Hello Splinterlands enthusiasts, I hope you are all having a great Splinterday!
The Battle Mage Secrets Challenge is a wonderful and effective way to get to know rulesets better and improve your gameplay. Not only do you study and analyse rulesets and example battles closely, you also get to read and see what other Splinterheads are thinking and doing with their little darlings on the battlefield.
With many battles now being comprised of 3 rulesets, it is important to know your rulesets well, how they relate to other rulesets and what corresponding cards work well to either exploit the ruleset or defend against it. We have also seen a number of new rulesets coming into the game lately and a bunch of new monsters have received new abilities.
The game is becoming more and more technical, leaving you with ever decreasing chances of winning battles with sheer brute force and overkill strategies. All these reasons and the clear challenge that players (and bots unfortunately) are getting „smarter“ all the time underscore the need to know rulesets very well. The Battle Mage Secrets Challenge helps and motivates us players further to do just that.
In today's challenge we are looking at the Unprotected ruleset.
UNPROTECTED
All armour is removed from units and one cannot gain armor
Shield and Divine Shield are unaffected
My strategy for the Unprotected ruleset is very simple: speed. When I have this ruleset, I really do feel that my little darlings are unprotected and vulnerable. There is nowhere to hide and all types of attack will harm them. I could use a Taunt, but there are a lot more monsters around with Fury now that this strategy can easily be thwarted. So I do my best to outrun the enemy and create as much damage as possible during the first round to clear the way to victory during the following rounds while my enemy is weakened and slowed down. In the battle featured in today's Battle Mage Secrets Challenge, I am using Conqueror Jacek to give my team additional speed in an attempt to be faster than the opposing team.
The battle stats are the following:
RULESETS: UNprotected, Tis But Scratches and Taking Sides
MANA: 57
SPLINTERS: White and Gold are unavailable
Here is the team I put together:
So CONQUEROR JACEK is my summoner of choice for this battle for his +2 speed and Scattershot. The other ability, Piercing is useless here as none of the monsters will have any shield.
In a high Mana game I bring out the big guns, therefore GRUM is the perfect candidate for first position. Normally, his weakness is his slow speed but here he will have 3 speed to manage the frontline.
High Mana with JACEK's Scattershot means that I bring the big range monsters with Close Range. TINDERLOCK is a good monster for second position, although his other ability Last Stand would normally move him to last position, but here I want more protection for the monsters to follow behind him.
LAVA LAUNCHER is in third position and I want him to survive as long as possible as his 5 range and 5 speed are very destructive and I want him to have the greatest number of turns. He also has Close Range so a cozy spot in the midfield is just right for him.
Next comes MOLTEN ASH GOLEM in position 4. Again, he has Close Range, so that he can still fire from the first position if need be. He also has Demoralize, which will take 1 melee from all enemy monsters to help weaken the opponent.
ASH MIRAGE is my favourite Riftwatchers monster and his Headwind will reduce enemy range attack by 1. He needs to be far back as he has no Close Range and needs to hang around to keep enemy range fire reduced.
COUNTESS SINASH is a beast! At level 4 she has a bunch of abilities to terrorize the enemy, most notably her speed and Blast. Camouflage will keep her hidden and out of harm's reach right to the end.
So now let's take a closer look at the battle in focus today. My opponent brought a gold level summoner to fight a Diamond League battle, which will give me an advantage from the start. Nevertheless, he is sending some big water players into the arena, so it should still be an interesting and perhaps open-ended battle. Let's see:
ASH MIRAGE fired first and hit the enemy Taunt monster. Then came the COUNTESS and took out River Hellowdale with a perfectly executed Scattershot. When JACEK is in town, luck with Scattershot plays a big role. Then the LAVA Launcher took out Deep Lurker with a single hit. Half way through round one, 2 major enemy monsters are already wiped out, thanks to the speed strategy and lots of luck. Enemy fire was quite harmless and the rest of the round was uneventful.
ASH MIRAGE and the COUNTESS fired at the beginning of the round to continue the carnage and reduce the Coastal Sentry to 2 health. LAVA LAUNCHER then took his leave at the hands of Kulu Mastermind, for whom I have great respect. Coastal Sentry inflicted a Double Strike on GRUM, which he barely survived to then fire back and take the enemy tank out. Nothing else worth writing home about happened at the end of the round.
ASH and COUNTESS struck again to prepare the final victory. GRUM had to go followed by Baakjira, leaving the enemy with 2 lonely actors on the tennis court.
ASH and COUNTESS finished their meal and we all went out for a beer.
This battle was an easy win. I had lots of luck with 2 perfect Scattershot attacks during the first round, superior speed and an overall more powerful team. Had my opponent used a max summoner, things may have looked differently but I am confident to still have won the battle with my speed strategy. My opponent used a Taunt in an attempt to protect his team but speed and fire power prevailed, while Scattershot made things uncontrollable for my opponent.
Seeyaround Splinterheads!
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