This weeks Battle Mage Challenge is about the Rise of the Commons rule.

Splinterlands tells us the following about the Rise of the Commons rule:

Only common and rare units may be used in battles.

    Summoners are unaffected by this rule.

This rule excludes a large number of units from play. Notably, the units removed are the epic and legendary units, generally the strongest ones in the game. Epic and Legendary units generally have more abilities than the lower rarity monsters, so this rule becomes more about stats than usual battles are.

Incompatible Rules

Rise of the Commons is incompatible with Lost Legendaries.

Advantaged Summoners

All legendary summoners are slightly more useful than normal here because they often add a few abilities, and that can be particularly effective in this ruleset.

My Battle : Rise of the Commons battle

My battle had the following configuration: Modern Diamond Tournament (Scarred Hand Diamond Beginner Cup). 20 mana, rules: Melee Mayhem, Rise of the Commons, Ferocity. Splinters: Water, Life.

This is a relatively low mana match which favors melee monsters, and only allows common and rare cards. Water is the dominant splinter in the chaos set, so this is clearly the color that is most attractive to play here. Pelacor Bandit is the defining card for this battle. Other relevant cards to consider are Deeplurker, Diemonshark and Merdaali Guardian. Each of these three choices will be deciding for this match.

My lineup

I went for Lux Vega as my summoner, but my second choice would be Kelya. I had one mana left over when I picked my Kelya Team, and changed my summoner to Lux Vega instead for that final mana. I decided to go with a Merdaali Guardian strategy for this battle. This consisted of a Cruel Sethropod for my tank, followed by the Pelacor Bandit in the second spot, then Merdaali Guardian, and lastly a Merdhampir in the fifth position. The two last spots were filled with two 1 mana monsters, with Chaos Agent in the last spot to hopefully dodge a few incoming sneak hits.

Opponent's lineup

My opponent went for a different setup, with the two filler mobs frontline and instead of my Merdaali Guardian and Merdhampir, they went for the Xenith Monk and Angelic Mandarin. Angelic Mandarin as sneak protection lasts only one round more than chaos agent (if it doesn't dodge anything), so its more predictable, but not necessarily that much stronger. They have the same fronline damage as my team does (since the hardy stonefish is underleveled), no frontline support, and the same sneak damage.

Battle progress and Result

In the first round, the units hits their targets without fail until my Cruel Sethropod fails to hit the Chaos Agent and takes two return damage, thus negating the two armor repair it got earlier from the Merdaali Guardian. Round two begins in this state:

This round, the enemy Chaos Agent does not manage to dodge, and falls quickly. The remaining frontline hits from my team lands on the Hardy Stonefish, which also falls in this round. My Cruel Sethropod still stands strong because it gets both healing and armor from the Merdaali Guardian. At the end of the round the state of the battle is this:

In round 3, my first unit dies: the chaos agent. We knew this was likely coming, but it has bought enough time for the Merdhampir to get pretty bulky, so I'm not worried. We get a fortunate order of attacks, where the first strike on the Xenith Monk is done by the Merdhampir, who removes the armor and effectively does one damage through the armor because of cripple. The Sethropod continues to stand strong with the support it received, but it fails to land its hit on the Xenith Monk.

In round 4 we take down the Xenith monk and the Angelic Mandarin. Now the battle is clearly decided. Round 5 starts like this:

It still takes some time to take down the remaining units, but the battle is clearly over.

Finally, in round 7 the final hit is dealt on the Pelacor Bandit, and I can add one more win to my tournament results.

Alternative lineups

Kelya Frendul (Deeplurker team)

Kelya Frendul (Diemonshark team)

Lux Vega (Life)

Possibilus the Wise

I hope you found this post interesting. If you did, you might also enjoy my other content.

Battle mage challenges

Battle Mage Challenge: Reverse Speed
Battle Mage Challenge: Odd Ones Out
Battle Mage Challenge: Noxious Fumes
Battle Mage Challenge: Melee Mayhem
Battle Mage Challenge: Lost Magic
Battle Mage Challenge: Lost Legendaries
Battle Mage Challenge: Little League
Battle Mage Challenge: Keep Your Distance
Battle Mage Challenge: Holy Protection
Battle Mage Challenge: Healed Out
Battle Mage Challenge: Going the Distance
Battle Mage Challenge: Ferocity
Battle Mage Challenge: Fog of War
Battle Mage Challenge: Fire & Regret
Battle Mage Challenge: Explosive weaponry

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Best of luck in Splinterlands!
Kalkulus