Hello there.

Today I'll share my battle under the Odd Ones Out ruleset. But first, I will share some of my thoughts regarding it. With this ruleset, only monsters with odd mana can be used. Summoners are not affected by this ruleset.

With this ruleset, the unavailability of monsters pretty much shape my strategy, and what I expect from my opponent. I consider what strong meta teams are still available, and try to counter the most popular ones.

I believe that being flexible in battle is the ideal strategy. Check the opponent's history, check what they are most likely to use, and counter it. But always pick teams that can also counter different strategies. Without further ado, let's get into the battle.

The Ruleset

This was a Wild tournament battle, so it was a Bronze battle with Armored Up, Ferocity, and Odd Ones Out Rulesets. A 23 mana battle is on the low amount and only Fire is not available. I can think of a lot of different strategies for each summoner so I will try to counter as much as I can.

My go to team for Water is a Possibilus team with Noa and Kulu Mastermind. But because of the Armored Up, this isn't that strong since if they used Kelya, they will still have armor even with the Noa Rust.

For Earth, I usually go with Immortalis during Odd Ones Out. The Shatter is also good against the extra armor. Regal Peryton with Void can be good against all attack types because of its high speed and Flying. I can use a martyr monster to further make it stronger and faster. The Hill Giant at 3 mana and 2 attack is a really cheap and efficient monster with the low mana available.

In Life, I usually go with Katie, especially because of the extra armor. Franz and Katie eat up a lot of the small mana available, so I'll just add a few low cost monsters to fill out the team.

For Death, Thaddius can counter a lot of the magic damage that we expect because of the extra armor. Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of strong magic monsters for Death. Windeku and Riftwing are not available, and they have a few good range monsters that still need to go through armor. It is a bit of a toss up to use Death.

For Dragon, a lot of their cheap monsters are even, so they're not ideal for my strategies.

The Lineup

For me, between the lineups I mentioned above, I'd rather go with the Katie team. I added Meriput for the healing and additional magic damage. The Marksrat's Martyr buff can really help Katie get stronger faster, and I just added two 1 cost monsters to finish off my team. I opted for Franz instead of Helios even with the extra armor because of the threat of Possibilus Noa team. Gargoya Scrapper with Void can hopefully buy a little time against magic attacks.

The Battle

Link to the Battle

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The Matchup

My opponent decided to go with a weird Mylor team that I did not expect. With the Armored Up, one usually expects a magic team. I guess they could be trying to counter the Possibilus team I was thinking of. The addition of Spirit Hoarder and Chaos Agent at the back seem to show that they are expecting a sneak opponent. Maybe a Thaddius with Shavi team. was what they were expecting. Venka is interesting because it can attack from the backline, and the Pierce can work against the armor. But it still needs to go through all of it first. My Katie on the other hand should be able to stack up nicely.

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End of Round 1

Katie was able to get its first bloodlust stack after killing the Spirt Hoarder. Scrapper died, but I think it already bought enough time by not dying immediately to Venka. Because of this, Katie will be able to get another kill on the Chaos Agent before it gets into the first position.

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End of Round 2

Katie got another stack from the Chaos Agent, and Venka still was able to kill the Marksrat even after it was healed by Meriput. This gave Katie a martyr stack. Uraeus is pretty much useless as it is having a hard time even killing my Chaos Agent. Katie still has a ton of HP and Armor to deal with their monsters.

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End of Round 3

Venka was able to hit Katie, but it had too much armor, and still has some left over. The opponent's monsters should die in the next three turns, and they don't have enough damage to kill Katie even without Meriput. This battle is over.

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End of the Battle

I will have to say that I wasn't surprised at the outcome of that battle. My opponent went with a physical damage heavy team, and the extra armor from Armored Up really slowed down their damage. It didn't help that Franz also added 1 more armor. My team on the other hand focused on magic damage to ignore the armor, and Katie was able to get easy stacks. This resulted in Katie snowballing very early, even with the low mana available. I think my opponent hurt their chances even more by using Uraeus and splitting their damage. My Katie had Snipe, but it was mostly my only damage. Meriput was just there to soften the tank up, but it was all Katie in the end.

The Result

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Conclusion

In tournaments where there are additional limitations on top of the Rulesets and banned elements, I try to make it a point to look at the possible teams and imagine them fighting against one another. I will then choose the team which I think is best. For this specific battle, my opponent used a weird team composition that I didn't expect. It looked like they were trying to counter a Melee Sneak team. But with the rulesets, the chance of that happening were pretty low. I took advantage of the ruleesets and was able to steamroll my opponent and come out with the easy win.