Battle Mage Secrets - Coastal Sentry Deals 8 Damage Per Round!?

The theme for the current "Battle Mage Secret" challenge is Armored Up ruleset this time! It's not always easy to get the specific ruleset, but if you play hard enough, you definitely can find one!

For Armored Up ruleset, it is my favourite chance to use Magic cards because they don't have to bypass the armor when dealing damage. Alternatively, using summoners that reduce opponents' armor helps too! Of course, that depends on the other rulesets in the battle setup too.

Anyway, I thought it would be still be interesting to introduce some useful cards and show how their strengths can be maximised especially with a particular ruleset. In this post, the featured card would be Coastal Sentry, which is one of the new Soulbound Reward cards.

Looking at the stats, the first impression I got was, the card is too expensive to use! Yes, she has a high damage but her stats are quite squishy for a 10 mana card. However, not every card is an all rounder, and the strategy is to make use of the card at the appropriate time. In this post, I will be sharing how she can turn battles round.

As usual, here's the lore for Coastal Sentry for your reading interest:

The coast of Praetoria is full of beauty and danger, and nothing encapsulates that better than the coastal sentry. These warriors hail from the watery settlements of the merfolk. Their role is to guard their people and the sea life around them, often swimming out for weeks on end, tracking a route around their territory.

Most of the time, coastal sentries will avoid strangers unless they pose a threat, choosing instead to slip away quietly before they are seen.

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Battle Type & Team Lineup

There were many lineups that could go well with an Opportunity ruleset, but I chose to stick with my default first choice element, i.e. Water. I went with Kelya Frendul with the plan to go with a strong Melee lineup given they are able to attack from any position.

Sea Monster is my default tank for Water because it is just so strong on one vs one battles.

I was quite tempted to use Venari Marksrat in this Opportunity ruleset to score the Martyr ability but I decided to go for something more conventional. Tide Biter is also my default pairing with Sea Monster for low to medium mana battles. Often I find that having two cards that hit the opposing tank is very important because most tanks will have Armor.

When I decided to go with a full Melee lineup, Demented Shark would be a definite pick because of its Inspire ability. Having this boost would surely increase my damage output massively.

And here's the featured card! Once again, Melee cards benefit from the Opportunity ruleset because they can attack from the backline. This allows the relatively squishy Coastal Sentry to stay hidden while dishing out her Double Strike attacks - boosted by Demented Shark.

With the remaining mana, Cruel Sethropod was good value for 2 Melee damage and its tanky stats. Which is much better than Pelacor Bandit or Uraeus.

The remaining mana is used for filler cards so as to soak up some damage so the main cards have a better chance to survive to deal damage.

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• Pre Battle: Both lineups used the same summoner (same level too) and quite a number of cards are similar too. The main difference I would say would be Coastal Sentry. Not a lot of magic cards, so let's see how we pierce through each other's Armor!
  

• Round 1: I started off badly, with a tons of misses on the opposing Pelacor Bandit, which was not unexpected given his high speed and Flying ability. My filler card went off as expected.
  

• Round 2: It was clear that my damage output was significantly higher with Sea Monster at 5 and Coastal Sentry at 4 (times 2) while my opponent was dealing at 2s and 3s. I quickly caught up and it was 4 vs 4 after the end of the 2nd round.
  

• Round 3: While Sea Monster did its job on the front, Coastal Sentry's 4+4 damage was causing a lot of problems for my opponent. One hit for the Armor and another hit for the HP. Barring a series of unlucky misses, we should be okay.
  

• Round 4: Some misses against the opposing Lemell Refugee and my opponent hung on.
  

• Round 5: And we are done! Sea Monster once again held firm on the front.
  

If you are interested to watch the battle, you can find it here.

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Post Battle

Did my strategy work? Playing an all out same damage type has its own pros and cons. I was fortunate that my opponent didn't use Mylor Crowling and/or Disintegrator and/or cards with Shield ability. As such, my entire team of Melee cards comfortably won this battle. The only minor issue was to overcome the misses, which was manageable.

What's the Battle Mage Secret? Use Coastal Sentry when she can attack from the backline and pair her with Demented Shark for maximum effect!

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So that's all I have! What are your takeaways from this battle? Feel free to comment below, as I am always keen to learn and improve!

As always, thanks for reading and have a pleasant day ahead!

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