This week's Battle Mage Secrets challenge features the Going the Distance ruleset! Going the Distance is a rule that you may enjoy if you are a fan of long range combat. In fact, you can't even get in the door to today's battle unless you are packing some monsters that can hit their targets from far away!
Battles with Going the Distance only allow the use of monsters with ranged attacks. Want to use a monster with only melee, magic, or no attack at all? Well, unfortunately you're out of luck for this fight. While this is clearly a win for ranged attackers and a loss for non-ranged ones, there are also other slightly less obvious winners and losers. Monsters with dual attacks are extra useful in Going the Distance, since those are the only way you can get melee or magic damage into the fight. There are also several abilities that shine in battles heavy on ranged damage - Return Fire, Headwinds, and Protect are just a few that you may want to keep your eye out for.
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. As is to be expected, we have Going the distance, which limits our options to monsters with a ranged attack. There is also Holy Protection and Heavy Hitters, which will give monsters the Divine Shield and Knock Out abilities. Oh, and I should also mention - this battle is from a gold foil tournament, which considerably limits our available options.
Thanks to Going the Distance, we know that that there will be plenty of ranged damage in this battle. Kelya Frendul is a great summoner choice in this case, because her buffs to speed and armor are both relevant in ranged battles. Not only will her armor protect our monsters from enemy ranged attacks, but also her additional speed will give us an opportunity to attack first and have a greater chance of landing hits or dodging attacks.
One of the biggest drawbacks of ranged attackers is that they are unable to attack from the front position. This becomes even more of a problem when every monster on our team is a ranged attacker. Luckily, we can bring along a monster with Close Range and be able to get off an extra attack from the front. Gargoya Devil is a relatively pricey monster at 7 mana, but having Flying, decent speed, and a bit of armor makes it a good choice as our front line tank for this battle.
My second monster was a bit of filler - Xenith Archer isn't a particularly impressive monster, but she can pitch in a bit of attack and also has Divine Shield and some armor thanks to the ruleset and our summoner choice. This allows her to stand in as a buffer to provide additional protection to our third and final monster.
Swamp Spitter is the real key to my strategy for this battle. Recovery skills are rare on ranged attackers, so Swamp Spitter's Repair ability is very welcome on my team for this battle. With Kelya as my summoner, we know that every monster will be able to take receive some of that healing. My plan was for Swamp Spitter to sit at the back and keep my team healthy, while wearing down the enemy team with a steady stream of ranged attacks.
With the lineup set, it's off into battle! When I see the selected teams I am not sure what to think - my opponent doesn't have any sort of healing or repair, which means that the longer the battle goes on the better my chances. But their summoner is Fernheart, who allows every single one of their monsters to attack from the front - a skill which is particularly valuable in Going the Distance battles!
The fight gets off to a slow start thanks to Holy Protection, but by the start of round 3 my team has dealt heavy damage to the enemy Uloth Dhampir. With Kelya giving my team a crucial speed advantage and Swamp Spitter doing a commendable Repair job, my team is in a great position.
By the start of round 4 the enemy team appears to be heading towards the exit - with the Uloth Dhampir out of the way, the opposing team's damage output takes a big hit. While the enemy Venari Seedsmith can still attack thanks to its Close Range ability, it is poised to be knocked out of the battle once a couple of my monsters get their turn to attack.
One more round and it was just about over - my monsters are poised to take down the last opposing monster, and my entire lineup doesn't even have a scratch! 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 working perfectly. Selecting a Repair monster allowed my Gargoya Devil to tank the opposing monsters' attacks while my team's damage output took out the enemy team one by one. Despite having a summoner which is excellent with ranged monsters, the opposing team was unable to overcome that repair, and it cost them the battle.
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:
Better Lucky than Good - Battling with Noxious Fumes! - A Splinterlands battle analysis, featuring Noxious Fumes!
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.
