Battle Mage Secrets - Ever Hungry Skull Leads The Equaliser Battles!

The theme for the current "Battle Mage Secret" challenge is Equaliser ruleset this time! This means all units start with the same health, based on the highest health on either team. 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 Death Common cards, Ever Hungry Skull!

Ever Hungry Skull is definitely built for Equaliser battles because of its stats. At Level 3, it has 8 armor and 1 HP. With a boosted HP, it becomes extremely tanky for a 5 mana card and when paired with Astral Entity, another Resurrection would definitely cause a nightmare for the opponent.

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.

Battle Type & Team Lineup

With limited elements available for selection, I went with 2nd most preferred element, i.e. Death. Astral Entity is my top pick because of his Resurrection ability.

Ever Hungry Skull is one of the best cards for Equaliser battles because of its 1 HP and 8 Armor. If all goes well, it would get the Resurrect and that would buy a ton of time for the backline.

Gargoya Devil is not a conventional pick here but I thought it would also benefit from Equaliser given its low HP. With Flying ability and Dodge ability from Astral Entity, it would make it a difficult target to hit.

Venari Bonesmith is chosen because of its Life Leech ability. With a boosted HP, if the frontline holds off long enough, Venari Bonesmith would be able to build up a good amount of HP.

Life Sapper is chosen for the same reason as Venari Bonesmith. With a boosted HP, if the frontline holds off long enough, Life Sapper would also be able to build up a good amount of HP.

Soul Strangler is one of my favourite Death cards lately for low mana battle. Never mind its low HP, it's irrelevant here, but that 2 Ranged damage is nasty for a 3 mana card.

With the remaining 4 mana, Ravenhood Warden rounds off the backline with an important Protect ability.

• Pre Battle: Apart from the summoner, both teams looked evenly matched and it was definitely a race against time for my middle cards as my opponent would be attacking from the back too!
  

• Round 1: A warm up round as both our tanks were the model answer here. Some signs of optimism from my team as Astral Entity's abilities behind the scenes earned us some misses from our opponent.
  

• Round 2: My opponent was relentless with the Sneak attacks and Ravenhood Warden went down, only to be brought back by Resurrection. A deviation from my original strategy but let's see what happens.
  

• Round 3: My backline was clearly very exposed and like I mentioned, it was a race against time for the Life Leech cards.
  

• Round 4: Neck to neck here. They had 2 cards down from the front and my team had 2 cards down from the back.
  

• Round 5: No change here...
  

• Round 6: A miss on Ever Hungry Skull and we have a breakthrough here! Life Sapper accumulated enough HP to hold on as we earned a crucial card advantage nearing the end of the battle.
  

• Round 7: After a whooping 7 rounds, our tank finally gave way! Onward steps Gargoya Devil, and it easily earned the misses. My opponent is struggling after a long fight!
  

• Rounds 8-10: And we were done!
  

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

Post Battle

Did my strategy work? Equaliser battles aren't too difficult to handle actually. Low HP and high damage cards are the favourites here, including the ones with a ton of armor. Let your opponent boost the HP for you and you are set for the win!

What's the Battle Mage Secret? Ever Hungry Skull is one of the best tanks for Equaliser battles!

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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