HELLO to all Splinterlands readers of my humble blog.👋🏻👋🏻👋🏻 Welcome to yet another week of the "new" iteration of the Splinterlands Weekly Challenges 😜.
For any old Hivers/Splinterland players who've just come back and are confused, fret not! Even with the name and format tweaks, right at it's core, battles are still the foundation of these posts.
In this week's edition of Battle Mage Secrets, don't cry out "MEDIC!!!" when you get injured. In fact, an entire team of medics will probably prove to be your downfall. Well, that's unless they're somehow killers in disguise! 🤣
No matter! I present to you the ruleset — HEALED OUT 👨🏻⚕💊🩸
The game's description of HEALED OUT is as follows: "All healing abilities are removed from Monsters and Summoners."
Simply put, all forms of healing are now completely non-existent. It will be as if no one has any healing capability at all. This means that HEAL, TANK HEAL and even TRIAGE are, for all intents and purposes, completely removed from every single unit and Summoner whenever you encounter this ruleset.
Needless to say, if you strategy is to sustain your high hp main tank with regular health topups, that plan will now have to be shelved. 😉
I will take advantage of this ruleset in my battle showcase today to show how 1 of my units in particular becomes a lot stronger than one would expect with HEALED OUT. Introducing the Summoner, POSSIBILUS THE WISE.
Possibilus the Wise is a leviathan from the future that has adapted to rule on both land and sea. His mission is to find and secure the lost sacred rune tablets of his race that were shattered into pieces and strewn across time and space by the entity known only as Desolation. In his present time, a war rages on his home world of Nyuuldus, but Possibilus was tasked with traveling into the past and the future to find these runestone fragments and return with them to defeat Desolation.
From Splinterlands Lore on POSSIBILUS THE WISE
Possibilus The Wise is a Legendary card released during the Chaos Legion expansion. It has definitely found it's place in many Water decks given its availability and usefulness. It's effects on the battlefield are ❤️+2 HEALTH❤️ and it grants the TRAMPLE & REACH ability to all your units. It's summoning cost is, like all other Chaos Legion Legendary Summoners, 6 🧪MANA🧪.
The stat buffs it gives are nothing out of the ordinary, so at first glance, he might look pretty bland. However, all of it combined makes this Summoner one of the strongest in the game!
Reach allows any melee unit on the 2nd spot of your lineup to also attack. While Trample allows your units to launch another attack if it manages to land the killing blow. You can see then how Possibilus has the ability to multiply your army's damage 😱. The battle will very quickly turn against the opponent with a few well placed attacks.
I would venture to say that with the HEALED OUT ruleset in play, we are heavily incentivized to pick DPS units. Add one and one together and I hope it's glaringly obvious by now that Possibilus is a match made in heaven for this situation. Possibilus gives that extra bit of additional health for your units to make up for the lack of heals and thus grants the ability to take slightly more damage. Furthermore, his Reach and Trample abilities have the potential to punish teams who planned to originally play more defensively! There is no stopping the monstrous Possibilus from devastating the entire battlefield! 🔥
This could make all the difference if the battle comes down to the wire where the slightest advantage is the fine line between victory or defeat! 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻 This is definitely what I'd consider game changing! 😱😱😱
⚔️🛡️My Battle Showcase🛡️⚔️
Let me present a battle I fought recently in which the ruleset HEALED OUT was in effect. My opponent used the Chaos Legion edition Summoner General Sloan from the LIFE splinter as his main pick, while I used the Chaos Legion edition Summoner Possibilus the Wise from the WATER splinter. 👼🏻 VS 💧
At first glance, it would seem like I was at a distinct disadvantage.
This was a ruleset which favoured speed and damage.
My opponent was using one of the most offensive summoners in the game!
This gave his entire team a huge increase in raw damage output.
To exacerbate matters, there was an additional "Equal Opportunity" ruleset in play too. This meant his dps focused units would punish my team with an incredible amount of focus fire on the weakest units.
On his part, his Shieldbearer with the TAUNT ability would protect his fragile glass cannons.
This would be a DPS race to the finish!
I was honestly expecting this to be a really bad matchup for me 😜🤣. This was a team who had an innate advantage in this ruleset. His team had one purpose only and that was to output the maximum amount of damage possible. Would I be able to turn the tide of battle against such an opponent then? Victory or defeat would lie in the small details.
I would say that the ruleset HEALED OUT was DEFINITELY the MVP of this match, having played it's role in turning the tide of battle. The advantage it gave my team resulted in me outlasting my opponent in this battle. It definitely provided the edge that I needed to overcome my opponent.
This ensured that the other units could eventually wear down the opponent until victory was achieved! 🏆🏆🏆
👯♀️👯👯♂️LINEUP CHOICES👯♀️👯👯♂️
1st CARD SLOT
The Diemonshark is chosen for this slot. He plays the role of the Main tank perfectly with his great stats. His high health stats and very high ARMOUR will also allow him to have much longer staying power on the battlefield. This allows all other units to be kept safe until he is taken down.
2nd CARD SLOT
The Goblin occupies this slot. It's main role here to be the main DPS for the team. It will also fulfil the role of the backup tank should the main tank fall.
3rd CARD SLOT
The Demented Shark fills this slot and it's main role is to buff all the melee units in the team with it's INSPIRE ability.
4th CARD SLOT
The Deeplurker fills this slot. It is another DPS unit in the team whose main purpose is to take out the weakest units in the opponent's team with it's OPPORTUNITY ability.
5th CARD SLOT
The Hardy Stonefish occupies this slot. At such low cost, it's main role is to draw SNEAK/OPPORTUNITY attacks and act as cannon fodder.
6th CARD SLOT
The Creeping Ooze occupies the last slot. It gives all my units a quick speed buff, although it is more likely to die very quickly in this particular ruleset and is thus, yet another cannon fodder sacrificial unit.
I hope you're starting to see the pattern here in my team setup. 😉
⚔️🛡️Battle Action Report🛡️⚔️
As you can see, both of us fielded very different units in our matchup. We used completely different splinters with Summoners that focused on different types of attacks too. My opponent went for a heavy ranged DPS setup while mine was a pure melee team. 😱
👼🏻LIFE👼🏻 VS 💧WATER💧
My opponent used the Chaos Knight and Shieldbearer as his tanks in the 1st and 2nd slots. Both of which were VERY good choices. With their great defensive stats and the defensive abilities to take damage for the team. These are units which will protect their entire team until the moment they both fall.
His 3rd slot was filled with the Time Mage. This unit is obviously here mainly for it's SLOW ability. In a ruleset like this, being able to strike first provides an undeniable advantage.
His other slots were filled with Ranged DPS units. They would be well placed to unload all their damage on any opponent while being protected by the tanks.
All in all, I would say that the opponent picked a really strong team.
My choice of the Main Tank was the Diemonshark who is perfect for this task. He has really high HEALTH stats in order to take extra hits to ensure that all the other units are protected. Not only that, it also has an inordinate amount of ARMOUR too! This allows it to heal itself to last longer on the battlefield.
The Goblin Mech comes next in the 2nd slot. It's PIERCING ability and naturally high attack will allow it to deal a massive amount of damage and ignore any armour they make have too.
The Demented Shark occupies the 3rd slot and it is mainly there just to provide the additional +1 melee damage via it's INSPIRE ability. Of course, it will also become a backup tank/DPS should the need arise.
The Deeplurker comes next and it's role in the team is to "assassinate" the weakest units in the opponent's team. No unit is safe from him.
This is followed by the Hardy Stonefish and Creeping Ooze in the 5th and 6th slots. Their roles are to be sacrificial cannon fodder units by attracting the OPPORTUNITY attacks thanks to the EQUAL OPPORTUNITY ruleset in play too.
The battle started out with all our units just duking it out pound for pound. It was a high mana game with 38 mana as the limit. The rulesets were EQUAL OPPORTUNITY & HEALED OUT.
The first round saw both our sides launch a flurry of attacks. Both teams took a lot of damage trading blows, especially with the ruleset conferring OPPORTUNITY on everyone. 🤣
The opponent started off strong as his faster units attacked first against my team. It looked like a pretty dire situation too as I lost my Creeping Ooze and Hardy Stonefish very quickly in that first wave while the opponent ended the turn with all his units still standing.
Round 2 started off even more horribly as my Demented Shark fell to his targeted DPS. In fact, I had thought at this point that the game was over and I had lost. Just take a look at the screenshot of the situation below.
I had lost HALF my team while the opponent still had his entire army intact! 😭
When it was finally my turn to attack, the tide of battle very suddenly turned. The moment the opponent lost his TAUNT Tank (Shieldbearer), my units tore into the rest of his fragile units and trampled for additional attacks to completely destroy his army!
Just take a look at the sudden change in battlefield units left standing after the end of that round! 😈
With his once imposing force reduced to it's last 2 units, I think it was safe to say that I had turned a losing battle into the unlikeliest of victories!
It was all over for the opponent now as I eventually mopped up his entire army. 💀💀💀
Talk about doing WAY MORE than it was supposed to!!! 😱🤯🥳 All I expected was for the HEALED OUT ruleset to give me a slight advantage. Individually, on their own, my units would never be able to output such ridiculous amounts of damage. However it ended up being the entire reason for my win! By capitalizing on the ruleset, his LIFE team, which would have usually depended on HEALING to supplement his TAUNT Tanks, was completely neutered! The opponent simply could not handle all that at all.
Well as you can see here in this GIF of my battle, the results were pretty good! 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
This was truly an eye opener! 😁🏆
Slowly, but surely, I wore down the opponent's team and the match ended up with me inflicting a crushing defeat. My team selection proved to be the edge I needed to eventually overpower my opponent. 💪🏻
🔮🔮🔮Hindsight is 20/20🔮🔮🔮
Would I have done anything differently? 🤔 This might have seemed like a disadvantage at the start but I ended up winning handily. IF I had to use the same cards again, there would be no better lineup than what I had already used for the match. Any other combination MIGHT have resulted in a loss for me. I'm really satisfied with the results against such a worthy opponent. 🏆🥇
💭🧐💭Ending Thoughts💭🧐💭
I definitely can appreciate the ruleset HEALED OUT and how it changes the dynamics of usual gameplay. This is one of those rulesets which can be turned into a huge advantage if surrounded with the proper team. The role it brings to the battlefield will give a player the edge in squeezing out every tiny advantage to get the win. 👍🏻
I hope this article has given you some insight into its potential. 😉
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