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Ahoy fellow Splinterlands players and welcome to another Battle Mage Secrets weekly challenge post!
This week Briar Patch is the featured ruleset. This ruleset gives all Monsters the Thorns ability.
You can recognize this ruleset with the following icon.
When you have this ruleset it's often not a good idea to play many Monsters with Melee Attacks as they will take damage from Thorns whenever they attack. Unless they have the Reflection Shield ability or a good amount of Armor. If you have a really good damage output they could still win.
This time I'm sharing a battle from Ranked play in Wild. The battle that I want to share was against the player takenaga68.
This is a photo of our initial lineup.
Battle Rules
This was a battle with a 13 Mana cap where Fire, Water, Earth, Death and Dragon were available. Almost all elements available except for Life. The battle had 2 rulesets.
- Briar Patch: All Monsters have the Thorns ability.
- Tis but Scratches: All Monsters have the Cripple ability.
Here is the link if you want to check out this battle: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_8655936d9da390c2afa548a192d5462a&ref=athunderstruck
Battle Lineup
As all the Monsters get the Thorns ability it is often best not to use many Melee Attack Monsters. A low mana Monster, due to the mana cap of 13, like the Tide Biter could work since it has Reflection Shield and wouldn't take damage from Thorns. However as I saw my opponent also likes to use Alric for some Magic Attacks which is a great idea in this low mana ruleset since Melee Attackers aren't the greatest due to Thorns. I'm not a big fan of many Ranged Attackers in this low mana unless you can have a really strong frontline.
With the expectation of my opponent playing some Magic attackers I wanted to make sure I had Magic Reflect on my frontline.
Lord Arianthus is a great choice for tank then because at level 2 it has Magic Reflect. Normally it gets Thorns at level 3 but thanks to this ruleset it also had Thorns. Then on top of that it has Shield and Void. So it's already taking less damage from Magic attacks and then also reflects some of that damage back. I wanted to play this card for both the Void and Magic Reflect but also for the Shield just in case my opponent does play a Melee attacker in the front line.
Then for my idea of a lineup I wanted a 2nd low mana tank with Magic Reflect with the Failed Summoner card. Because of this it was important that I would go with an Earth or a Dragon Summoner to be able to play that card. It had to be 3 mana too because the last Monster from Earth I wanted in my lineup costs 3 Mana.
My Summoner choice became Lyanna Natura. Providing +1 Health to all Monsters which allows my frontline to live a bit longer. Another option was Camila Sungazer with -1 to Melee attacks on the enemy team, but as I didn't expect much Melee with the rulesets the best option for me to play was Lyanna Natura.
With the Summoner now locked in I can talk about my damage choice for this lineup. The Goblin Sorcerer from Earth was my choice for my ONLY Monster that could actually attack. This one has a Magic attack and the Sneak ability so that I can start to take out the enemies backline with it.
Finally I put in the Fungus Fiend and Furious Chicken. They are just to protect the backline a bit in case my opponent also plays some Sneak or Opportunity. Also they're gold foil so they will provide an extra bonus to Focus Points when I win the battle which is a nice extra bonus.
Battle Analysis
My opponent indeed went for Alric Stormbringer to boost the Magic attacks on their team. They went with Kelp Initiate as a frontline tank to take some damage. They had a similar idea of using Torrent Fiend and Furious Chicken for taking potential hits. However they placed them right behind the tank to protect the Magic attackers. Then as Monsters to attack they brought the Ice Pixie and Ruler of the Seas.
Ruler of the Seas provides a speed boost so both of my opponents Monsters attack first. Ruler of the Seas also has Blast though and with my Magic Reflects in the 1st and 2nd position it will take damage from hitting both.
Lord Arianthus reflects 2 damage and then since Failed Summoner took less damage from the blast it reflects 1 damage back to the Ruler of the Seas. Which causes it to lose 3 health from attacking my Monsters. Then Ice Pixie attacks Lord Arianthus and takes 1 damage.
The battlefield looks like this after they attacked and took Magic Reflect damage back onto them.
Now that they had their turns it is time for my Goblin Sorcerer to attack with its Sneak ability. It has 2 Magic Attack and well Ruler of the Seas already took 3 damage from Magic Reflect lowering its health to 2. So once my Goblin Sorcerer attacks it takes out the Ruler of the Seas in round 1.
Ice Pixie loses the speed buff but is still faster than my Goblin Sorcerer. So it attacks my Lord Arianthus, takes that Magic Reflect hit and dies because of its own attack being reflected back.
Now that all my opponents attacking Monsters are dead my Goblin Sorcerer will slowly win the fight. In round 2 it takes out the Furious Chicken. Round 3 it takes out Torrent Fiend. Then it needs 3 more turns to take out the Kelp Initiate to win the fight!
Did My Strategy Work?
Yeah my strategy worked really well. I properly predicted that my opponent would likely play Magic attackers in this battle. So my frontline and 2nd position tanks with Magic Reflect were an amazing choice. Then my Goblin Sorcerer helped to take out the Ruler of the Seas during round 1. If it didn't then Ruler of the Seas would've still killed itself against my Magic Reflect in the next round.
Conclusion
A great choice of lineup that I went for. My Goblin Sorcerer could have been replaced by any 3 Mana attacker with either Magic attack or Ranged attack to work in this scenario. Because my opponents' Magic attackers would have taken themselves out in 2 turns anyway if I didn't have a Sneak attacker.
It was still a great choice of attacker because if my opponent used any Ranged attackers in the backline those wouldn't take any returned damage. So Goblin Sorcerer could've taken those out.
In this setup the team would have still worked perfectly even it was replaced, I wouldn't have done anything differently in this battle though. It was a sweet and flawless victory!
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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