Battle Mage Secrets - Always Something To Learn In Every Battle!

The theme for the current "Battle Mage Secret" challenge is Up Close and Personal ruleset this time! This means only units with melee attacks can be used. It's not always easy to get the specific ruleset, but if you play hard enough, you definitely can find one! This time I was lucky enough to have one - woohoo!

So here's the second battle this week that I encountered.

Anyway, I thought it would be still be interesting to introduce some useful cards and show how their strengths can be maximised especially with a particular ruleset. In this post, the featured card is a Gladius card, Katrelba Gobson!

Katrelba Gobson has Double Strike which is a strong ability for a Gladius card, because when paired with Bloodlust, can become very, very deadly. The downside is that she has very low HP which makes her very vulnerable for Sneak, Opportunity attacks. And there's Thorns to watch out too, i.e. a Double Strike + Thorns would be instant suicide. After all, it's a Common card so one needs to be careful when using her.

As usual, here's the lore for Demented for your reading interest:

The eldest daughter of Rock Gobson, Katrelba, has gotten the city into trouble for the last time. Her last spree nearly resulted in a full-out war with the Centauri people of the north, who could easily use their astral magic to level the entire goblin city. Luckily, the centaurs are more forgiving than goblins, so when Katrelba (while flying high on poppypoof) desecrated their most sacred shrine with a band of her unruly cronies (also flying high on poppypoof), she was grudgingly released by Kron the Undying without a fight. Still, a band of Centauri messengers brought the Gobson patriarch a stern warning two days later that led him to send the reckless daughter across the sea. Knowing how tough and formidable in combat his eldest daughter was, Rock Gobson decided to enlist her as a Gladiator. It was his hope that Katrelba could be someone else’s problem for a while.

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Battle Type & Team Lineup

Position	Card/Level	Mana
Summoner	Lobb Lowland	6

For this battle, I didn't have my favourite Water and Death lineups to pick from so I decided to go with a Earth Melee lineup. Using Lobb Lowland allows me to pick Gladius cards.

Position	Card/Level	Mana
1	Mycelic Infantry	8

Mycelic Infantry is a card that I always seem to have difficulties overcoming. With this ruleset, Mycelic Infantry's Shield comes into play and that should give some challenge to the opponent.

Position	Card/Level	Mana
2	Disintegrator	7

Disintegrator is chosen for its Demoralise ability, which hopefully will reduce my opponent's damage output.

Position	Card/Level	Mana
3	Katrelba Gobson	6

Katrelba Gobson would be my trump card for this battle, having Bloodlust and Double Strike. Hopefully she has time to beef herself up as the battle progresses.

Position	Card/Level	Mana
4	Mycelic Morphoid	1

Mana runs out so there's Mycelic Morphoid, which acts as a filler card behind.

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• Pre Battle: When the lineups showed up, I knew I was in deep trouble because it was a Tarsa-led lineup from my opponent and they had 6 cards with quite a number of Opportunity cards.
  

• Round 1: After one round, I was clearly in trouble with my Gladius card taken out swiftly by my opponent's Sneak and Opportunity attacks.
  

• Round 2: Another round of attacks flew by and both my tanky cards were still kept standing. Let's see how long Mycelic Infantry can hold up!
  

• Round 3: Once Disintegrator went down, Mycelic Infantry couldn't hold up much longer but we survived one more round...
  

• Round 4: Ouch, and my lineup went down to this set of Level 1 cards.
  

If you are interested to watch the battle, you can find it here.

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Post Battle

Did my strategy work? Obviously, my lineup failed miserably. I placed all my hopes on a strong tank Mycelic Infantry at the front while leaving my Gladius card Katrelba Gobson to attack from the back. However, my opponent had the same strategy and spending mana at the front meant my backline was left exposed. It's just one of those battles where the strategy didn't work and you just got to pick yourself up and move on from there.

What's the Battle Mage Secret? There's always something to learn in every battle.

So that's all I have! What are your takeaways from this battle? Feel free to comment below, as I am always keen to learn and improve!

As always, thanks for reading and have a pleasant day ahead!

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