Good morning everyone! It's weekend again, and it's time for my second Battle Mage Secrets post for this week, did you see my first post I made last thursday? it's already at $17 in upvotes, the highest for me in the last weeks! 😊

This week the Battlemage Secrets is about the Taking Sides ruleset, which is pretty simple: No neutral cards, so it's more like one extra limitation instead of an important ruleset, when it is combined with other rulesets, I pretty much ignore this one or treat it as a standard ruleset when it's the only one for the match.

I found out it works best for me making one post on Thursday, since it's my day off in my 4 day work week, and making the second one on Saturday morning.

The battle for this post I wanted to share is a 41 mana Taking Sides / Born Again match with Life and Death locked out. I had two nice battles in my list to share but I chose this one because I was definitely losing at the start of the battle! I always play Splinterlands on my desktop PC, and next to my screens are two cheat sheets: one with all my gladiator cards on it with the mana value, the other one is a list of different rulesets, what abilities are important because there are so many options and sometimes I just forget certain strategies, I'm not a bot 😅 it's just so much!

As I wrote before, the Taking Sides ruleset I pretty much ignore... the Born Again IS a primary ruleset for me, and my cheat sheet says: Void Armor, Martyr, Scavenge, BLOODLUST.
And it's the bloodlust that really turned the tide on this battle!

First look at the battlefield:

Unfortunately I'm still missing some cards to bring my summoner to level 4, looking at the battlefield, I don't expect this battle to go well for me, two big opportunity attackers, a repair, a counter to my protect and a void tank.... oh my... I could be in trouble!

My Line-Up:

• Summoner: Lobb Lowland - reason: I need this one to be able to play Katrelba.
• First position: Unicorn Mustang - reason: Fast, good damage, Void.
• Second position: Goblin Psychic - reason: Tank heal, Affliction.
• Third position: Queen Mycelia - reason: Protect.
• Fourth position: Fungus Flinger - reason: Martyr, to boost Katrelba.
• Fifth position: Katrelba Gobson - reason: the star of this battle, Double Strike, Bloodlust!
• Sixth position: Thane Newsong - reason: Inspire, gives +1 melee damage to kickstart Katrelba.

The Battle:

Round 1: Well this is certainly not the best start for me, my healer got killed right away and not a lot of damage to the other team...

Round 2: Jikes! Two down and still not a lot of damage to the other team, my tank is gone, at this point I'm pretty sure this is a loss for me! The only good thing is Katrelba is gearing up...

Round 3: Two vs. five! And only one of my cards has attack... Katrelba is a very strong card, and the bloodlust is gearing up nicely, but will it be enough?

Round 4: Nothing has really changed, Thane Newsong got killed, Katrelba got another kill so her damage is still at 7, with double strike that's 14, her speed is high too, can she turn the tide?? It's 5 vs. 1 so I really doubt it!

Round 5: Oh! both opportunity monsters missed their attacks!! every turn it's a kill for Katrelba now because it needs to cut trough armor first, this is one exciting battle!!

Round 6: The Born Again ruleset is helping me gear up even more bloodlust, one miss, one hit this time... 6 health points... 8 active enemy damage, if both hit I'm gone!

Round 7: I was a little late with the pause for the screenshot XD, 3 misses!! Katrelba's speed is very high, but with bad RNG it still can go either way...

Round 8: Again, three misses while Katrelba is gearing up more and more!!

Round 9: Both attacks missed, and Katrelba can now survive two hits, this is looking good!!

Round 10: With such short turns it's harder to pause at the right moment, both missed again.

Round 11: One more kill and resurrect, two more missed on the other team...

Round 12: One vs. one now! No chance Katrelba is giving this fight away anymore, she is a real boss!!

Round 13: I never made a post before with so many turns 😅 almost over... one kill and resurrect, and... surprising... one enemy miss!

You can watch the battle unfold for yourself here.

The hero of this post, Katrelba Gobson!!! she ended with 16 melee damage and 17 speed! with double strike that's a whopping 32 damage 😁

0.3 SPS for the win, not bad in Wild league, winning is much easier there than in Modern so I'm playing Wild now for more than half of the season, and changing to Modern 5-7 days before season end, depending on how my performance in Wild is.

That's it for this week, this was one of my most surprising battles for sure! I hope to see you on my posts next week, probably on Thursday.

Thank you for reading!!!

If you haven't made an account already, please consider using my referral link to sign up, I'll happily send the amount I get for your signup back to you in DEC or SPS to help you start.

Have a great day!

Sources: For my thumbnail I used a background from @golemoverlord, when you're not playing this game as a splinterlands player, you're missing out!
I made a post with more info about Golem Overlord here.