In the spirit of the new weekly Battle Mage Secrets challenges, I would like to take a look at a Splinterlands battle with a particular focus on a ruleset. Our ruleset today is one that is great for anyone out there who doesn't enjoy getting their hands dirty. That's right - in these battles there is absolutely no hand to hand combat at all. Today, we will be taking a look at a battle with the Keep Your Distance ruleset!
As I mentioned at the start, there is no hand to hand combat in Keep Your Distance battles. In other words, any monster with a melee attack is banned from those fights. Ranged, magic, or not attack at all? Then you're good to go. The big loser in Keep Your Distance battles is fairly obvious - monsters with a melee attack are completely unusable.
Whenever there is a loser there is often a winner, and in this case there are a few. First, there are bulky non-melee monsters that can serve as a tank. Without melee monsters bulk is more difficult to come by, and any monster that can serve as a buffer for your ranged attackers becomes quite a bit more valuable than the would be normally. And second, there are the counter-play options. Knowing that your opponent is limited to ranged or magic attacks means that you have a greater chance of being able to counter their strategy with an anti-magic or anti-melee team composition.
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 were the rules for our battle. As you may expect we have Keep Your Distance, which eliminates any monsters with a melee attack. To go along with it there is also Ferocity and Explosive Weaponry, which give all of the monsters in the fight the Fury and Blast abilities. Finally, we have a teeny tiny mana cap this battle with just 14 available, and 3 splinters to choose from.
For my summoner I went with Quix the Devious. Recall that Keep Your Distance limits the attacking options to either ranged or magic. Quix does a great job of debuffing any potential ranged attacks, and even if that turns out to be irrelevant he still can impact the battle with his very useful speed debuff.
The lineup for this battle is a rather short one. In fact, it is only a single monster! We're putting all of our eggs in one basket for this battle, with Tinderlock. Tinderlock is great in these battle conditions, because with the low mana available, he is the only monster on our team. While having just one monsters is ordinarily a bad thing, in this case it means that Tinderlock starts off with his Last Stand ability already triggered. Last Stand will bump Tinderlock's attack all the way up to 5. Add in the fact that he'll have Blast from Explosive Weaponry, and Tinderlock becomes a rather heavy hitter! Oh, and let's not forget - with Close Range, Tinderlock can attack even from that front position.
With the lineup set, it's off into battle! When I see the selected teams I am not sure what to think. It is a relatively simple battle situation but I am not quite clear on how the math will work out. My opponent has brought along one of the more expensive summoners in the game - Scarred Llama Mage. This will not only give his monsters an additional 2 health each, but also give them the last Stand ability. My Tinderlock should hit harder than their Goblin Psychic, but it remains to be seen whether that additional damage will be able to outrace the Goblin's Tank Heal.
The battle starts off just as expected - my Tinderlock goes to work on Epona, and does a bit of splash damage to the Goblin Psychic as well.
The real battle begins once the enemy Epona gets taken down. It becomes a duel of Last Stands, with Tinderlock's higher damage output facing off against Goblin Psychic's healing potential.
It took a couple of rounds, and turned out to be extremely close. By the start of round 5, both monsters were on their last legs. Luckily, I had the speed advantage and my Tinderlock was able to claim the victory by a hair! And again, if you wanted to see the whole battle for yourself, you can see it right here.
My strategy for this battle ended up being just barely enough to win the fight. While my anti-ranged play with Quix was a little bit of a miss since the opposing team was mostly magic monsters, Tinderlock's versatility and high damage output were more than the enemy monsters could handle. Oh, and another interesting note on this fight? The lineup I used was somewhere in the neighborhood of 1/30th the cost of my opponent's...I always get a kick out of it when that happens.
In any case, it often pays off to carefully consider the rules and battle conditions for a fight. In this case, the low mana cap and Explosive Weaponry ruleset allowed me to set up a powerful Last Stand Tinderlock right from the start. This is a fun combo in less restrictive rulesets, and even more so when the enemy monsters are less bulky thanks the the constraints presented by Keep Your Distance.
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:
Need a Medic Here - Battling with Healed Out! - A Splinterlands battle analysis, featuring Healed Out!
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!
Thinking about giving Splinterlands a try but haven't signed up yet? Feel free to use my referral link: https://splinterlands.com?ref=bteim, and be sure to reach out to me if you have any questions!
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.
