#Blaugust2019 Day 15 -- Vexxed by Amanithrax

Yesterday I talked a bit about the Lore behind the new Amanithrax Delve in Gems of War. Today I'd thought I'd talk a bit about a couple of teams I made surrounding the new troops you can obtain from Amanithrax.

Essentially there are four units you can get from Amanithrax:

As you can see, it's a lot of mushroom this and mushroom that.

I leveled up 3 of the 4 troops and even slotted 3 traits on the Fungomancer. To be honest, I'm still thinking about how to craft a good team around disease- and poison-based mushroom troops, but here are a couple of builds I came up with last night that were interesting.

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1- Venbarak, Fungomancer, King Gobtruffle, and Plaguelord with Spark Rocket 2.0.16

Venbarak -- Both teams feature the stylings of Venbarak. I just really like the 75% chance to disease all units that Venbarak brings to the table, also, when fully traited, Venbarak does double skull damage against any diseased enemy troop.

Ven's ability charges relatively quickly and 75% of the time gets that disease cooking quickly, which not only sets up the rest of the characters in this build, but by the very nature of disease, cancels any traits on the opponent team.

Fungomancer -- Straight outta Amanithrax, the Fungomancer has the ability (50%  of the time) to change an enemy opponent into one of those gimpy little Mushroom Men. Let me tell you, I'd rather face down a Mushroom Man over a mythic troop any day.

I also found that most people haven't really leveled up their Mushroom Men troop yet, so it's a big whammy when that ability works from my mans Fungomancer.

King Gobtruffle -- Unfortunately because he's mana blocked on Blue mana from Venbarak, he charges a little slowly in this build. What I found myself doing eventually was holding on to Venbarak's ability to unblock mana for King Gobtruffle and then doing a big 1-2-punch of abilities once BOTH Venbarak and Gobtruffle were all charged up.

If you can do that, there's a really good chance that the board will become a sea of Brown and Green gems and another really good chance that King Gobtruffle will get into a charge cycle where his ability pops again and again, which is absolutely devastating.

I WISH I had the traitstones to fully trait him out. If I did, he'd also disease enemies on 4+ gem matches.

Plaugelord with Spark Rocket 2.0.16 -- I had never leveled the Plaugelord class before last night, but seeing as the class is all about spreading the disease condition, I gave it a go and managed to unlock the 10th level talent tree feature to disease enemies on 4+ gem matches (just imagine the power if you had both this and Gobtruffle's 4+ gem match trait)

As for the Spark Rocket, well, it's not optimal, but it does fill the void of Red and Yellow gems. If it exploded a few more gems, it'd be about perfect. As it is now, it just does a bit of extra damage and helps get the board moving . . . slightly.

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2- Venbarak, Exploadstool, King Gobtruffle, and Plaguelord with Anvil of Might

Venbarak -- Again, the ability to disease all enemies is super attractive when paired with disease troops like those from Amanithrax. The final trait in Venbarak's line of traits is really what it's all about in this build. What makes this build disappointing to me is that it's more about Venbarak than about King Gobtruffle . . . c'est le vie

Exploadstool -- This troop does everything the Spark Rocket wasn't doing for me in the previous build. It takes out 3 gems, poisons enemies if they're diseased, and gets mana rolling in. It's definitely not as fun as turning enemies into Mushroom men, but it works well to get the board moving.

King Gobtruffle -- Because Exploadstool is helping generate mana, even though Gobtruffle is COMPLETELY mana blocked by Venbarak and Exploadstool, it feels easier to charge Gobtruffle up, which seems counter intuitive. I'm still not sold on having him in the third position though . . . or even in this line up, which is sad.

Plaguelord with Anvil of Might -- The Anvil of Might in this build is used to give Venbarak more armor and attack. The fact that Venbarak is doing double damage against diseased opponents makes the attack buff from the Anvil of Might super sexy. Plus the extra armor making him more survivable in the top spot is nice.

The Anvil of Might fills in the red and brown gem void in the build, so . . . it all kinda works.

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Out of the two builds I came up with, I think I like the second one better. It just works more cohesively as a whole. Although, yes, in both builds, it feels like King Gobtruffle isn't the star of the show. There's gotta be a build out there that puts him front and center, you know?

I'll keep working on my builds, but if you have any additional insights or comments, please feel free to leave them!

Happy Dueling!