Welcome back to our Weekly Battle Mage Secrets!
This week, we are featuring the Going the Distance ruleset.

Going the Distance:

Only units with ranged attacks may be used.
Consider including units with the Close Range and Return Fire abilities in your lineup.

Going the Distance can be an interesting and annoying ruleset at the same time. The main annoying point is that there are limited ranged monsters with the Close Range ability so you are limited in terms of options for your front line. Depending on your strategy, you can even employ having a tank in the front line that can't hit at all. Let's take a look at our synergies and counters below.

Synergies
Close Range	First up is the most obvious choice. Close Range is the ability you'll want to have on most if not all your monsters since it can help you have a front line tank that can still dish out damage. Fernheart is one of the best heroes to use in this rule set.
Protect	Since we know that ranged damage goes through armor, it'll be good to have this ability on your side to potentially tank up on more hits from the opposing side. Similar with Close Range though, ranged units that have this ability are limited like the Tower Griffin.
Pierce	Similar to the Protect idea, you'll want to think or expect that your enemy has armor on their side, too. Circumvent that by integrating a Pierce ability on your side. If you aren't able to use a Fernheart, for example, a Conqueror Jacek would be a good alternative.

Counters
Headwinds	Headwinds is one of the best counters for this ruleset as it reduces ranged damage. Monsters like Ash Mirage and Scavo Chemist (both Fire Splinter) have these abilities so be on the lookout. Summoners like Quix the Devious also have -1 ranged damage. Remember, these stack so it'll be painful if you are nerfed to the ground in terms of damage.
Return Fire	The other option is to out tank you and return the damage back to you. Return Fire doesn't nerf your damage but directs damage back to you after you deal it out. Lir Deepswimmer and Ilthain are the summoners who have this on their kits so make sure to take those into consideration.
Amplify	This is more of a synergistic effect in combination with Return Fire but it can be very deadly when paired together. Amplify Increases Magic Reflect, Return Fire, and Thorns damage to all enemy monsters by 1. That means all the ranged damage you deal gets reflected back to you with additional damage and you may not be able to survive long enough.

This week's feature is from a regular match in Diamond League. Rulesets are as follows:

Aimless
Going the Distance
Noxious Fumes

Fernheart is a good option here if you have him but since I don't, I settled for going Fire instead.

Round 1

As mentioned, I opted to go with Fire since I don't have a Fernheart maxxed out for this league. I used a Conqueror Jacek while the enemy used the ever versatile Lux Vega. Since it's a high enough ruleset, I added in some good high mana cards like Lava Launcher and Countess Sinash while the opponent opted to go for the new legendary soulbound card Drybone Raider in the front line followed by Gargoya Devil.

Another thing to note here is that both of us used 2 martyr cards each. This match has quite a bit of RNG since we have the Aimless ruleset though I have it automatically due to the summoner. I'm not quite sure though why both martyr cards on the opposing sides are next to each other.

Round 2

I mentioned RNG and boy did we have a lot of those in the previous round. I was able to get 2 hits in on the Gem Meteor taking it out quickly. I also got lucky because both my martyr cards got taken out which further buffs up the ones remaining. We end up with a 4v4 prior to the poison kicking in and I already have a ton of damage potential.

Round 3

Since I hit like a truck on most of my truck on most of my remaining cards, I was able to make quick work of pretty much everyone with only the Supply Runner remaining. At this point it seems pretty obvious that it's in the bag, but is it really?

Round 4

In an interesting turn of events, both my Scavo Firebolt and Countess Sinash get taken out by the poison leaving a 1v2. You'd think it's pretty much over but not one but BOTH miss hitting the Supply Runner making it a lot more thrilling than anticipated!

Results

GG! Made me sweat close to the end there but that was very thrilling indeed! MVP for this match is Pierce and Conqueror Jacek is a good alternative to Fernheart if you don't have it.

That's it for this one and see you next week!

Full battle here.

Images provided by Splinterlands in game and via Weekly Battle Mage Challenge post.