Briar Patch: Rule Set Born from Thorns

Hello there! @Saydie here, playing Splinterlands everyday!

As a Trading Card Game, one of the thing that makes Splinterlands a unique and entertaining game is the wide variety of Rule Sets that it have. Rule Sets are a set of conditions that either boost or limits the capabilities of the cards that are being played during a match. Together with Mana Cap that limits the number of cards that can be used based on their mana cost, each game includes up to two Rule sets at a time making every battle indistinguishable from the others.

With the Town Hall held during the 31^st of October this year, the Splinterland's Team announced the addition of three additional Rule Sets and were implemented during Season 98 of Splinterlands. These Rule Set are Briar Patch, Fire & Regret and Counterspell. Today, I will talk about the Briar Patch Rule Set and how to get used to it.

Rule Set Name	Icon	Description
Briar Patch		All Monsters have the Thorns ability.

Briar Patch is a Rule Set that is based on the Thorns ability which deals up to -2 damage when a monster with this ability is attacked with melee damage. Because of this, both players will avoid using melee monsters as much as possible and instead use range and magic monsters for it's team. With this consideration, we can then build a team that will counter either range or magic attacks.

• If the opponent will use range monsters, we can use the summoners Lir Deepswimmer or Iltain that gives Return Fire that returns range damage towards the attacker or go for summoners Quix the Devious, Contessa L'ament and Mimosa Nightshade that reduce range damage by -1. We can also use monsters with Headwinds ability which reduces range damage by -1. Using monsters with Shield ability also helps to reduce range damage by half.

Ability	Description
Return Fire	When hit with a Ranged attack, Monsters with Return Fire will return reduced damage back to their attacker. Damage returned is equal to damage of attacker divided by 2, rounded up.
Headwinds	Reduces the Ranged attack of all enemy Monsters. -1 to ranged attack, it cannot be less than 1
Shield	Reduced damage from Melee and Ranged attack. Attack damage gets halved (rounded up), except attack 1 which deals 0 damage Reduces the Thorns damage to 1 Cancel Redemption damage

• If the opponent will use magic monsters, we can use the summoners Mimosa Nightshade that gives Void which halves magic damage or with Grandmaster Rathe that gives Void Armor where magic attacks needs to hit armor before the health. We can also Bortus and Thaddius Brood that gives -1 magic to the opponent or go with Owster Rotwell with the Magic Reflect ability which returns magic damage back to the attacker. The use of monsters with Silence also reduce the magic damage of the opponent by -1.

Ability	Description
Void	Reduced damage from Magic attacks. Attack damage gets halved (rounded up), except attack 1 which deals 0 damage.
Void Armor	Magic attacks hit this Monster's armor before its Health.
Silence	Reduces the Magic Attack of all enemy Monsters
Magic Reflect	When hit with Magic damage, does reduced Magic damage back to the attacker. Deals damage equivalent to the attacker's damage divided by 2, rounded up. The damage is reflected even if the attacker does not hit.

• We can also rely on RNG against this monsters by using summoners Brighton Bloom with the Flying ability that gives 25% dodge chance against non- magic attacks and is similar to Dodge and Stispa with the Phase ability can cause Magic attacks to miss it's target. The Backfire with Aquatus also does work similar to Return and Magic Reflect that it does damage back to the attacker but this was on the condition that the opponent miss the target.

Ability	Description
Flying	Has an increased chance of evading Melee or Ranged attacks from Monsters who do not have the Flying ability. +25% chance of evading.
Dodge	Has an increased chance of evading Melee or Ranged attacks. +25% Dodge vs melee/ranged
Phase	Magic attack can miss this Monster (using the same hit/miss calculation as for Melee and Ranged attacks.
Backfire	If an enemy misses this Monster with an attack, the attacker takes 2 damage.

On Briar Patch Rule Set and even on Thorns the default damage that can be reflected back to the attacker is only -2 damage and can go down to -1 damage when the opponent has the Shield ability. Despite that, this does not stack even when both the summoner and monster has the same ability. The only way to increase the damage for this Rule Set is to use monsters with Amplify ability. It only does increase the damage by 1 but having and not having monsters with this ability greatly affects the outcome of the battle.

Ability	Description
Amplify	Increases Magic Reflect, Return Fire, and Thorns damage to all enemy monsters by 1

With Briar Patch Rule Set on play, a melee monster just doing the attack may cost dearly because every successful attack that it did means that a portion of its armor or health will be consumed by Thorns which was for a long time became a headache of people during Up Close & Personal Rule Set as you can only use melee monsters and nothing else so when the opponent uses Mylor Crowling, while your not, There is rarely a time when it can be defeated. But now, we have the Reflection Shield ability which make it immune to all indirect and reflected damage. This means that melee monsters with this ability will not take Thorns damage from Briar Patch even when the opponent has Amplify within their team. But this does not mean that these monsters are immune from attacks. They will still received damage from direct attacks.

Ability	Description
Reflection Shield	This Monster is immune to all indirect, or reflected damage. That means that it will not take damage from Blast, Thorns, Return Fire, or Magic Reflect

Melee Monsters with Reflection Shield

Mana Cost	2
Edition	Rewards
Element	Neutral
Rarity	Legendary
Attack Type	Melee
Abilities	Reflection Shield Comouflage Immunity Slow Amplify

And that was all for the Briar Patch Rule Set. I hope that this knowledge will help you on winning the matches that are ahead of you. Thank you and keep Grinding!!