Definitely one of my biggest pet-peeves in the game is the True Strike ability. It derails most of my strategies since they are usually based on building speed. It negates all of my monster's chances to evade attacks and were forced to rely on health and armor.

This is why I hated to encounter Byzantine Kitty in a match because of its absurd combination of abilities. First off, it makes sure that all its monsters' attacks hits. Then it also buffs the speed with 2 points of speed, making sure their monsters go and attack first. On top of all that, there's a tank heal to undo the damages done to the frontline enemy monster. But luckily for me, it seems as though the meta has shifted and I rarely encounter Byzantine Kitty users in modern bronze, silver and gold. They probably all moved into the wild format. All for the better.

But then of course there's the Aim True rule set which I encounter from time to time. Aim True gives the True Strike ability to all monsters on both sides of the battlefield. When I see this come up in a game, I often expect opponents to dish out their low-speed monsters with upside like Grum Flameblade.

But instead of doing the same, being a life splinter player, I often choose a different strategy to this rule set and that is to hunker down and armor up. And my summoner of choice for this type of strategy is of course Grandmaster Rathe.

So if attacks cannot be avoided, the second best thing for me is to beef up my troops. A good way to do that is to give everyone the Void Armor ability. This allows armor to absorb first the incoming magic damage instead of penetrating directly into my monsters' health. With this strategy, my monsters endure the brunt force of enemy attacks and retaliate back and slowly chip away at their troops.

A good two-card combination for me to use for Grandmaster Rathe is Uriel the Purifier and Adelade Brightwing. Uriel is heavily armored and is a beast of a tank. Giving him the Void Armor means he can withstand a great deal of punishment. The only downside to this is the Recharge ability which only lets him attack every other turn.

And usually, with normal matches, it has a fair chance to miss, wasting two turns at a time. But if it's used in a Aim True rule set, then accuracy will not be a problem. There's also the upside of him having the self-heal ability on top of having a large enough health.

Backing him up will be Adelade Brightwing with the Repair ability. And if push comes to shove, she can instantly resurrect Uriel with full armor.

My featured battle is a 27-mana silver league match with Aim True and Earthquake rule set. You can check the battle here. Earthquake deals 2 damage at the end of turn to all monsters that does not have the flying ability. I was expecting for my opponent to use magic type monsters and try to end the match as fast as possible. But instead, he went all melee with focus on Harklaw as tank and Arachne Thug as support.

I went ahead and placed Uriel the Purifier to the frontline with Adelade Brightwing for support. Since both of them have flying, I don't have to worry about the Earthquake penalty. I also included Truthspeaker for an additional 2 points of armor.

Since the enemy has two Sneak monsters, Uraeus and Silent Sha-Vi, Truthspeaker was the first one to go down in this match. Both Uriel and Adelade are in perfect health and ready for a two versus six battle. But what I forgot to anticipate is that Adelade was going to resurrect the first monster to fall in battle and that is Truthspeaker.

Two more rounds of back and forth action and Uriel finally cracked open the enemy's defenses by destroying Harklaw. This is in part thanks to the Earthquake damage that slowly chipped away at my opponent's monsters. It was an easy cleanup afterwards and the match ended at round six.

If you guys are still new to the game and want to join, you can click on my link here to start playing. Thank you for reading and see you on the battlefield.