In the spirit of the new weekly Battle Mage Secrets challenges, I would like to take a look at a Splinterlands battle with a particular focus on a ruleset. Our ruleset today is one that you may be a fan of if you enjoy hand to hand combat. Today, we will be taking a look at a battle with the Up Close and Personal ruleset!
In Up Close and Personal battles, only monsters with melee attacks may be selected. This is obviously good for melee attackers, and bad for monsters with only ranged or magic damage, or no attack at all. Big winners include monsters with abilities that impact melee, such as Demoralize, Thorns, or Shield. Melee monsters with abilities that allow them to attack from the back of a lineup, such as Sneak, Opportunity, Reach, or even a second attack type are also great in Up Close and Personal since those are the only ways to be able to attack with more than a single monster per turn.
If you wanted to jump right to the action, the Battle Link is right here. Want to hear some more about the lineup? Read on further!
Here is the ruleset for our battle. First up we have Up Close and Personal, our focus of this post, which forces every monster selected for this fight to be a melee attacker. To go along with it we also have Even Stevens and Lost Legendaries, which rule out any odd mana costed monsters or legendary rarity cards. The eligible splinters are also noteworthy since two of my favorite splinters for Up Close and Personal are not available here - Fire has plenty of excellent melee attackers and Earth has Mylor Crowling, but unfortunately neither of them will feature in this battle.
With Fire and Earth ruled out, I decided to go with an alternative strategy that would require me having access to the Dragon and Death splinters. Quix fit the bill in this case, since his relatively low mana cost fits perfectly into the 19 mana cap battle, and his speed debuff to the opposing team is always welcome, especially when I know that most (if not all) of the damage will be physical, since that will give my monsters an additional chance to dodge attacks.
My first monster selection for this battle was Cursed Windeku. Cursed Windeku is a great monster even in less restrictive battles since you get an incredibly bulky (10 health!) monster with a decent 2 melee and 3 speed attack, for the relative bargain of just 6 mana. What pushes Cursed Windeku over the top is the Thorns ability - any time a melee monster attacks Cursed Windeku, Thorns will deal some counter damage, effectively giving Cursed Windku an additional attack. This is outstanding in Up Close and Personal since we know that there is a very good chance that every attack will be a melee one.
What's better than 1 monster with Thorns? 2 monsters with Thorns! Djinn Chwala is yet another monster with Thorns, and is even bulkier and harder hitting than Cursed Windeku. While Chwala also costs a bit more, I have just enough mana to work with in this battle to fit him in to my lineup. With two bulky Thorns monsters on my team, any attacking monsters on the opposing team are likely to have a bad day.
With the lineup set, it's off into battle! When I see the selected teams I like my position. My opponent has actually chosen a similar lineup to me with Quix and a Djinn Chwala. There is, however, a major difference - instead of two Thorns monsters my opponent has instead opted for a bit of diversity in their team and instead selected a team with some Reach and Sneak damage. Luckily for me, Thorns doesn't care where attacks are coming from - it'll deal that counter damage in return just fine either way!
In the first round of battle the opposing monsters start attacking, and start taking counter damage from Thorns. The enemy monsters may have more attacks hitting each turn, but that also means they are taking more Thorns damage in return - and my team has a distinct bulk advantage!
One round later and the battle is just about over - it was an unusually fast one for the Up Close and Personal ruleset, thanks to my team having Thorns and most of the opposing monsters being relatively fragile. My Cursed Windeku ended up dying, but Djinn Chwala had more than though health to pull through for the victory! And again, if you wanted to see the whole battle for yourself, you can see it right here.
My strategy for this battle worked out perfectly. While I couldn't select Mylor Crowling in this melee-only battle, I did the next best thing by filling my lineup exclusively with monsters with Thorns and plenty of health. That plan changed the battle into more of a numbers game than a strategy game - and it was a numbers game in which my team had a distinct advantage!
Thank you so much for reading all the way to the end. Interested in seeing some more of my writing in the future? Be sure to give me a follow! In the meantime, if you'd like to see some of my recent posts:
A Man with a Plan - Battling with Earthquake! - A Splinterlands battle analysis, featuring Earthquake!
Splinterlands Economics: Causation - A look at causation, and how we can apply it to Splinterlands!
Splinterlands Economics: Ceteris Paribus - An introduction to the concept of Ceteris Paribus, and how we can apply it to Splinterlands!
Thinking about giving Splinterlands a try but haven't signed up yet? Feel free to use my referral link: https://splinterlands.com?ref=bteim, and be sure to reach out to me if you have any questions!
All images used in this article are open source and obtained from Pixabay or Unsplash. Thumbnails borrowed with permission from the Splinterlands team or made in Canva.