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. This week's Battle Mage challenge deals with a weapons malfunction in Broken Arrows, and that ruleset is actually included in this battle, but we will be focusing on one of the other rulesets which may be even more impactful. Today, we will be taking a look at a battle with the Earthquake ruleset!
Earthquake discourages bringing any monsters that are stuck on the ground. This is a bit of a tall order, since this means that the only monsters who can avoid Earthquake are the ones who have one specific ability - Flying. Everyone else? Well, they get stuck taking two points of physical damage every turn. The obvious winners in this ruleset are monsters (and summoner - looking at you, Brighton Bloom!) with Flying. Other cards good in the ruleset include monsters with Shield to take half damage from Earthquake, as well as any bulky monsters with plenty of armor and/or health.
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!
First up: the ruleset. This was a battle with 3 highly impactful rules. We have Back to Basics, which removes all monster abilities. We also have the previously mentioned Earthquake, which deals out damage to every non-Flying monster. And finally, we have Broken Arrows, disqualifying any ranged attackers. There is an extremely annoying combination here, as we would normally be looking for monsters with Flying or Shield to mitigate Earthquake, but thanks to Back to Basics those abilities are off the table.
In Earthquake battles, a powerful summoner choice is Brighton Bloom. Unfortunately, Dragon is not an option in this battle. However, there are some other factors in this battle which gives us another excellent option. Back to Basics means that the only way to get more than 1 monster attacking per turn is to use magic or ranged damage, and Broken Arrows means that ranged is unavailable. So Thaddius Brood is a great summoner for this fight, thanks to his magic debuff.
I started my team with my tank and secondary tank. Recall that this battle has Back to Basics, so monster abilities will be nullified. So my goal here was to select monsters with as much bulk as possible, in order to survive through Earthquake and enemy attacks. Cursed Windeku and Disintegrator are both high on the bulk scale - Cursed Windeku has a whooping 9 health, and Disintegrator is no slouch either with its combination of 3 armor and 6 hp.
After leading off my team with a couple of tanks I had to make a decision - select some magic attackers with lower amounts of health in hopes of killing the enemy monsters faster, or choose bulkier monsters in an attempt to outlast the opposing team and let Earthquake damage do most of the work. I opted to go with the second option, and loaded up even more melee monsters in the middle of my team. Harklaw and Night Ghoul are both amazing tanks with great stat lines. They won't do much unless they get to the front line, but they sure can last for a while - even while in the middle of an Earthquake! Incidentally, Harklaw is a great choice in non-Back to Basics battles with Earthquake thanks to Shield, but his raw stats make him a good option here as well.
I closed out my team with more bulk, and a small amount of damage. Legionnaire Alvar has a crazy 8 armor, which means that he won't be taking any health damage unless the battle runs very, very long. And I finally threw a dash of additional damage in with Magi of Chaos. It isn't a lot with just 2 magic attack, but every bit helps!
With the lineup set, it's off into battle! When I see the selected teams I am not sure what to think. While I went with a strategy heavy on bulky monsters, my opponent choose the opposite option and went all in on magic attackers. Luckily Thaddius Brood's magic debuff will significantly lower the opposing team's damage output, but the enemy monsters will still be doing much more damage than my team will be able to push out. This battle will come down to a race between Earthquake and the enemy magic attacks.
The battle starts off just as expected - my team's lower damage doesn't do a whole lot, but their higher bulk gives them some extra survivability to Earthquake. By the start of round 3 the enemy team has managed to knock out my two front monsters. That has come at a price though - the entire opposing team has taken significant Earthquake damage and many of them are only going to be able to stand up to one or two more rounds.
One more round and half of the opposing monsters get wiped off the board, thanks to Earthquake and a small bit of damage from my team. This battle is quickly nearing the end!
By the start of round 5 the fight was a foregone conclusion - the enemy team was down to just a single heavily damaged monster, and with a turn of Earthquake damage and an attack the battle was over. And again, if you wanted to see the whole battle for yourself, you can see it right here.
This battle turned out to be an interesting one - when faced with the same ruleset combination, my opponent and I went for completely different strategies. In the end, my plan of bringing as many tanky monsters as possible and letting Earthquake do most of the hard work for me ended up being a winning one.
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:
Prick and Dirty - Battling with Briar Patch! - A battle analysis, featuring Briar Patch!
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.
