Battle Mage Secrets - Battle Of The Marksrats!

The theme for the current "Battle Mage Secret" challenge is Healed Out ruleset this time! This means all healing abilities are removed. This applies to summoners as well. Healing abilities include Heal, Tank Heal, and Triage.

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 interesting battle 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 Rare Neutral card, Venari Marksrat!

Venari Marksrat is well known card for its Martyr ability, but is often used in Rebirth battles or paired together with cards with Resurrect ability. But a little known fact is that, when combined with Resurrect and Rebirth, it comes back twice, and died thrice, triggering Martyr 3 times for the adjacent card. With a clever placement of the adjacent card, 3 boosts can be very strong.

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

Venari marksrats spend more time in the forests than they do underground. Most of it is taken with hunting and foraging, with marksrats being the main food gatherers for the venari colonies that inhabit the upperdark caverns of the Realm of Silence. They are incredibly agile and have honed their hunting skills to perfection.

Their crude bows are fashioned out of branches and saplings. Don't be fooled by their unrefined look, though. These skilled archers can still hit a fleeing rabbit at a hundred yards with precision. They hunt alone or in packs, and if you ever manage to spot one, you can guarantee they saw you first and have been watching you for some time.

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Battle Type & Team Lineup

Position	Card/Level	Mana
Summoner	Astral Entity	6

With Healing not in play, Water and Life lineups were out because that's where the healers are. And with Rebirth in play, Astral Entity is the best choice to combine Resurrect with Rebirth using Venari Marksrat.

Position	Card/Level	Mana
1	Venari Marksrat	3

If all goes according to plan, Venari Marksrat would be the card to receive Resurrect and Rebirth, hence triggering Martyr 3 times on the adjacent card. Hehe!

Position	Card/Level	Mana
2	Pelacor Deceiver	5

Of course, the lucky card is none other than Pelacor Deceiver! With 3 Martyr boosts, he would be up to 5 Melee damage and have 7 speed. That's a terror!

Position	Card/Level	Mana
3	Corpse Fiend	0

With our front lines set, the backline will mainly consist of filler cards given the limited mana quota.

Position	Card/Level	Mana
4	Carrion Shade	1

Another filler card over here.

Position	Card/Level	Mana
5	Soul Strangler	3

Soul Strangler is a pretty strong card, dealing 2 Ranged damage at just 3 mana. He takes up the 5th spot and hopefully the hits will come in handy.

Position	Card/Level	Mana
6	Ravenhood Warden	4

Ravenhood Warden is a very useful card and it's almost a must have for any Death low mana battles. With Protect, the 2 extra Armor is extremely important, especially when there is Rebirth and Resurrect.

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• Pre Battle: When both lineups came out, I thought it would be an interesting battle with Death vs Water. Both teams adopted the same strategy with Martyr boosts for the adjacent card and a Martyr boosted Djinn Oshannus would not be easy to handle for sure. Let's see if I can make my card advantage count!
  

• Round 1: Astral Entity's -2 Armor for opponent came immediately into effect and we were hitting down cards much faster without the armor protection.
  

• Round 2: We managed to clear the opposing Venari Marksrat quickly and came face to face with the scary looking Djinn Oshannus. Crossing my fingers for this one.
  

• Round 3: It's amazing that my Venari Marksrat is around. Haha.
  

• Rounds 4-5: After 5 long rounds, Venari Marksrat finally went down, triggering a total of 3 Martyr boosts for Pelacor Deceiver! Immediately the 5 Melee damage was inflicted onto the opposing Djinn Oshannus.
  

• Round 6: Easy peasy when you have Pelacor Deceiver dealing 5 Melee damage per round. While every card was missing their hits because of that 8 speed, Pelacor Deceiver had no problems at 7 speed.
  

• Rounds 7-8: And we were done! A little longer than usual battles because of the Rebirth in play, but we had more than enough.
  

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

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Post Battle

Did my strategy work? To be honest, I didn't expect this battle to be lopsided. A double Martyr boosted Djinn Oshannus is never easy but Pelacor Deceiver definitely pushed above his weight today, with a Common card overcoming a Legendary card with ease. This is definitely one of the rare instances that old and forgotten cards become super powerful when paired newer cards.

What's the Battle Mage Secret? Using Astral Entity with Venari Marksrat in Rebirth battles gives you 3 Martyr boosts to the adjacent card!

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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