Prelude
Hello everybody, how is it going? It's time for more Battle Mage Secrets. We had an earth shaking experience last week with the earthquake rule set. Many amazing strategies were shared, I myself have benefited so much from all the sharing and I hope you have too.

The ruleset of the challenge this week is: Equalizer

Ruleset Spotlight

Equalizer
All units start with the same health, based on the highest health on either team.

Buffs and debuffs are done afterward - this impacts base health.

Abilities/Cards that get shutdown with this rule set
To be honest, nothing really get shutdown for this. However, in order to not let your opponent have a bigger boost on health to their lineup, rule of the thumb is to find cards that hit hard but have generally low health, unless you want to use that card's health to boost the viability of your other cards.

What thrives with this ruleset?
Cards with low health but high attack will do well here. Example of such can come in the form of Serpentine Spy/Spark Pixie for Fire Splinter, Goblin Psychic from Earth Splinter and Pelacor Arbalest from Life Splinter are good examples of hard hitters with very low health.

Next thing to consider is healing. Because we start at a higher base of health, heal become much more effective. So tank heal, heal and triage will help sustain the team longer.

Porcupine abilities such as thorns, magic reflect and return fire are great adds to the lineup. Reason for these is to ensure while we get attack, we also shave off the health of our opponent in the midst.

Other abilities that give advantage should also be considered, attack buffs, de-buff, protection, shield etc are all great.

Fiends, these 0 mana cards come in handy and certainly will get a significant health boost since they mainly come with 1 health. These will become really good meat shield either from front or back of the lineup.

As usual, other non-health stats are equally important so that we can strike earlier or have additional armour to fend off attacks.

For me, somehow there are many critter-like (low health cards) available in Death Splinter, which somehow lead me to using Death Splinter whenever I see equalizer ruleset.

With these in mind, let's start to talk about the battle proper.

The Battle
Link: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_b06fb67627d37c2e484632d2272a2de8&ref=vaynard86

Rules
Equalizer, Lost Magic
Mana Limit: 25

Splinter	Mana Cost	Position	Reason
Thaddius Brood	4	Summoner	Death Splinter Summoner which helps with reducing magic attack and reducing 1 health
Venari Marksrat	3	1st	Martyr, to sacrifice to boost other cards.
Cursed Windeku	6	2nd	Boost health to all but has thorns to wear down opponent
Silent Sha-vi	5	3rd	Fast and heavy sneaker
Soul Strangler	3	4th	Heavy range attacker
Ravenhood Warden	4	5th	Protection giver
Corpse Fiend	0	6th	Backline Meat Shield
Total Mana:	25

Opponent Lineup

• Summoner - Kelya Frendul
• Position 1 - Serpent of Eld
• Position 2 - Albatross
• Position 3 - Scavo Hierling
• Position 4 - Pelacor Bandit
• Position 5 - Uraeus
• Position 6 - Kulu Swimhunter

Prediction before pressing rumble
A very different choice of lineups. My opponent went for a sneak + dodge lineup with Scavo Hierling giving repair to armour, while I opted for hard hitting cards like Silent Sha-vi and Soul Strangler while having Ravenhood Warden give protection. Let's see which is the better option.

Battle Synopsis

Round 1-2, Due to high health, relatively peaceful round 1 with both side just scathing one another.

Round 3, Marksrat die and Cursed Windeku gains stats from martyr ability. No other casualties this round.

Round 4, Attacks continue to fly with my Corpse Fiend on very low health and Serpent of Eld is almost of the verge of falling.

Round 5, Corpse Fiend fell together Kulu Swimhunter which has been consistently attacked by Silent Sha-vi. Serpent of Eld surprisingly survived.

Round 6, Serpent of Eld died to thorns. With the tank away, attacks flew towards Albatross.

Round 7, Albatross fell to all the bombardment. Now Scavo Hierling stands at first position.

Round 8 and 9, saw the clearing up of Scavo Hierling and my Ravenhood Warden falling to continuous sneak attacks.

Round 10 and 11, saw the final clear up of my opponent team, with the combination of Cursed Windeku's attack + thorns, Silent Sha-vi hard hits and also damage delivered by Soul Strangler. Victory secured!

Post Battle Summary
A longer than usual match due to the equalizer ruleset. Cursed Windeku's thorns were exceptional together with its 2 hard hitting buddies helped secured the win.

Did my strategy work? It did as I wanted it to be for most of it but somehow the Marksrat here might not have its effect gone to the fullest because it a little while for it to trigger the martyr effect, would be perfect if it happened earlier. But for the remaining, the hard hitters and thorns worked perfectly. Then Ravenhood Warden's protection also helped us to sustain as well.

What's the Battle Mage Secret?
In this, the thorns that Cursed Windeku actually help to wear down Serpent of Eld. It was very important to ensure opponent take more damage so that we can tear their lineup apart. Serpent of Eld in this match was a pain with its dodge, but the thorns really helped to quickly take it down.

A sustained Silent Sha-vi and Soul Strangler whom served as hard hitters that usually have low health, allowed them to run rampage on opponent's lineup, doing big damage turn after turn.

So the secret in summary is:
Prepare porcupine ability (Cursed Windeku), prepare hard hitters (Silent Sha-vi/Soul Strangler) and give it sufficient protection (Ravenhood Warden).

There are also many amazing small health cards in Death Splinter that are worth exploring as well to make Equalizer to your advantage too.

Wrap Up
I hope you guys enjoyed reading my sharing on the rule set Equalizer. I would really appreciate it if you liked and/or commented to let me know what are you thoughts.

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Till my next battle sharing, take care, stay safe and happy battling!

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