It Feels Good To Be Born Again

In this week’s Battle Mage Secrets, we look at the Born Again ruleset and see what strategy works when all units receive the Rebirth ability. This allows them to self resurrect once. This can be very useful in combination with the Martyr ability, as we will see.

For this battle, i've gone with Ruffmane as my summoner because I want to use a Gladiator card that has the bloodlust ability. Every time it kills an opponent's unit, it gets a stat boost and so if it kills a resurrected unit, it gets double the boost.

The other strategy is to have a unit with the Martyr ability so that it will also give a second boost when it gets resurrected.

1st position - Soul Fiend - A bit of buffer at the front since my attacker in second spot has Reach.
2nd position - Marisol Contuma - Reach ability, very fast, strong attack and also has the bloodlust ability.
3rd position - Silvershield Knight - I want his Inspire ability to boost my melee attackers.
4th position - Silvershield Assassin - Doublestrike will be useful to kill off the opponent's unit when it gets resurrected.
5th position - Venari Marksrat - I want its Martyr ability x2 to boost my Silvershield Assassin.
6th position - Furious Chicken - The Furious Chicken will be my buffer at the back against my opponent's sneak attacks.

From the start, I knew this was going to be a good battle because my opponent's strategy played into my own. First, his use of Opportunity and Snipe meant that my Marksrat would be targeted early. Second, he wasn't using Shield for many of his units, that meant that my melee attacks would be able to kill his units faster.

By the start of round 5, the results of the strategy playing out were evident. My assassin had a speed of 5 and an attack of 5 thanks to the Martyr effect. My Contuma also had a boosted speed of 6 and attack of 6 thanks to 1x Bloodlust.

With the boosted firepower, speed and shield, my opponent was unable to cope and despite a couple of missed attacks, victory was mine. He was getting hit from all sides and would have benefited a lot more from having more shield when there's no Magic.

You can check out the entire battle here: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_3e0d78084dae39a2e79099c81bd02dfe&ref=charcoalbuffet

With Born Again, Opportunity can be a huge liability because there's a big chance that the opponent will be using a Martyr that has low life. Doublestrike to finish off resurrected units within the same round can change the outcome of the game because the opponent's unit isn't able to land any attacks once resurrected.

That's all for this Born Again edition of the Battlemage Secrets. See you in the next one.