This week's Battle Mage Secrets challenge features the Ferocity ruleset! Have you ever gotten tired of seeing your opponent load up on Taunt monsters and have every single one of your attacks go the wrong way? Well, then this might be the ruleset for you. In Ferocity battles, both players are welcome to bring all of the monsters with Taunt that they want. But, BUT - every monster in the fight receives the Fury ability. This means that they will deal double damage to monsters with Taunt.
The Ferocity ruleset has a very clear set of losers - the monsters with Taunt. But there are plenty of other monsters which are also negatively affected. More fragile monsters that rely on a Taunt tank on their team for protection become a a bit less valuable in the ruleset, since they are more likely to get picked off early. Monsters that offer support to a single monster through abilities such as Tank Heal or Triage also lose some of their utility, since you can otherwise use Taunt monsters to ensure that those support monsters will have a target to help out. Of course, there are also the winners - those monsters with indirect attacks are free to run wild and knock out back lines. Opportunity, Sneak, or Snipe monsters love to see a good Ferocity fight!
If you wanted to jump right to the action, the Battle Link is right here. Want to hear some more about the lineup? Read on further!
These are the rules for our battle. There are an unusually large number of high-powered ones - in fact, Ferocity is arguably the least impactful rule of the bunch. To go along with Ferocity, we have Fire and Regret and Explosive Weaponry. These will give every monster the Return Fire and Blast abilities - a potent combination that makes it likely that we will see a quick battle, with very few ranged attackers.
As I alluded to while going over the rulesets, Fire and Regret combined with Explosive Weaponry makes it very difficult to use ranged attackers, since they will be taking double or possibly even triple counter-damage every time they attack. This means that it is likely for both players to be pursuing a strategy heavy on melee or magic damage. When there are only two strategic options in a battle, playing a hard counter to one of them can be a strong play. For this battle I opted to go with Mylor Crowling as my summoner, since Thorns is an incredibly strong anti-melee ability.
I started my team with my main tank, in Mycelic Infantry. Mycelic Infantry packs solid stats and the Shield ability, which holds up very well to physical attacks. Fungus Flinger was a cute play on the ruleset combination - with Blast and Return Fire all around, Fungus Flinger would quickly kill itself with Return Fire damage, and then buff my surrounding monsters from the Martyr ability.
For the middle of my lineup I went with Regal Peryton and Goblin Psychic. Regal Peryton was there to receive a buff from Fungus Flinger. Really, if things went according to plan, Mycelic Infantry should be able to provide all of the required tankage for this battle. But if not, a Regal Peryton with an extra helping of stats thanks to Martyr could stant in well as a secondary tank and damage dealer.
I was just about out of mana to spend at this point, so I finished off my team with Chaos Agent. With the Ferocity ruleset in play, it is likely that we'll see some Sneak or Opportunity monsters. Chaos Agent is great because he can serve as a magnet for those attacks, while also having a chance to Dodge them and prevent both the primary attack AND any associated Blast damage.
With the lineup set, it's off into battle! When I see the selected teams I am not sure what to think - we have both decided to go with Mylor teams! On top of that, my opponent has brought along an anti-magic tank in Unicorn Mustang, and a Failed Summoner to reflect some more of my team's magic attacks. My main advantage in this battle is my Goblin Summoner - if I can get enough healing off, then my team may have enough bulk to outlast the enemy monsters.
In the first round of battle things go about the way I expect - blows are exchanged and a lot of monsters deal counter-damage to themselves. Importantly, my Fungus Flinger is able to provide a welcome double-buff to my Mycelic Infantry and Regal Peryton.
By the start of round 3 I am beginning to like what I see - my team has managed to take down the opposing Unicorn Mustang, and the rest of the enemy monsters are relatively fragile. Unfortunately, on account of Blast damage my supporting monsters are not looking like they will stick around for long. But it is looking like I might have just enough firepower left to finish off the other team!
It actually ended up taking an extra round thanks to a (moderately) lucky dodge on the part of the opposing Regal Peryton. But my Mycelic Infantry managed to get off that final hit in the fifth round, getting a double kill with Blast damage and finishing off the victory! And again, if you wanted to see the whole battle for yourself, you can see it right here.
This ended up being a bit of a funny battle because my opponent and I both chose similar strategies in countering a particular attack type strongly. Luckily, in this battle anti-melee trumped anti-magic and my team was able to come away with the win!
Thank you so much for reading all the way to the end. Interested in seeing some more of my writing in the future? Be sure to give me a follow! In the meantime, if you'd like to see some of my recent posts:
Shaking Things Up - Battling with Earthquake! - A Splinterlands battle analysis, featuring Earthquake!
Splinterlands Economics: Causation - A look at causation, and how we can apply it to Splinterlands!
Splinterlands Economics: Ceteris Paribus - An introduction to the concept of Ceteris Paribus, and how we can apply it to Splinterlands!
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All images used in this article are open source and obtained from Pixabay or Unsplash. Thumbnails borrowed with permission from the Splinterlands team or made in Canva.
