Hello there.

Today I'll share my battle under the Explosive Weaponry or, as I like to call it, the Blast ruleset. But first, I will share some of my thoughts regarding it. With this ruleset, all monsters get the Blast ability. Monster attacks deal additional damage to monsters adjacent to their target. For example, if the first position monster attacks the opponent's first position monster, the second position monster will take Blast damage. The computation for damage is the Main Damage, divided by 2, rounded up. So if the main damage is 2, the Blast damage is 1. If the main damage is 3, the Blast damage is 2. The Reflection Shield ability ignores the Blast damage, while Shield/Void can reduce the Blast damage depending on the attack type. So in the example above, a Blast damage of 1 is reduced to 0 by the Shield/Void, and the Blast damage of 2 becomes 1.

In this ruleset, I am reminded of Yodin. Blast is very powerful and can deal a lot of damage in one round. There are a lot of strategies available. One is the Taunt and support team. The Taunt monster is placed in the first position, and a Reflection Shield monster is placed on the second position. Then have different support monsters at the backline. Iziar and Corsair Bosun are good examples of this. For an offensive option, Double Strike or Dual attack type monsters are also powerful. Attacking twice lets them deal even more damage because of the Blast. Grund and Coastal Sentry come to mind. Another strategy is using Martyr monsters. Putting them in the second position or next to a taunt monster in the back lets them die earlier and apply their buff. There are a lot more options like a scattershot or Possibilus + opportunity team.

I believe that being flexible in battle is the ideal strategy. Check the opponent's history, check what they are most likely to use, and counter it. But always pick teams that can also counter different strategies.

Without further ado, let's get into the battle.

The Ruleset

This was a tournament battle, so it was a Bronze battle with Lost Legendaries, Back to Basics, and Explosive Weaponry Rulesets. A 26 mana battle is on the normal amount, while Earth and Death elements are not available. I can think of a lot of different strategies for each so I will try to counter as much as I can.

The ideal team for Fire can be Conqueror Jacek. He increases the speed of the monsters, pierce minimizes the effectiveness of armor, and the scattershot can help spread the Blast damage more effectively. Magic attacks are ideal because of Back to Basics, so cards like Djinn Apprentice can be good.

For Water, Kelya with magic monsters is good. The extra armor can hopefully buy some extra time against the Blast damage, and the extra speed will be helpful in attacking faster. Nerissa Tridawn will be best for the damage.

For Life, Ilthain is an option to try and counter some Range monsters, and for the speed. Using magic monsters like Time Meddler can be good because of its armor and magic attack.

For Dragon, Quix can be an option, but there aren't a lot of cheap Dragon cards that work well with the rulesets. Additionally, Gladiator cards can be an option, with Franz and Helios being good because of their armor and speed buff. Captain Katie can be a cheap 3 damage magic monster.

The Lineup

For me, between the lineups I mentioned above, I'd rather go with a Katie Life team. The armor from Franz will help me survive a few physical Blast damage. Katie is my main damage because of its 3 magic attack. Time Meddler with its high armor is my last line of defense. It having 2 magic attack is also nice. I just placed cheap monsters in front as fodder. I think this team has a good balance of offense and defense.

The Battle

Link to the Battle

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The Matchup

My opponent decided to go with a Jacek team. The Exploding Rats is very fast so it can deal some damage before dying. They have two magic monsters at the back with a 3 magic attack monster in Djinn Inferni. The did a similar strategy of putting the fodder in front. With their scattershot attack, this battle can be decided by RNG.

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End of Round 1

Wow, their two Djinns almost hit the perfect targets that round. The Djinn Apprentice targeted and killed my Scrapper, and also killed my Chaos Agent with the Blast damage. The Djinn Inferni on the other hand target Katie. Looking at the overall health of the monsters it looks like I am leading, but they will be attacking first. I need them to split their damage and not kill one of my magic monsters.

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End of Round 2

I guess both Djinns used up their intelligence and strategy last round. In Round 2, they both targeted my Blinding Reflector, which is the best case scenario for me, and leaving both my Time Meddler and Katie alive. The two were able to kill the Djinn Apprentice which only left Djinn Inferni with 3 health, and unable to kill both of my monsters next round. This battle is a win.

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End of the Battle

I will have to say that I was surprised that I won that battle. Looking at it from the start, they had more monsters to tank the Blast damage, and they were very fast. There seems to be a lot of instances were I lucked out. If I missed my Blinding Reflector's attack, or if their scattershot hit were more favorable for them, I would have lost. I was actually curious on my chances of winning in that battle so I checked it in the xbot battlevision:

I only had a 24 percent chance of winning that battle. I guess I lucked out big time.

The Result

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Conclusion

In tournaments where there are additional limitations on top of the Rulesets and banned elements, I try to make it a point to look at the possible teams and imagine them fighting against one another. I will then choose the team which I think is best. For this specific battle, my opponent used a team composition that I was considering. I think they had the better team, and I was very lucky to win. There were some monster placements I could have improved like putting the Chaos Agent first to tank the big hits against other strategies, but it didn't matter much here because of the scattershot. This is the risk of using Scattershot, sometimes they can win one games, in others, the RNG just loses the game.