Battle Mage Secrets - Battling To Diamond II For The First Time

The theme for the current "Battle Mage Secret" challenge is Ferocity ruleset this time! This means all units have the Fury ability. Think carefully before including a unit with Taunt in your lineup as they will take double damage from units with Fury.

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 an Common Death card, Ever Hungry Skull!

Ever Hungry Skull has a unique set of stats, with a huge armor and just 1 HP. Such cards are very vulnerable to Magic attacks, but there are many good use cases for such cards too. One example is Equaliser battles. Another example is for Lost Magic battles. Of course they are many more.

The interesting thing is, with the introduction of Astral Entity not long ago, Ever Hungry Skull is one of the many cards in the Death collection that pairs very well with this deadly summoner. With Resurrect, it gets all the armor back and that would be extremely frustrating for the opponent. If you don't believe me, watch this battle!

As usual, here's the lore for Ever Hungry Skull for your reading interest:

Skulls of slain vampires sometimes become re-animated with necromancy, allowing the spirit of the former vampire to possess it once again. This is used for dark rituals, for information gathering, and even by necromancers with a macabre sense of humor. The souls are not happy with their situation, but often seek to turn the tide in their favor. They will go along with what their captor asks in hopes of returning to a full body.

These skulls still feel the bloodthirst they did in their lives, driving them to be very ruthless and foul-tempered. They have no empathy and can prove very cunning in their strategies and words. For instance, the necromantic power flowing through the skull left a mark and each one is protected by a nearly imperceptible magic shield. When harmed by any weapon, the skull lashes out with the magic used to create it to harm the attacker. The necromancers that keep these skulls must walk a fine line between harming them and distrusting anything the skull says.

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Battle Type & Team Lineup

Position	Card/Level	Mana
Summoner	Astral Entity	6

With Magic monsters out of the way, one of the strong summoners for this case would be Astral Entity, because its Dodge ability would be very helpful against Melee and Ranged attacks.

Position	Card/Level	Mana
1	Ever Hungry Skull	5

Once again, with Magic out of the way, Ever Hungry Skull is one of the best cards to take advantage of Astral Entity's Resurrect ability. With 8 Armor and 1 HP, a Resurrect means having to take down 16 Armor and 2 HP for a 5 mana card. And that's before further boosts.

Position	Card/Level	Mana
2	Corpse Fiend	0

This being a low mana battle, Corpse Fiend comes in as a filler card to buffer against the cards in the backline.

Position	Card/Level	Mana
3	Riftwing	4

Riftwing has been my staple card in Death lineups whenever Astral Entity is in play because with Flying and Dodge (from Astral Entity) and a high speed of 4, Riftwing is very hard for opponent to hit.

Position	Card/Level	Mana
4	Soul Strangler	3

Soul Strangler is one of the strong Death cards for low mana battle because it deals 2 Ranged damage for a 2 mana card. That's pretty massive. And with a decent speed, it doesn't miss often.

Position	Card/Level	Mana
5	Dark Astronomer	4

We are stretching our card collection to fill the lineup here because of the restrictions in the ruleset. Dark Astronomer is a rare card to play for my lineup but I thought 2 Ranged damage is pretty decent here.

Position	Card/Level	Mana
6	Ravenhood Warden	4

Completing the backline would Ravenhood Warden, who has a Protect ability and that's a massive boost to the team, especially to Ever Hungry Skull. Now the opponent has to go through 20 Armor to pass through the tank.

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• Pre Battle: When both lineups came out, I thought it was a pretty good match. Both teams are of similar levels and it's anyone's game. But little did I know...
  

• Round 1: Astral Entity's contribution was immediate was its -2 Armor ability neutralised my opponent's Protect ability. As expected, with Flying and Dodge, Ever Hungry Skull was difficult to hit and it clocked 3 misses this round. That said, that Level 3 Chaos Knight was posing some difficulties for my team.
  

• Round 2: Ever Hungry Skull clocked another 2 misses, making it 5 in total. And then it went down, and that 10 Armor and 1 HP was resurrected once again. My team was still stuck at that opposing Chaos Knight.
  

• Round 3: This was an exciting battle to watch as the tanks from both teams continued to stay strong. Certainly impressed with the opposing Chaos Knight, but fortunately, Ever Hungry Skull was up to the challenge, clocking another 2 misses. That's 7 now.
  

• Round 4: And then it was all the way downhill for my opponent... Cards went down one by one while my Ever Hungry Skull continued to eat up all the hits and that's 9 misses in total now. Almost done here! What a pivotal round!
  

• Rounds 5-6: And we did it, what an unexpected 6-0 win from what was supposedly an evenly matched battle! Ever Hungry Skull was so impressive, of course helped by Astral Entity and the rest of the cards.
  

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

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Post Battle

Did my strategy work? The lineups were evenly matched in terms of levels, so it was definitely my strategy that came out tops for this battle. Astral Entity was never an easy summoner to handle, especially for Melee and Ranged battles. And the Death lineup having a card like Ever Hungry Skull with huge Armor is definitely a great way to pair it with Astral Entity.

What's the Battle Mage Secret? Astral Entity and Ever Hungry Skull pairing is awesome!

With that, I have set a new personal record! I have reached Diamond 2 for the first time and my rating of 3260 is a record!!! :)

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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