In our battle mage secrets this week, we have the close range ruleset. In my opinion, this ruleset is one of the more overlooked rulesets and not really something people plan around at least at the lower levels. Close range allows all archers to fire from the tank position. There are not many resilient tanks who do not already have close range as an ability especially in modern. As usual, we will look at a few strategies to use here and then breakdown a battle with this ruleset.
Strategies:
1. Fast high damage archer: Due to the low health most archers have, using a high speed monster to dodge melee attacks or even better pair it with sthispa for some phase can be a good strategy. My favorite monster to use here is the 2 mana dragon archer naga assassin.
2. Ignore the ruleset all together: it can be a trap I think to force a ranged monster in the front line especially in mid to high mana where there are several better monsters. Also, if you can predict your opponent using this strategy you can go around it all together by doing a sneak or opportunity play.
3. Return fire: Naturally, if you expect your opponent to lean into the close range you can always put some return fire up front to limit this.
Battle Breakdown Round 1:
Close range along with snipe and gladiator rulesets make for an interesting choice here. The snipe pretty much negates the close range as monsters will fire to the backline across the board. There are many good gladiator cards but none of them really fit in our strategies. My thought was to use baakjira to limit magic attacks as well as soak up any big ranged damage. This proved to be good given his heavy magic attack on the other side. In round 1, everything goes to plan as all my hits take and the deeplurker gets a big swing on his triage monster.
Round 2:
In round 2, both of us are chipping away at the snipe targets. My triage mandarin along with the baakjira heal is slowing him down singificantly however.
Round 3:
We have some movement in round 3 as the oshannus goes down while all of my monsters are still holding on strong. The baakjira has been basically unflappable.
Round 4:
In round 4, nothing really occurs however all the damage allows his ruler of the seas to go down in round 5 and everything ends for my opponent after that.
As you can see, not really alot of play into the close range ability here. We will see whether his ruleset makes a change in the future or stays a bit of a non-factor. Please upvote or comment if you have any other strategies for this ruleset.
