Once again it is time for the weekly battle challenge - my third entry and first one where the card in question is actually really exciting! Time Mage is one of my favourite additions to the game in Chaos Legion, so I am titillated to be able to bring to you one of the battles that it was a part of!

Time Mage is a Life card and it fits in almost every lineup - low cost, powerful ability, good stats and on top of that a very good growth curve across levels! Personally, I have enough BCX to make Time Mage level 3, which would get it the 2nd point of attack, but because I only own a level 2 General Sloan, I will wait with combining them until it I get my hands on a level 2 legendary Life summoner from Chaos Legion - hopefully that will not be too far away from now! Let's get that airdrop!

The Battle

This time I had a pretty difficult choice to make when choosing the right battle to include in the post. Time Mage is a core card of many of the lineups that I use and many of the battles were quite exciting! That said, I decided to go for a ranked battle that I've had, as it highlights the strengths of Time Mage very well in my opinion.

It was a battle in the Silver League and the mana cap was 34 - this is a pretty high cap and yet a 4-mana card like Time Mage was an important part of my victory. The rulesets were quite fortunate for this monster, with Equalizer giving it a lot of health and Holy Protection. This second ruleset is good for Time Mage at level two, as in my team it was the fastest unit, always able to pop the Divine Shields with its 1 attack. My opponent had a level 4 summoner and some levelled monsters, thus it really was a challenge!

You can find the battle for yourself HERE

Here's a screenshot in case you don't feel like watching the battle.

Card Choices

The cards that I could use were limited by three main factors:

• Ruleset: While this did not limit any cards per se, it did change a lot in how I had to approach the battle. Equalizer allows the use of fragile cards with high attack and encourages Healing if you expect the total health to be high. Holy Protection makes Blast desirable, as well as encourages Resurrect.
• Splinters: Water, which is usually my favourite choice, was not available in this battle. I would likely also consider Fire with Equalizer enabling cards like Spark Pixies, Serpentine Spy and Exploding Rats.
• Mana: With 34 mana available, it is possible to choose out of a few approaches. The most prevalent would be to either take 6 mid-mana cards, or simply take a few expensive ones and then finish off with cheaper monsters. That is the one I went for.

Frontline

If you are picking Life with my collection size in high mana cap battles, the choice of your main frontliner is pretty much between two cards: Shieldbearer and Chaos Knight. Because of Equalizer, Chaos Knight is simply the only good choice - it has Shield, higher attack and speed and will have the same health due to the ruleset. It's also gold and shiny, in my case!

Because I had some mana left over after choosing my desirable team, I had the luxury of picking my offtank out of a larger variety of cards - anything equal to or under 2 mana. The real choice was between Gargoya Scrapper and Pelacor Conjurer and the final decision was actually affected by Time Mage. While Scrapper is better against Magic (as Conjurer doesn't get Magic Reflect at level 3 yet), Time Mage makes Pelacor Conjurer a great tank against physical damage, due to increasing the speed difference and helping it dodge more.

Support

My two supportive cards in this lineup are some of my all-time favourites in the Life splinter. First of all, the star of this post - Time Mage. This monster is fantastic with many General Sloan range-focused teams because of its Slow ability. The weakness of some of the monsters in this lineup is the fact that they are a little too slow to deal damage. Time Mage helps remedy this problem and lets them sneak in more attacks before the opponent gets a change to make a move.

Venari Crystalsmith is my go-to healer. It synergizes perfectly with General Sloan due to being a ranged attack monster, but also works well in the Equalizer ruleset. With the exception of Healing Out and Odd Ones Out, I rarely field Life lineups without the Crystalsmith.

Damage

The main reason for fielding General Sloan is that you want to do a lot of damage. This was no different so with the remaining 14 mana, I decided to go all out and choose the most damage possible. Because of Time Mage's ability to slow the opponent's down, I was able to partially ignore the speed problems of Prismologist and Pelacor Arbalest and include them in this lineup. Pelacor Arbalest in general is a fantastic card alongside Sloan, as the extra attack is a double advantage through the Double Attack Ability.

Prismologist, on the other hand, not only does huge amounts of damage through Blast, it also works well with Holy Protection, able to take off the Divine Shield from the 2nd position monster. Both units work well with Equalizer, as their initial health is quite low.

Time Mage

Time Mage is one of my favourite additions in Chaos Legion and also one of my favourite monsters in the Life splinter. While I can only use it up to its Silver level, the Slow ability already makes it a great unit, especially combined with being quite cheap and a magic user. As presented above, it works well with Equalizer and Holy Protection, but it is also a fantastic addition to Little League teams. Due to being a fast magic attacker, it can also work in Armor Up.

It is particularly powerful with Dragon summoners. First that comes to mind is obviously Delwyn Dragonscale, but Byzantine Kitty can make for insane speed differences, as can Quix the Devious.

Something that is worth mentioning is that it is one of the few cards in Life that get access to Rust in the higher leagues - and even in Little League! That can be a huge boon to your team's strength.

As for weaknesses, its low health makes it an easy target for any Opportunity monster out there and it is important to ensure it stays out of harm's way - either through redirecting those scary Opportunity monsters to another unit, or simply by using Protect or Taunt monsters of your own. It is also obviously completely useless in Reverse Speed and quite a bit weaker in Weak Magic.

Closing Words

There it is, weekly battle challenge with Time Mage! It is a great card that is an auto-include in many Life lineups. It can win you games through letting your team attack before the enemy even gets the chance to do so!

All images are screenshots from the game, while the thumbnail is copied from the official Share Your Battle Challenge post.

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