You BIG Cheat!

Hey everyone,

Meanwhile, away from my festive garden, I am still working my way around Zafaria. Today was the day I would face Belloq.

• Defeat number 1 - I wonder what on earth happened. 
• Defeat number 2 - To be honest I am really none the wiser. 
• Defeat number 3 - I know I am doing something wrong. 
• Defeat number 4 - I think I have some insight... maybe.

Now, if you haven't succumbed to this particular quest yet, then you may wonder what on earth is happening too!! Time to meet Belloq, who should really be known as Belloq the Cheat.

First up, this is what we are dealing with in this battle:

A rank 10 boss, but you know - 6,335 health? Not a huge fight compared to some of the others I had overcome. And there be the lesson..... do not be complacent.... things are never quite what they seem, and I was about to learn that.

So I start the battle with a plan to defeat the minion first. I have fought a few of these Greyhorn's and I know they are quite liberal with balance trio shields, and didn't want to see too many Death-Myth-Life shields in play. The weird thing was that Belloq kept saying "I thought you were here to hurt me". I came to realise that meant that Ra would be played. Ra hit me for anything from 1200 to 1600 each time.

He seemed to play it alot - so I knew this was a fight that I needed to concentrate on. Sadly it did take quite a few re-starts to realise exactly what was going on. I came to dislike Ra very much in that time - two hits in amongst the other spells and I was done. They made it look easy. I was defeated around 7 times after round 3. This was embarrassing to say the least.

Then I realised how to approach this battle. I had tried a couple of changes, and each one had failed. I knew I had to attack, but I had not realised the extent of that until after a friend had ported in and played some of the spells I thought would work. They didn't - and we were both defeated.

I re-thought my deck. This new deck was something I had never played with before. But I knew that something radical was in need. Here is the deck I went forward with:

There are a few things to notice here:

• There are no blades
• There are no traps or curses
• There are no prisms
• There are no Vengeance cards

Treasure cards were a mix of Feint, Gargantuan and Poison only. Nothing else at all. My theory was that I need to attack. If I don't attack then he plays Ra. And I already know that 3 times Ra and I am defeated.

But the question is - what is an attack? I knew a Feint worked, and that was great. Being death I had enough in my deck, and gardening is a big help with this card. Traps and Curses though? I really wasn't sure. But I know that at this point, he has defeated me 12 times too many and I needed to get this battle done!

My new deck is all about the pure attack apart from the Feints. No curses. No Traps. I was taking no chances!

 So I started my considered attack. My theory was that I should keep Poison running continuously so there was an attack every round. I hoped this would work because 1. it is a low level pip spell and 2. it was a three round attack card. And the good news is that it did what I wanted. Gradually I whittled down the health of Belloq. I played nothing on the minion. And as you can see - it is successful......



It was fairly easy from this point on. Patch helped my every now and then - and as you can see my incoming health is very high at 48%, and this was the only fairy he was willing to give in this particular battle :)

But you know what?

It didn't matter. I kept playing those Poison Cards - obviously I used a Gargantuan on them first, and sometimes Patch gave me Vengeance, to increase the chance of critical.

Before I knew it I had him on the back foot :). Every card I played was an attack on Belloq. If I didn't have an attack card then I prepped - Poison gave me three rounds :)

And I didn't worry about the Greyhorn. Sometimes you just need to concentrate on the boss and then deal with the minion. This was definitely one of those times.

It was nice to get this particular victory. I think it is great that you are lulled into a false sense of security with a low health boss. But seriously, if you are faced with a cheat you need to watch very closely for the triggers.

Just take a look at my health - completely full at the end of the battle - I love being a death wizard!!

So it was Poison that helped change this battle in my favour. But you are not all Death Wizards... so I would love to hear what you used against Belloq!

Have fun, until next time,

Tabitha