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Ahoy fellow Splinterlands players and welcome to another weekly Battle Mage Secrets challenge! I still keep writing my posts so late xD Really should try to do it before the weekend!
This week the featured ruleset is "Back to Basics" which causes all Monsters to lose all of their abilities. If a Summoner provides abilities then your Monsters will still gain those, they just won't have their own.
You can recognise that ruleset if you see the following icon:
The choice of Summoner can be quite important here to provide some abilities to your Monsters as they lose all their own abilities. The use of Magic Monsters is also quite good because they can attack from any position and thus have a good damage output until they die. Which is what I often like to play in that ruleset, but it also depends on the other rulesets.
From my recent battles the past days I actually had two nice wins with this ruleset where I didn't use Magic at all.
One of the battles was low mana with 12 Mana battle with this ruleset and Opportunity for everyone so I used Mylor.
The other battle and the one that I wanna share with you, had the additional ruleset of Lost Magic so Monsters with Magic attack couldn't be used.
This time the battle that I'm sharing is one from Ranked play in Modern.
Here is a screenshot of our lineups at the start.
Battle Rules
This battle has a Mana Cap of 58 Mana with Water, Earth and Dragon available. The battle has 3 rulesets.
- Lost Magic: Monsters with Magic attack may not be used in battles.
- Back to Basics: Monsters lose all abilities.
- Unprotected: Monsters do not have any armor and do not get armor from Abilities or Summoner Buffs.
Here is a link if you want to check out the battle: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_7dabf60c2c75694da55f8d88e9be4489&ref=athunderstruck
Battle Lineup
With no Magic attack Monsters to be played it's important to have at least some Ranged attack Monsters in your team since the Melee attack ones can't attack unless they're in the first position. Fernheart would've been a pretty good summoner here allowing Ranged attack Monsters to attack from the front, but I don't have him yet so I couldn't play him.
I don't have a Byzantine Kitty either, but I do rent one. So that was my Summoner of choice for this battle. To speed up my Monsters so they could hopefully attack first to take out opponents and also provide that Tank Heal to keep my frontline up longer.
My team starts off with Coeurl Lurker, some good Melee damage on it and pretty good speed so it might be able to evade some attacks. It does lose its Dodge ability of course so chance are slim.
Up next I have Arkemis the Bear. Even if Monsters didn't lose their abilities, there wouldn't be any Armor because of the Unprotected ruleset. But the main reason that I place Arkemis the Bear 2nd is because it has 12 health and decent Melee attack. The 12 health means that if it takes damage the Byzantine Kitty will heal it for 4 health, which can really help with the survivability.
The 3rd card in my lineup is my first Ranged attack Monsters. Cornealus. Just like Arkemis the Bear it has 12 health so I'm using it as an additional tank that will be healed for 4 health by the Kitty. It also has 2 Ranged attack so while it's still in the backline it also helps me to deal damage.
The rest of my backline is filled with Ranged attack Monsters that really serve the purpose of dealing damage as fast as possible and hopefully they can stay in the backline because they're all really fragile. First up is Iza the Fanged, a low mana card to fill out my last Mana and she has 4 Speed with 2 Ranged so that's great. Then I have Beatrix Ironhand with 4 speed as well and 3 Ranged attack. Last but not least, the fastest and strongest of them all, Mitica Headhunter with 5 speed and 4 Ranged attack. They all get +2 Speed on top of that thanks to Byzantine Kitty.
Battle Analysis
My opponent is using Kelya Frendul as their Summoner for an extra speed. No Armor provided though because of the Unprotected ruleset. They also went with 2 Melee attack Monsters for frontline followed by a tanky Ranged attacker and 3 more Ranged attackers as damage output.
First round my Ranged Attackers all went first and took out the Diemonshark. Then Cornealus and Coeurl Lurker damaged the Flying Squid but didn't kill it.
During the first round my Coeurl Lurker ended up dying already because it didn't evade any attacks. Which was expected because it didn't have its Dodge ability. Arkemis the Bear takes some damage during the first round but gets healed back to full at the start of Round 2.
This is what the teams looked like at the start of Round 2.
During Round 2 I of course kill the Flying Squiad with my Mitica Headhunter. Then my opponents Wavebrood takes the frontline and it stays alive because I don't have enough damage output to take it out that round. My opponent also doesn't have the damage output to take out my Arkemis the Bear.
In the next round I take out all of my opponents Monsters except for the Gargoya Devil, and I do this before any of them even have a chance to attack thanks to the high speed on my Monsters. That causes Byzantine Kitty to heal Arkemis the Bear back to full health in Round 4. Which makes the start of Round 4 look like this.
Then once Round 4 starts, my Miticate Headhunter makes the final hit to achieve a beautiful victory.
Did My Strategy Work?
Yeah my strategy worked like a charm. I did hope that Coeurl Lurker would dodge at least one attack thanks to speed difference, but unfortunately that didn't happen. It doesn't really make a difference though, I think it would've had to dodge several attacks to stay alive until the end.
My choice for Coeurl Lurker, Arkemis the Bear and Cornealus as front lines with the Tank Heal worked really well. So well even that Cornealus never even saw the frontline at all!
Conclusion
This sort of lineup was exactly what I had in mind when I saw the combinations of the rules. So no choosing between some options. Just had to make sure I was picking the right tanky Monsters with a solid and fast damage output in the back. Which I succeeded in perfectly.
There is nothing that I would've done differently in this battle.
That's it for my Battle Mage Secrets challenge this week. Thank you for reading!
If you haven't signed up for Splinterlands yet and want to check it out, you can do so with my referral link at: https://splinterlands.com?ref=athunderstruck
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Thanks for sharing! - @yonilkar
