2025 Battle Of The Day 31/365

Thanks for checking out my #Splinterlands Battle of the Day #BOTD for your reading and watching enjoyment. All hail the #ageofthebattlemage!

BATTLE LINK -- January 31, 2025 -- Day 31 of 365 vs. @kjira.modern

Today's BOTD comes from Day 2 action in the @sps.dao Gloridax Wild Diamond Invitational event, which allows the use of all the cards in the game at their highest levels. The 52-mana battle had three rulesets: Little League, Wands Out, and What Doesn't Kill You. Two elements were excluded: Water and Death (my two favorite).

I always find it amusing when Little League battles provide more than the maximum 28 mana that can be used to fill seven card spots. Needless to say, my opponent and I squandered much of the 53 mana available. Interestingly, we both chose Dragon with Fire in support of the same battle strategy: put the speedy Rebellion phase monster Continuum Seer up front to evade as many attacks as possible.

With all monsters gaining enrage, the main way to take advantage of that in an all-magic battle is to play for the speed boost with a phase monster to evade magic attacks. It makes pretty good sense that Kjira and I ended up using the same general strategy. But how we supported Seer in the front differed a little bit.

As Kjira's name suggests, this is likely a modern-only account, so he can't take advantage of any cards from the A/B/U sets. He leans into the speed strategy with the -1 from Quix and the swiftness from Ujurak Elder. They also use the blind ability from Spirit Hoarder to make their tank even more evasive, an idea that did not occur to me during team selection. However, I also found boosts and abilities to make my tank more evasive.

My featured card is the Dice Dragon rare summoner -- Brighton Bloom. Rather than -1 speed from Quix, I felt the flying ability would make my tank more evasive. Every 1 point of speed means an extra 10% chance of evasion, but flyers gain a 25% chance of evasion against non-flyers. Of course, giving up the slow ability from Quix meant that my opponent's monsters would be faster, but overall my lineup still held the speed advantage after abilities.

That's all thanks to four monsters in my lineup with speed abilities, including three from Beta. Like Kjira, I also used Ujurak Elder in my lineup for its swiftness and got another swiftness boost from the 2-power Flame Imp. My lineup also added two slow abilities from the Fire common Goblin Shaman and Dragon rare Serpentine Mystic. Finally, at the back I had Elven Mystic to bring its silence ability to cancel 5 power of magic attack from my opponent's monsters.

Crucially, my Seer took out their Seer on its first attack by avoiding the 15% blind fail rate. Then my speedier attack ganged up to take out their next two monsters before they could make their first attack. Even when Kjira's three monsters got to attack, they all missed my Seer, making for a dominating first round of battle.

Things didn't improve for my opponent in Round 2 as my monsters took out their other three cards without response. When the dust cleared on this battle, I enjoyed a near-flawless victory. The only damage my team suffered was the redemption trigger from Venari Spellsmith. They only managed three magic attacks in Round 1 and missed them all while I raced ahead with a handy speed advantage.

Speed is the name of the game, especially in more narrow rulesets like Wands Out, and it served me very well in this battle. But don't overlook evasive support abilities like flying, dodge, and blind to help make monsters even more evasive. Brighton Bloom is well known as a strong option for earthquake battles, but there are plenty more opportunities, especially in Little League battles, to leverage the evasion gained by giving all monsters flying.

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