Hello Hive gaming community! Splinterlands battle rules include modifiers that change gameplay by limiting the cards you can use, modifying abilities, damaging units, and more. Modifiers can influence what cards you should play; we have to adapt our tactics on the fly to pull off a win. At first, my battles have no modifiers. As I advanced in league, I see more and more modifiers. I have to fit the cards I play to the limits of modifiers.

⚔️🛡️ Briar Patch & Melee Mayhem 🛡️⚔️

The mana was 58 allow me to use all possible card combinations. There were two modifiers:

Briar Patch - All units have Thorns (returns 2 damage to attacker when hit by a melee attack).
Melee Mayhem - Units can use melee attacks from any position.

Featured Cards

Because of the battle modifiers, I decided to lessen the damage from Thorns and chose Life element. The Life archon has an armor adding protection to physical attacks. I also decreased the melee units in the cards I chose in battle thus I had two magic units and two ranged units to complete my team.

Twice Yester Knight has good defense. It has three armor and four life.
New Beluroc Aegis attracts attacks. The Melee Mayhem allows him to use melee attacks from any position. My next units seek to avoid the Thorns penalty and does not attack with melee.
Lunaki Howler - A magic unit with one attack.
Lady Amara - Another unit with one attack.
Hungry Ulund - A ranged unit with two attack.
Wild Horse Tamer - A ranged unit I gained from chests. It also has two attack.

My opponent had the Fire element and had the same strategy of minimizing melee units. The Fire element adds speed while my choice of Life element adds armor that defends against physical attacks. The additional defense prevented damage from Thorns making me achieve victory in the battle.

⚔️🛡️ Up Close & Personal & Equalizer 🛡️⚔️

The battle blends low mana with Equalizer. I read from guides its better to use as many units as you can with Equalizer.

Up Close & Personal - You can only summon units with melee attacks.
Equalizer - The initial health of all units is equal to that of the unit on either team with the highest base health.

Featured Cards

We switched elements in this battle. I had the Fire element while my opponent had Life. I chose Fire because my archon is already at level 2. Also, Fire element had many low mana units that are ideal in the battle modifier.

Frankarsgard has high 7 mana but it's already level 3 gold. It's stats are higher than normal level one cards.
Chaos Furybringer has 6 mana. He has low health but he benefits from Equalizer modifier.
Ember Roast Sow has low 4 mana. It also has a low health and also benefit from the Equalizer modifier. It's ability is Sneak allowing it to attack the last unit of the opponent.
Kanaaq Miner has 5 mana. It is also sneaks into the last unit of the opponent to attack.

My opponent had Life element and had only three units. In the number of cards, I had the advantage. He also had two units that sneak into my rear unit. Normally I would get beaten by my opponent's card combination but there's safety in numbers. My two units in the back absorbed the opponent's attacks while I had two units attacking the front.