Battle Mage Secrets - True Strike Is Underrated

The theme for the current "Battle Mage Secret" challenge is Fog Of War ruleset this time! This means all units lose the Sneak, Snipe, and Opportunity abilities and Scattershot still works in this ruleset. 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 Rare Death card, Dhampir Stalker!

Dhampir Stalker is one of the very few cards at Level 1 with True Strike. On first glance it might not seem like a very useful ability since most of the hits do land on opponent's cards. But sometimes the 100% accuracy can be very important, especially when opposing cards have high speed, have Flying ability, have Dodge ability, or a combination of both. Having True Strike means regardless whether the opponent has 1 speed or 10 speed (this is possible to due to Enrage), that 3 Ranged damage will land for sure and that gives a big assurance for the attacking team.

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

Half-vampire, the Dhampir are faster and stronger than normal humans. Most have taken to a mercenary lifestyle, never quite welcome with vampires or humans. The Stalker is adept at tracking their prey, then dispatching the target with a silent and perfectly-placed arrow from the shadows.

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Battle Type & Team Lineup

Position	Card/Level	Mana
Summoner	Astral Entity	6

Within limited options, I decided to went for a Death lineup for this ruleset and Astral Entity was the top choice for this battle.

Position	Card/Level	Mana
1	Drybone Raider	12

With mana being a luxury, Drybone Raider took the tank spot given this restrictive ruleset. A card with a dual attack is indeed extremely valuable in some instances. With Double Strike, it would capitalise on the Blast ruleset very well too.

Position	Card/Level	Mana
2	Queen Of Crows	9

Queen Of Crows took the second spot as the secondary tank as she has the Close Range ability. Coming in 11 HP, she is extremely tanky as well.

Position	Card/Level	Mana
3	Rune Crafter	8

Rune Crafter joined the battle next, with Fury ability. With such a high mana battle, there's always a chance where cards with Taunt ability are used. He also provides further protection for the backline.

Position	Card/Level	Mana
4	Dhampir Stalker	7

Dhampir Stalker is actually a very underrated card in my opinion. With just 7 mana, it deals 3 Ranged damage and because of True Strike, the hit is guaranteed! No more disappointment or nervy battles where you sigh when you card misses!

Position	Card/Level	Mana
5	Lira The Dark	7

Lira The Dark is also a card which I used very often for Death lineup. The strongest part about her is her Opportunity ability and her fast speed of 6. This allows her to easily take out weak cards from the opponents' backline very quickly, and this could be cards that are healers and have abilities like Repair.

Position	Card/Level	Mana
6	Gargoya Devil	7

Gargoya Devil also turned out to be very useful when it comes to such restrictive rulesets. Which also means that the depth of one's card collection is very important! Being weaker from a HP perspective, I decided to put it at the very end since they wouldn't be any Sneak attacks under the Fog of War ruleset.

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• Pre Battle: It's always a surprise when the two lineups come up. This time, my opponent probably didn't have the depth within his card collection and that was just the only cards that could fit in this restrictive ruleset.
  

• Round 1: I won in one round!!! This rarely happens but looking at the lineups, and with the Blast ruleset in the battle, this wasn't really a big surprise. Strong damage output from team, as well as the -2 Armor from Astral Entity, ensured that my opponent had no chance in this.
  

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

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Post Battle

Did my strategy work? My strategy was probably okay, but fortunately or unfortunately, I think we didn't get to see the full display of the abilities of the cards because the ruleset was just too restrictive.

What's the Battle Mage Secret? Take a chance with Dhampir Stalker! True Strike is really an underrated ability especially when opponent have cards with high speed and/or Flying and/or Dodge.

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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