Theme: Rexxie

I must admit, I rarely used Rexxie. Actually since I have started playing relatively recently, I didn't even have a leveled up Rexxie before this theme was announced 2 days back. I play Earth Splinter a lot, so I thought, well, this is an opportunity to play a card on my favorite splinter that I have always seen but never played before. So I upgraded Rexxie from Level 2 to Level 8 as shown above. Thanks to @splinterlands for the image library, the image above is straight from the library.

The Battle Line Up

Battle Rules:

1. Monsters loose all abilities
2. Odd ones out
3. 31 Mana

This immediately put Rexxie as a reasonable choice for position 1 (not just a made up choice for the challenge) because:

• I can't take Flesh Golem (my regular go to monster) as it is 6 mana
• Also "monsters loose all abilities" makes Lord Arianthus a difficult choice for position 1
• Therefore, Rexxie it is for first position
  Rest of the positions I normally do not think in sequence, I do not know if it is right of wrong but my brain works that way. Since this is a 31 Mana battle, I consider it high, and so I choose my favorite Summoner The Prince Rennyn. Whenever, I choose the Prince, I tend to lean towards the range attackers, because Prince gives a +1 Range attack, and +1 speed boost (along with +1 health), so like most people I tend to gravitate towards fast range attackers:
• The Spirit of the Forest
• Javelin Thrower
• Earth Elemental
  In most cases I will put them in positions 6, 5 & 4 respectively, but notice I got their sequence wrong, which is a mistake and could have cost me the battle, but in this case it didn't. (That's what happens when you try to do multi-tasking!)

That leaves me with position 2 and 3 and only with only 4 mana to spare (Prince takes 5 mana, ouch!) I normally like to take a healer here; but decided against is because

1. No healing ability allowed as per battle rules
2. I want a fast game, that is my best chance, so ideally I want to slow my opponent down (but slowing ability is hidden as well!). Damn!

Therefore choices from position 2 is Creeping Ooze for 1 mana, and I chose Gold Level 9 Screeching Vulture (3 mana) for its Scavenge and Opportunity abilities, which are both excellent addition to Untamed cards in my opinion.

Battlefield After Initial buff-debuff

Link to the Battle Featuring Rexxie

As the battle starts, I am just awed by opponents all gold death cards! Impressive @angstgegner. I checked the steemit profile, looks like the profile is dormant for 8 months plus in posting, so perhaps only gaming repository (like so many others I have seen). It would be nice to get a bit more human touch back to this game. Oh well, I digress!

Rexxie and Vulture gets an immediate attack Nerf from the death summoner from the opponent, and my fast team gets even faster with The Prince, and get their range attach and health buffed. One of the drawback of Rexxie is the lack of shield and/or healing abilities, but thankfully in this battle ruleset its a 'given'. Rexxie immediately takes a hit by opponents Vampire, but 2 of my "range ladies" took out opponents Hydra in no time. Then Rexxie did land a 5 health hit on opponents Peaceful Giant, which is a hefty blow; before taken out by opponents Screaming Banshee's 3 magic attack. So taking 2 major blows, and landing one major hit is something I can live with.

Rest of the battle worked out as expected. My "range ladies" kept of pounding the opponents and continue to take them out with a clear victory. Again I wish I had Javelin Thrower in position 5 as it given one more turn opportunity to her instead of Earth Elemental which has a softer hit. However, it didn't make any difference in this case.

Conclusions

• Did it work? Yes, sure it did. In this case Rexxie was usable
• Would I use it again, also more importantly, is Rexxie the only choice here. No and No. I would have gotten away with Failed Summoner + Wood Nymph combo with a cheaper mana cost and a safer option. Also Lord Arianthus or Gelatinous Cube both would have done the job better I think

So bottomline, not really a great choice now, but still usable. Its cheap and legacy so many longer term player likely have it at max. So sure, can be used! So I will be the first to admit that I am no expert in this game, I am learning as I go along. So this style of play may or may be the best or optimum. You guys be the judge of that.

However, most importantly, I had fun buying Rexxie, laying Rexxie, and had a lot of fun writing about it! So thank you to the @steemmonsters team for coming up with the idea regarding the weekly challenge.