The battle challenge ruleset this week is Rise of the Commons. In this ruleset, only Common and Rare monsters may be used. So this means no Epic or Legendary monsters. Summoners are exempt.
The battle I chose to showcase is a 37 mana match with the ‘Enrage’ and ‘Rise of the Commons’ rulesets. Fire, Water, Death, and Dragon were the available splinters to play.
Here is a link to the battle:
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_21f55f444f47f35f0e125f75e4ba23d5&ref=ninjamike
I chose the Death splinter because I have several Common Death cards that are hard to hit with a lot of speed. Once they become enraged they will become even more difficult to hit. Magic attacks will always connect no matter what the speed is, so I will counter some of that risk by using the Death summoner that reduces Magic attacks by 1.
With battles involving Enrage, I am always worried about monsters gaining speed and being difficult to hit. So in my backfield I included a couple monsters with the Poison ability. The idea being that once a monster is poisoned it will keep losing health even if my shots miss it. I also included a backfield monster with True Strike so at least I have one attacker that cannot miss.
Start of Battle / Round 1
My opponent went with an entire Magic attack and it also appears that they were expecting a Strong Magic attack. Their first two monsters have defenses for Magic attacks.
Round 2
In the first round, we both defeated each other’s monsters in first position. Fortunately for me my second tank that is now in first position has become enraged and now has a Melee attack of 5 and speed 8.
Round 3
During the second round, I defeated two more of my opponent’s monsters. I lost my Melee monster in first position. One of my opponents’ monsters has the Blast ability. As a result, my first two monsters have become Enraged. This should give me the speed and firepower edge to win this match.
Overall my strategy ended up working for this match, though I do think I got a little lucky. My two Melee tanks and Magic attack monster barely managed to hold up. I put myself at risk of having Ranged attack monsters falling into first position and not being able to attack. In addition, I had a couple of monsters with low health and no armor in my backfield that were vulnerable to opportunity attacks. If I could do this match over again I would probably pick the Water or Fire splinter. My primary strategy would be to use a combination of opportunity and sneak attacks.
My initial reaction to Rise of the Commons matches is boring. Now I do not get to use my most exciting beasty monsters. But when you actually think about it, Rise of the Commons matches are more strategy driven because you cannot rely as much on sheer firepower. There are still many Common and Rare monsters that have useful abilities. For example, you can still focus on Healing and Repair or strong Sneak and Opportunity attacks. It can be hard to fill out large mana matches because many of the high mana cards are Epic or Legendary. So small mana matches are naturally easier to fill when restricted to Common and Rare cards.
