Big Mana Battles? Dragon's Quix to the Rescue

I've always had trouble winning battles with large mana pools. I would get easily outgunned by teams with a full lineup of high-mana Epics and Legendaries. If I could, I'd want to go with mana caps around 25 or below for every battle 😂. But in reality, low-mana matches are much rarer.

Of course, players don't need to fill the mana pool every time. Battles are won even if you have ten mana points unused. However, monsters with large mana requirements are generally stronger in stats and skills. If your opponent can make full use of a 50+ mana pool by taking out more large-mana monsters, then you are at a total disadvantage.

Things are actually getting gradually better for me on that front. In the past several weeks, I got lucky in getting lots of seven-and-up mana Epic and Legendary monsters from rewards. I even got some of them leveled up a bit! Djinn Oshannus was the most recent addition from the previous season-end.

I only got a few of these behemoths per Splinter. So I'm often unable to fully use the mana pool by relying on just one Splinter. So for battles with 40+ mana, I'd always, ALWAYS, go for Dragon Splinter when applicable. With the purple Splinter, I can use dragon monsters, which usually have large mana requirements, and combine them with the big ones from whatever other Splinter.

And it's good news for me that Chaos Legion brought us another Dragon Summoner, that's, for some reason, much cheaper to rent than other summoners despite being so awesome.

Quix The Devious: New Chaos Dragon Summoner

Quix the Devious is pretty great, having double debuffs. It's a decent equalizer for Kelya Frendul's speed buff or General Sloan's ranged attack buff. Those two new Chaos summoners have been quite a pain to deal with. They got great buffs and a lineup of monsters that syncs well with them. So having a counter, like Quix, is a relief.

Plus, Quix is Legendary, so you get more summoning potential even if it's just on level one.

I was able to rent a level 2 Quix for only 4.750 DEC a day. I think I got it cheap since I rented the card at the beginning of the season. Five days into the season, the rental price for the card has gone up almost four-fold. I was lucky, I guess 😋

On a side note, I love how the Splinterlands creative team has tied in Quix's skills into his lore.

At first, he found that he could levitate and even consume fragments of time, taking it away from other beings and slowing them down. Soon after, he realized the ability to interrupt projectiles inflight, as though an invisible hand had snatched them from the air.

My Lineup for a Big 58-Mana Battle

This battle has an enormous mana pool at 58 that I would usually dread. But, not so much anymore because I got my dragons with me. 😈

The current Unprotected and Close Range rulesets work great with ranged monsters. There'll be no armor to worry about blocking ranged attacks. Also, ranged monsters will be able to attack when they're in the first position. With all the inherent disadvantages of ranged monsters gone, it's the best time to take them out on the battle.

Alternatively, melee attackers with the Opportunity skill also vibe well in the Unprotected ruleset. Being melee monsters, they generally have higher attacks. If there's no armor present in the battle, then there's a good chance they can knock out an enemy in one hit. But I'm not going on this route since I don't have a lot of melee monsters with the skill.

Now, here's my lineup of Dragon and Fire monsters:

Summoner	1st	2nd	3rd
	4th	5th	6th

[Summoner] Quix The Devious is the quick and obvious choice. With Quix, I can unleash Dragons and Fire Splinter heavyweights. Dragons all the way!

[1st Position] Djinn Chwala secures my frontline. Chwala is a well-rounded tank. It has high health, some armor (made absent by the ruleset), and Thorn skill. It's only a bit lacking because it does not have any defensive skill like Shield or Void. But I think Chwala could last long enough for my main attackers to deal massive damage.

[2nd Position] Elemental Phoenix would act as a secondary tank of sorts. It has Flying and high speed, so it has good chances to dodge physical attacks. And its health is not too bad too, so it could sustain more damage.

[3rd Position] Naga Fire Wizard secures the middle spot. I pondered for a bit if it's better to have it in 2nd spot instead of Phoenix. But I'm often worried about its low health. Sure it has Shield, but a five-health-point is nothing to a few magic attacks. So 3rd spot it is.

[4th Position] Gold Dragon seems not too essential in the grand battle plan. Both Phoenix and Naga outdo Gold Dragon's utility. But I keep it there to fill up the numbers lol. It would have been a different story if my Gold Dragon is at least level 2 with Heal. Still, it's a decent addition to the team, even at level 1.

[5th Position] Lava Launcher serves as one of two of my primary damage dealers. Just look at that 4-point attack. Since there's no armor, enemies will bear the full force of that hit unless they have the Shield skill.

[6th Position] Lightning Dragon is my other main attacker. It has a very high speed and Stun --- perfect for disabling enemies before they even have the chance to attack. I placed this dragon in the rearmost because it has a high chance to dodge melee sneak attacks using its speed and Flying skill.

The Battle: Brute-forcing My Way Towards Victory

In hindsight, not much strategizing came into play as I decided on my team. The only strategy I got was to release all of my monsters with the highest mana requirement with little thought about skill synchronization or my opponent's battle records. 😅

So, I'm entering this battle with tempered expectations, especially after seeing that my opponent has a high level, with monsters hitting the max cap of the Silver League. But when I looked at their lineup again, something felt off. Like, why were there several three or four mana monsters in their team?

Here's a screen capture of the team compositions. I added the mana utilization parameter on both of our teams. I did not, and I don't ever, calculate mana allocations of my opponents during battles. I only counted it for a retrospective review of our match. And only as a point of discussion on this post.

Click here to watch the battle.

The wide disparity in the mana used between teams gave me a tremendous advantage. As I mentioned earlier, I did not put much thought into strategizing. I put more focus on optimizing. So here I am, brute-forcing my way to win the match, just relying on the raw power of my stronger high-mana monsters.

In Round 1, my Djinn Chwala was defeated. I lost it much earlier than I expected. But I'm calling it even because they also lost their main tanker, Prismatic Energy, to a lava-launched attack, smacked right at the middle.😁

The fierce attacks continued at Round 2. My Elemental Phoenix was defeated but not before it dealt a killing blow on the enemy's Flying Squid. As I kept saying, it's all raw, primal force!

Deep Lurker can no longer endure the onslaught and got destroyed. With all of the opponent's strong monsters gone, the three remaining feeble monsters wouldn't be able to survive for long.

The match ended in Round 4 with my 🥳 Victory! 🥳

Battle Retrospective: What I'd Do Differently

I got lucky this time because my opponent severely underutilized the mana pool. Perhaps they were away-from-keyboard during most of the countdown, and only had the final twenty seconds to arrange their lineup. Thus, they scrambled towards completing their team without careful consideration.

If I battled a well-planned team, I would have lost. What I'd do differently is balance the need to optimize mana and the need to keep a strong strategy. Sure, big-mana monsters are individually strong, but they may not always work well as a team. I need to avoid jumping into the frenzy of getting the big guys out whenever I see 40+ mana pools. I should still do the usual strategizing, similarly to what I'd do if mana pools are low.

As a bonus battle showcase, here's another match where I (a) maximized mana allocations and (b) thought about my lineup better. For this battle, I suspected a ranged-heavy team led by General Sloan may potentially come up based on my opponent's battle history. So I had Harklaw with Shield skill be my main tanker. And then, the Sloan team did come up!

Click here to watch the battle.

Both sides had excellent mana utilization, but my opponent had several disadvantages. Quix nullified Sloan's buff so that greatly diminishes my opponent's attack force. My placement of monsters with Shield skill at the front and at the rearmost contributed to keeping my main attackers safe. All these factors led to my win.

To End: Do I Think Quix The Devious is Good Summoner?

Thousand times, yes. I think I found my new favorite Dragon Summoner. 🥰

Of course, there are much more capable Dragon Summoners such as Byzantine Kitty. But their prices are astronomically higher compared to Quix. If you want more bang for the buck, then you'll probably like Quix The Devious.