Fiendish Imp, Minefield, Stone Armadillo Pup
This is a basic Minefield/force swap team with the underused Armadillo as a third. The Stone Armadillo brings four things to the table: an anti-Undead move, and anti-Humanoid move, DoT shielding, and a soft counter against Elemental damage.
My line up:
Fiendish Imp (Burn, immolation, Nether Gate)
Warbot (Missile, Minefield, Extra Plating)
Stone Armadillo (Scratch, Shell Shield, Infected Claw)
There are a couple of different starting strategies for this team. I can start with the Warbot, throw down a Minefield, and then use the Imp to force a swap with Nether Gate. Or I can start with the Imp and immediately get Immolation up and swap out the potential threats. Extra Plating is very useful for keeping the Warbot alive. The Armadillo is used against Humans and Undead, both of which are very popular on my meta.
Win: Darkmoon Tonk, Pterrordax Hatchling, Unborn Val’kyr
We both threw down Minefields and decided to duke it out, I put up Plating right before the Ion Cannon came, after that the Tonk went down fast. Minfield was off CD, I threw another down when the Valk came in, at that point it was faceroll time.
Win: Darkmoon Tonk, Pterrordax Hatchling, Unborn Val’kyr
I came back a few hours later and here they are again. This time the Tonk beat my Warbot thanks to my Missile misses. My Imp came in killed/Gated the Tonk out just in time for my Mines to do some damage. I swapped to the Armadillo whose Critter Attack paid off against the Valk. The Valk Haunted on its undead turn, the Pterrordax killed the Armadillo. The Imp had no problem with the Pterrordax, even with a missed Burn.
Win: Darkmoon Tonk, Pterrordax Hatchling, Unborn Val’kyr
Okay, this isn’t fun anymore. At least they tried something different by bringing out the Valk and Cursing/Haunting before going to the Tonk. Thanks to Extra Plating I was still able to take out the Tonk. After the Valk killed my Warbot I Gated away the Undead turn and my opponent had enough, forfeiting.
Win: Anubisath Idol, Kun-Lai Runt, Emperor Crab
My Warbot put down mines, the Runt Chilled it, in comes my Armadillo. It took the Freeze but the Critter racial ignored the stun. After a few Infected Claws, one of which crit, my opponent decided to quit. I think they left to early, but hey, I’m glad to not have to face an Idol. As I was waiting for the queue to pop I saw that the Stone Armadillo comes in an H/P breed. If I switch from an H/H to and H/P I will only lose 178 hp but gain 29 power. Something to consider.
Win: Ash Lizard, Armadillo Pup, Arctic Hare
Whoa, I just start using an Armadillo and here’s another one, cool. The rabbit didn’t have Dodge, that seemed odd. The Ash Lizard did some nice strong damage to my Armadillo but it wasn’t enough to give me the loss.
Loss: Fiendish imp, Spirebound Crab, Infected Squirrel
This was a really fun battle. There were so many strengths/weaknesses to exploit we were both trying to get the upper hand. When two evenly matched, evenly skilled players battle sometimes rng is the decider as it was now. I missed a Missile and an important Infected Claw, and also lost the Imp coin flip at a crucial time. I don’t want this to sound like “I only lost because of rng”, my opponent played it quite well. Another thing, sometimes when you rack up a lot of wins it seems like you’re on to something great, but looking back I see this is the first top-tier pet I’ve faced.
Win: Spawn of Onyxia, Infinite Whelpling, Scourged Whelpling
I got hit by two Deep Breaths in a row, thank you Extra Plating for helping me live through it. The Armadillo provided some much needed anti-Undead. Having two normal attacks on the Armadillo is a plus, I can decide if I need to take a risk for more damage with Infected Claw or go the safer route with Scratch. Obviously I went with Scratch against the Undead.
Win: Fiendish Imp, Scourged Whelpling, Scourged Whelpling
I’ve lost to this team before, it’s not easy to take down. The Armadillo in this case was extremely useful with strong attacks against all the enemy pets and its Shield reduced the backline healing of the Imp. It was still very close, the Armadillo outlasted the last Whelpling with only 25 hp remaining. In this case the H/H breed paid off.
Loss: Stunted Direhorn, Qiraji Guardling, Direhorn Runt
A loss always sucks, but really what can you do when your full-health Armadillo with a strong attack against Humanoids loses to a half-health Qiraji Guardling due to so many Sandstorm misses. Then the Direhorns hit all but one attack in a Sandstorm? Sometimes the Dice Gods favor you, sometimes they don’t. In this case they favored my opponent.
Loss: Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling, Magical Crawdad, Onyxian Whelpling
This one was a major disappointment. A Missile missed early in the game, it happens. But then I needed to hit two Burns to kill the Crawdad. I had three attempts, I only hit one. Bummer. I thought I had found a good third member for this team but now the losses are really piling up.
Win: Shrine Fly, Shrine Fly, Effervescent Glowfly
With such a powerful anti-flying move one would think it really took a toll on these Flies. If it hit it more it surely would have. Well at least I hit one out of two, while this seemed like a tricky fight it wasn’t close in the end.
Win: Alpine Hare, Alpine Hare, Enchanted Broom
Those rabbits were kind of annoying to take out. But when the Mines are down it’s hard to swap out when your defensive CDs are gone.
Win: Anubisath Idol, Clockwork Gnome, Celestial Dragon
A Demolish spammer, oh joy! A Demolish spammer that’s hit three in a row, even more joy! Thankfully it missed the next two, my Armadillo was able to Claw the Idol down with only 59 hp remaining. Another case for keeping the H/H?
Win: Fiendish Imp, Scalded Basilisk Hatchling, Pterrordax Hatchling
More rng based than I would have liked, we had a few Imp face-offs and I won em’ all. Darn this person for making have to beat the Basilisk!
Win: Fiendish Imp, Scalded Basilisk Hatchling, Pterrordax Hatchling
Same opponent as above, this time I played a little better and I’ll take credit for the win instead of giving it to rng. This time I started with the Armadillo, I figured I’d force the swap or make the opposing Imp take Infected Claws. The Imp Gated and in came my Warbot to throw down a mine. Since the enemy team is so fragile the Mines really take a toll.
Loss: Pygmy Direhorn, Direhorn Runt, Grasslands Cottontail
I took out one Direhorn and was a Missle away from taking out the other one. My Imp was at around 500, the Armadillo was at full health, after this I’m confident that I’ll be able to take out the rabbit. The Missle missed. The Direhorn took out my whole team after that.
Note: I got frustrated at my Missile misses so I leveled up a Pet Bombling to replace my Warbot since the Bobmling has some 100% moves. It was not a good choice. The only breed of Bombling has 244 power compared to the Warbot’s 325 power. The Minefields went from doing around 700 damage to doing less than 600. I had a hard time killing off anything thanks to the low damage. I’ll be sticking to my Warbot and dealing with the misses after all.
Win: Pygmy Direhorn, Phoenix Hatchling, Dark Phoenix
The Warbot hit a Missile to kill the Direhorn, sort-of making up for last time. I was a little bit worried, at the end my slower Armadillo was facing the Dark Phoenix, the Armadillo just needed one hit for the win. Why the worry? If the Dark Phoenix would have had Rebirth it would have easily won, but it didn’t.
Win: Crow, Enchanted Broom, Ghostly Skull
The Imp started by Gating the Skull, who came right back in, so I brought in the Armadillo who was able to take out the Skull and survive to fight the Broom. After one attack the Armadillo had 20 hp left, saved by H/H again. It allowed an extra attack. At the end I had a Warbot and an Imp to deal with the Crow, but it was still close thanks to a Missile miss and a Nether gate miss. Stupid Darkness.
Win: Arctic Fox Kit, Arctic Fox Kit, Arctic Fox Kit
If you run three times any family you better hope you don’t see a counter. They saw a counter.
Win: Infected Squirrel, Blighthawk, Blossoming Ancient
One thing I like about my team is that it has two pets that often get sent out first: the Warbot and the Imp. So my opponents aren’t sure what I’m going to start with. I started with the Warbot in this case, my opponent the Squirrel. I threw down a Minefield and switched to my Armadillo. The Squirrel used Rabid Strike, but Rabies ended up hurting the Squirrel bad. I was able to get it to 0 hp with only 3 Scratches. After it expired the Blighthawk came out and took the Mines, then out came the Imp to gate away the Undead turn. With the Imp’s backline DoT and its Extra Plating the Warbot was able to take out the Elemental.
Win: Crow, Enchanted Broom, Ghostly Skull
Same opponent as a few games ago, same result.
Draw: Creepy Crate, Infected Squirrel, Fiendish Imp
I love missing Nether Gates against Undead. I was hard pressed to pull out the draw.
Win: Anubisath Idol, Giant Bone Spider,Clockwork Gnome
I started with the Warbot, the Idol came out to face it. I threw Mines and the Idol threw Sand. I swapped to my Armadillo, popped my shield and hope to hit some Infected Claws. I did, four times in a row (I’ll try to remember that the next time Sandstorm rng gets the best of me). Nice work Armadillo, that’s why you’re on the team. The Spider took the Minefield, then it couldn’t take down the Armadillo with one hit, 58 hp remained. Good job H/H. After that finishing off the Gnome was easy.
Loss: Anubisath Idol, Crow, Chrominius
I could blame the loss to rng but I took a chance. My Imp had Shattered Defenses, I needed to hit a burn to kill Chrominius. My Burn missed and I went from full health to dead in one Surge of Power.
Win: Cinder Kitten, Voodoo Figurine, Cogblade Raptor
An easy victory, nothing exciting to report.
And with that last enlightening report I think I’ll call it quits for this team. The Armadillo was a decent third pet for the swap team, but it didn’t send the team into greatness. The team went 19-5-1, which is respectable enough. I was looking for something a little more competitive, which a 76% is not. As with a lot of decent teams it can beat up on the average teams but isn’t great against the top-tier pets.
I did enjoy using this team, the Armadillo has found a decent home. I was just listening to Dr. Octagon and I will name this team the “Space Doo Doo Pistols”. Acting your age is highly overrated.
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