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Ahoy fellow Splinterlands players. Welcome to my next weekly Battle Mage Secrets post.

This week the featured ruleset for the challenge is Even Stevens. When this ruleset is active only Monsters with an Even Mana cost may be used in battle.

You can recognise this ruleset with the following icon.

This ruleset is only for Monsters so you still have all your Summoners available. It does decrease the playable Monsters to about half of the total so it can be a bit tricky in building teams sometimes. I do kinda like this ruleset, forces you to try something else at times as not all of your preferred Monsters will be available in battles with this ruleset.

The battle I'm sharing in this post is from a tournament that happened a few days ago. It was during the Poseidar Wild Silver Invitational tournament. This battle was against the player dc3ntr4lzd.

Here's a picture of our initial lineup.

Battle Rules
This was a battle with a 52 Mana Cap. Only the Earth and Death Elements were available for this battle. The battle had 3 rulesets:

• Even Stevens: Only Monsters with even Mana costs may be used in battles.
• Aim True: Attacks always hit their target.
• Tis but Scratches: All Monsters have the Cripple ability.

Here is a link to the battle if you want to check it out: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sm_785yxKEMMtZrlZQBEeP7&ref=athunderstruck

Battle Lineup

With only Even Mana cost Monsters there could be a bit more puzzling to the team composition. There's only Earth and Death available to play, so there is a high chance that teams with lots of Magic attack Monsters could be played. If my opponent expects me to play that then they might be going anti-magic with maybe Immortalis or Thaddius Brood. It seems that I may be better off not placing focus on Magic attackers at all. I don't have to worry about missing because of the Aim True ruleset. I was thinking about using Immortalis, but then for the lineup I ended up wanting to play I didn't have enough Mana to play him so I chose Obsidian instead. Which does come with the drawback of not having that Void ability on my Monsters.

I start my lineup with Grund, good health to be in the front for a bit and Double Strike so he can attack twice to deal some nice damage. Next up I have Arkemis the Bear. I'm using him to provide +2 Armor to all my Monsters with his Protect ability. He also has nice health to serve as a second tank.

Then I have the Sporcerer with the Rust ability to reduce the Armor on my opponents' team so my Ranged and Melee attacks wouldn't really get interrupted. This is also the only card gaining a buff from my Obsidian Summoner.

Up next I'm using the Runi. It's a bit of a hit and miss play because of its Opportunity, if it doesn't kill anything it might be a bit of a waste of Mana. But on the other hand it can also take a few hits to maybe allow a few extra hits from my backline. Thanks to its Armor and the Resurrect ability.

Then I have Beatrix Ironhand in my lineup with a good speed and 3 Ranged attack. Also the Close Range ability so even if my Runi dies this card would still be able to deal some damage in her turn.

Last but not least I have Mitica Headhunter, even better Speed than Beatrix and also 1 more Ranged attack. No Close Range ability though so if this one ends in the frontline it would be game over. I don't have to worry about placing this card in the back because there are almost no Monsters with Sneak ability available in Earth and Death at silver level with EVEN Mana cost. One of them would require my opponent to play Lobb Lowland.

Battle Analysis

My opponent did indeed seem to expect me to bring Magic attack Monsters in my team. However their summoner choice didn't reflect that expectation as they used Astral Entity. It's only their Monsters that are partially anti-magic. Their frontline Prismatic Energy with the Magic Reflect ability followed by Phantom Soldier with the Silence ability to reduce my Magic damage. They also brought Octopider with the Demoralize ability to reduce my Melee attacks.

The extra Armor provided by my Arkemis the Bear gets nullified because of the -2 Armor from their Astral entity. The Astral Entity gives Dodge to all their Monsters, but there's the Aim True ruleset so Dodge is not effective. It does also have Resurrect.

My opponent is using Ravenhood Warden to provide +2 Armor to their team. This Armor gets taken away by my Sporcerer's Rust ability. So it's funny we are both trying to provide +2 Armor to our teams but then we both take it away from the opponent's team too xD

During round 1 my Mitica Headhunter and Beatrix Ironhand damage the Prismatic Energy severely. My opponents Prismatic Energy, Phantom Soldier and Octopider then damage my Grund severely. Now it's Grund's turn. He kills the Prismatic Energy, which then gets resurrected because of Astral Entity. Grund has Double Strike though so he attacks it again and kills it again in the same turn.

Kain Hace then kills my Grund though as payback and with Blast it also damages my Arkemis the Bear. My Arkemis the Bear is now in the frontline and gets hit by Ravenhood Warden and Usut. Then my Sporcerer hits the Phantom Soldier. Finally my Runi is the last Monster to attack during this first round. Kain Hace at 2 Health is the lowest target to my Runi hits it thanks to the Opportunity ability immediately getting rid of it. Here is a screenshot from when Runi hit and killed Kain Hace.

Luckily my Runi still had 2 Melee damage after the Demoralize so that it had exactly enough damage for that. Now that's the end of round 1. So yeah it's looking alright here. Especially because my Mitica Headhunter and Beatrix Ironhand are going first in round 2 and they have exactly enough damage (4 + 3) to take out the Phantom Soldier.

My Arkemis the Bear would have had enough damage to take out the Ravenhood Warden then. But because of Octopider's demoralize it doesn't. So my Sporcerer is the one to take it out. Usut attacks my Arkemis the Bear leaving it at 1 Health. My Runi now deals some damage to Octopider that's in the enemy frontline to end the round.

Round 3 my Mitica Headhunter and Beatrix Ironhand join forces to take out the Octopider this time. Arkemis the Bear hits Usut, destroying its Armor and using Halving so he goes down to 1 Magic attack. Which is still enough to kill my Arkemis the Bear and that's exactly what it does right after and thus gaining Bloodlust to go back to 2 Magic attack and getting an Armor back.

At this point he lost though. It would take him 3 turns to just kill my Sporcerer. With the Aim True ruleset even if he has Flying and Dodge he can't stop any of my attacks. So my Runi finished the round by destroying the Armor on Usut.

Round 4 is the final round where my Mitica Headhunter and Beatrix Ironhand ones again join forces to kill a Monster as they take down the Usut. That's a victory for me 😄

Was My Strategy Successful?

Yeah it was a great strategy! I expected my opponent to expect me bringing some Magic attackers during this battle and given the available Elements. Due to that I actually didn't really bring Magic attackers at all. Focused on a strong Ranged backline with some high health Melee frontlines and a Runi with Resurrect as an odd possible extra tank.

It was nice that Kain Hace only had 2 health otherwise my Runi wouldn't have been able to kill it since its 3 Melee damage got reduce to 2 with the Demoralize. If that kill didn't happen I would've had to spend an extra attack on it, but since my Arkemis the Bear was faster he would've taken it out instead of hitting Ravenhood Warden. So it wouldn't have changed anything to the battle outcome.

Conclusion

Great prediction of my opponent going anti-magic. I built a strong team to deal a good amount of damage while having a strong surviving frontline to allow the backline damage.

It was really funny how we both brought a Monster to give additional Armor to our teams and then we also both just took that Armor away again xD I took it away with the Sporcerer, my opponent took it away with their Summoner.

A great battle. I ended up 7-4 in that tournament and unfortunately didn't advance to the second round though so that was too bad. Using the battle link provided earlier you can see the Tournament results if you skip to the end of the battle.

That's it for my Battle Mage Secrets challenge this week. Thank you for reading!

If you haven't signed up for Splinterlands yet and want to check it out, you can do so with my referral link at: https://splinterlands.com?ref=athunderstruck

I also still have a giveaway for a seasonal delegation of a level 5 Vruz with Martyr ability which you can find in my post where I opened my Season Chests. The old one is now over as the Season has ended, but a new one will be up later when I do my End of Season video.