But in this battle, I only had 13 mana to play with and just 2 active elements to choose from... So I didn't have many options in this particular battle.
I wanted to have extra protection in the form of armour and that's why I used the Keyla Frendul but it comes with its disadvantage as it increases the speed of all the units which should be avoided in ideal conditions. Why I still ignored this speed increase is because I wanted to use a strong mage and mages can't miss their target (unless they have a special ability).
Djinn Oshannus was a vital unit in this lineup and I had high hopes from this unit.
This strategy, as you will see, worked in my favour and gave me an easy win in the end.
I will share my battle here, which I have uploaded to YouTube. Battle Link
My opponent wanted to use a gladiator unit and went with the Pembrook Nymph which cost 6 mana and that was a heavy price to pay in a 13 mana cap battle. They used the Isgald Vorst as their gladiator unit which is a good melee attacker but doesn't have much health to start with.
Both of us had the Torrent Fiend and both got eliminated in the first round only, just as we expected.
The bloodlust ability helped their gladiator unit get more powerful after the first kill. And it looked like a tight battle but my Djinn Oshannus took the charge and never let it go. Its high health made all the difference.
Their extra armor was not useful either against my magic attack damage and that made all the difference during this battle. In the end, I won the battle comfortably which looked a lot closer at some point in time.
Conclusion
Reverse Speed ruleset is not the most interesting ruleset as apart from reversing the order of attacks from higher speed to now lower speed and the miss/attack chances all the fundamentals remain the same and I go back to treating it like a normal battle by just keeping in mind that I am not reducing my opponent speed or increasing my own speed especially with summoners.
There are always trade-offs and one must make the decision depending on how the conditions are and what are the available options that go well with the mana cap. Sometimes having a low mana cap is very difficult and you might have to ditch the general advice and come up with unique plans just like I did in the above battle where despite increasing my speed and using a unit with very high speed, I still managed to get through the battle and came out victorious.
inactivating almost half of your deck it doesn't present many challenges. But it forces you to get out of your comfort zone especially when it is combined with other rulesets.
Let me know what's your strategy with this ruleset.
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