Hello Battle Mages of Splinterlands! silentwill here with my first entry in the Weekly Battle Challenge.
This week features the Radiated Brute, a 5-mana, Fire Splinter melee card which at level 1 has the Reach ability, 1 speed, 2 attack, and 5 health and is part of the Chaos Legion set. With the current cards I own, she mostly fights to take that second position slot against Fineas Rage. But they are different enough that one will certainly be more viable in certain rulesets and mana restrictions. Since she's much slower and requires less mana, Radiated Brute is more ideal for the reverse speed ruleset and lower mana battles.
While this particular battle is high mana, it is with a Reverse Speed Ruleset, so I opted to use her over Fineas. Though at level 3 she's already increased her speed to 2, that's still better than the latter's 5 speed. Let's go ahead and check details of this battle.
Splinters: Fire, Water, Death
Ruleset: Reverse Speed
Total Mana: 41
Summoner: Lv2 Tarsa (4 mana)
Monsters:
- Lv1 Grum Flameblade (11 mana)
- Lv3 Radiated Brute (5 mana)
- Lv1 Battering Ram (2 mana)
- Lv1 Parasitic Growth (4 mana)
- Lv1 Naga Fire Wizard (8 mana)
- Lv1 Living Lava (7 mana)
Total Mana: 48
Summoner: Lv3 Kelya Frendul (4 mana)
Monsters:
- Lv3 Diemon Shark (8 mana)
- Lv3 Demented Shark (6 mana)
- Lv4 Deeplurker (6 mana)
- Lv1 Axemaster (7 mana)
- Lv2 Sand Worm (9 mana)
-Lv2 Wave Brood (8 mana)
At first glance, I was clearly out-leveled, and the armor given by Kelya could spell trouble for my exposed low-health opportunity duo.
But because of the ruleset, his choice of summoner that gave him +1 speed ensured that all of my monsters attack first and gave me a good chance of missing his attacks, and boy, did he miss a lot (I counted 6 in total).
So even though Ram and Parasitic could be one-shot by Deeplurker, he missed on the first turn allowing them to survive long enough to help Fire Wizard take care of his backline taunt tank, while Grum and Brute did short work on his main tank.
My combo shield monsters at the back ensured that his Sand Worm would be busy and won't be able to get to my mid and front lines. I like to use this a lot if I expect hard-hitting sneak monsters and with reverse ruleset and plenty of mana, I anticipated that Sand Worm would make an appearance.
His team's lack of focus dividing his attacks all over the place and the fact that they were too fast for reversed speed ultimately cost him this battle.
Let's have a closer look at each round. You can also watch the full battle here.
while his Diemon lost all its armor and his Brood lost 4 health.
Living Lava lost his armor, and Grum took a bit of damage.
While his main tank is gone and Brood is down to 3 health.
All of his are capable of attacking from their positions compared to just 3 on mine.
But those 3 are attacking first,
with Grum having the first turn so we know what's gonna happen here.
He had his first bloodlust eating the Demented Shark but the Deeplurker, and Axemaster almost killed him if not for one of Axemasters doublestrikes missing.
Living Lava is down to 1 health but at this point, it's clear Sand Worm's never gonna get past my backline.
and another one is obviously right in front of him now.
Sandy finally killed Living Lava but it was too little too late...
to be served as Grum's 4th and final meal.
The key role that Radiated Brute had in this match is to destroy the armors given by Kelya so that Grum could finish them off and feed his bloodlust, allowing him to survive despite him getting to dangerously low health a few times.
With the extra unused mana I could certainly have gone with Fineas Rage which, even though I only had a level 1, still has 2 more health than my level 3 Brute, but his 5 speed could have have resulted in a few misses that would then prevent Grum from getting his bloodlust and die. So I think I made the right choice here in picking the slowest line up available for me and not worrying too much to fill that mana cap. Sometimes, it's just enough.
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