All monsters receive the Thorns ability at the start of the battle. Enemy monsters that use melee attacks receive damage back.
Damage returned is equal to damage of the attacker divided by 2, rounded up.
Melee attack monsters with the Reflection Shield ability do not take damage from thorns.
The Amplify ability increases damage.
Unprotected: Monsters do not have any armor and do not get armor from Abilities or Summoner Buffs.
Silenced Summoners: Summoners do not give any stat buffs or debuffs or grant/use any abilities.
Briar Patch: All Monsters have the Thorn ability.
This is a high mana ruleset game and every color is available to play except the Water Splinter. This would allow me to use anything I want, but with a huge difference compared to a normal battle, which is that all the summoners are silenced, so they do not have any abilities. This special ruleset means that all the Splinters has to rely on their monsters only.
I have picked Tarsa for this battle, because her monsters doesn't have any armor, so the Unprotected ruleset doesn't work on them. Her monsters are quite strong and I do not need to worry about the Thorns too much, because of the silence on all of the Summoners.
I had to use a tank for my battle and unfortunately that is a melee attack monster, which was the Tusk the Wide. I used him, because he has a lot of health and if my opponent would bring magic attack monsters he would resist some of their damage with his Void ability.
My off tank is the Molten Ash Golem, because he also has high health and the Close Range ability, which will enable him to attack from the first position as well. The Weakness will reduce all the enemy monsters health by one.
The Lava Launcher is my personal favorite reward card next to the Djinn Oshannus, because he has a lot of ranged damage, which is very handy in a ruleset with Thorns. The Stun is also nice, because if he triggers it than his target will skip his turn completely.
The Ash Mirage is another amazing ranged attack monster from the Fire Splinter, because he has nice damage of three and huge speed, which will help him to dodge any incoming melee or ranged attack. He also has a debuff ability of Headwinds in case my opponent will choose General Sloan or a lot of rangers.
The Djinn Inferni is a very good card as a magic attack monster, because he has the Giant Killer ability, which makes him this monster the perfect counter against monsters costing 10 or more mana, because he will deal double damage against them.
The Tinderlock is an interesting Fire card, because he has high health and quite good damage, but he has three amazing abilities. The Last Stand* makes him a beast if he is left alone on my side of the battlefield. The Close Range* allows him to attack from anywhere and the Silence will reduce the damage of the enemy magic attack monsters.
Link to my battle: https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_0271c358814ac0cda464ebbb3d1fb95f
My strategy didn't work the way I wanted, because in the first round I had big difficulty to hit the enemy Pelacor Conjurer from my opponent. Only in the first round I missed his tank four times, which was insane.
In the second round my Djinn Inferni finally killed the Conjurer, but his Magic Reflect ability also killed my Djinn as well and on top of that his Adelade brought him back to life. The series of missing of this monster continued and as long as I was trying to kill this beast again my opponent monsters killed my tank and off tank.
His Carnage Titan was affected of the Thorn as a melee attack monster, but his Shield ability reduced that damage to only one.
This battle was highly decided by the RNG of hitting my targets and without that it was impossible to win this game.
I like this ruleset, because I can finally try out some different strategies using only magic and ranged attack monsters without the problem of the melee attackers.
