Strategy Corner #53- Counterspell Ruleset - Be careful with magic :).

I think we could have quite a busy month for Splinterlands. I have not listen/watch the last Town Hall, but I read the summary and watched @aftersound video.
for It seems that we will have totally different ladder game, I really want to see how it will work. There are mixed opinions about that change, but time will tell :).
Another big change will come later and will concern rewards: rewards points shop, no SPS in the chest, burning Soulbands cards for reward points, and more cosmetics for lands, card, guilds. All those seems interesting, but as all big changes quite risky at the same time. We will see the final outcome soon, I hope :).
Let's check our today's ruleset:

Description:

All monsters receive the Magic Reflect ability at the start of the battle. Enemy monsters that attack with magic receive damage back.

Additional information:

• Damage returned is equal to the damage of the attacker divided by 2, rounded up.
• Magic monsters with the Reflection Shield ability do not take damage from reflected magic attacks.
• The Amplify ability increases damage.

Firstly, the description of the ruleset in the game is not perfect, sometimes you got just general information which does not give you all information you need. Best way to read the full description as above from the game documentation at least once. You can check all here.

I seriously encourage you guys to check more information about reflect magic, here is the precise link. I think even more, advanced players could find something interesting there.

Counterspell is another ruleset that relies on some ability from the game which gives back damage to the attacker. It's a very similar case to the Briar Patch ruleset, which we discussed earlier. So we could approach it with similar ways: first just avoid playing magic monster, easy and predictable :), another way is to play some kind of defense to protect our monster from returned damage, a good example here is Immortalis, the third option is just using magic to try to surprise the opponent and try to survive long enough to wipe out the enemy team before our team will kill themself :).

Today's battle is a Modern Silver Level tournament. It was Gold Foil only, so my collection is not full and sometimes I need to use less powerful cards.

We have Water splinter mirror, but both players used different splinter. I'm not sure it was the mistake of the opponent, because ruleset allows to use one gladiator card and opponent did not choose two. Keyla seems much better choice here, but we will see the outcome later.
For team composition, the opponent chose a good opportunity monster combo, which I often like and use. And it scattershot proof :). For frontal attack, both team have good cards, but my seems more powerful. And of course Supply Runner with speed buff is always good choice. Let's check the battle.

Round 2, we had a lot of luck this turn with scattershot ;). We managed to kill the opponent's Deeplurker. Let's see if it is enough :).

Round 3, another great round for us, Diemonshark is down, and we still didn't lose any units.

Final Blow - Round 4 - it was really fast, we got clean sweep battle, let's check the analysis section to see what was the main reason to have so great performance here :).

I thought that we had advantage here, but I didn't expect that we finish without losing any monsters. Definitely Kelya was a much better choice here, that speed buff and armor was the main reason of the easy victory. Of course we have some luck in the first round, but I do not think it was decisive for the outcome.
Another aspect was the frontal monster, recently I didn't use Diemonshark so often, there are much better choices like Costal Sentry (which sometimes need more protection to be effective). And of course Relenor, but we will talk more about those cards in the Core team section.
I mentioned that Isgald/Deeplurker combo is very powerful. And it's true even here, but I would definitely go with Kelya with those cards, speed buff, and some defense it is so helpful, and even more with scattershot ruleset.
I hope the opponent will draw conclusions from this fight :)

KELYA FRENDUL, is the best of water splinter summoner in modern format. Dot. The speed buff and armor are so significant boosts for all the monsters, that currently other water summoners cannot offer anything similar. In some specific circumstances, Possibilus can be better, but in general, Keylya Frendul is just a no-brainer choice. I think the summoner which was the opponent's choice today: PEMBROOK NYMPH is my least favorite soulbound. I rarely use it, because of Keyla of course :).

RELENOR CLEAVER as I mentioned several times already, among gladiator cards there is very good reach monster of every splinter, and Relenor is definitely one of them. It has very high damage, and decent defense stats, the only problem can be low speed, but of course, Keyla helps here a little. And as with other gladiator cards, when Relenor gets a kill and a buff from bloodlust abilities all his stats go up, and speed is less and less a problem :).

COASTAL SENTRY, is one of my favorite soulbound cards. Of course, it lacks defense capabilities, but that huge damage output and high speed compensate for this gap. The best way to use that card is some destruction, it could be a taunt monster, playing it not in the first position (reach, melee mayhem, equalizer etc), or as in today's battle even a scattershot ruleset can be enough :).

All those rulesets, which rely on some of the reflection damage in-game ability are very interesting. Theoretically, they limit our choice of the damage type which we should use. But theoretically is the key word here, as I presented above, you sometimes shouldn't be afraid to use the monster with damage, which is the ruleset reflection damage type.
One thing which could be very interesting is the statistics after every battle with the highest damage dealers, most healed points, etc.

I hope you like this kind of report, battle, and strategy presentation. More strategy analysis, discussion, and prediction games you can find on my Wednesday Twitch Channel stream. There will be schedule soon :)

If you have any comments, please do not hesitate. Do you think I could improve anything just tell me :)

If you wish to try out Splinterlands you can use my reference link.

Thumbnails and other pictures borrowed with permission from the Splinterlands team or made in Cooltext