This week's Battle Mage Secrets challenge features the Explosive Weaponry ruleset! Explosive Weaponry makes the battle a bit more chaotic by giving every monster the Blast ability. This means that attacks will hit adjacent monsters for half damage, in addition to dealing normal damage to the primary target. When first starting off as a player this was one of the more annoying rulesets for me, since I would keep having monsters die to Blast damage. But with more experience and careful positioning, I have gained a bit of an appreciation for this ruleset.
Explosive Weaponry is somewhat equal as it gives every monster Blast. But that ability benefits some monsters more than others. Monsters who already have Blast don't benefit at all. On the flip side, monsters which are able to hit the middle of a lineup potentially gain the ability to deal Blast damage on both sides, hitting a total of 3 targets. And finally, abilities such as Reflection Shield, Void, and Shield gain a bit of additional utility in these battles, as they are more likely to be able to negate some additional incoming attacks.
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!
First up: the ruleset. As you might expect, we have the Explosive Weaponry ruleset, granting every monster the Blast ability. We also have Heavy Hitters and Ferocity. Those are two rulesets with a slightly lesser impact, but they do give all the monsters on the field the Knock Out and Fury abilities. This makes monsters with Stun a bit more valuable, and monsters with Taunt much less effective.
In a battle with a relatively high mana cap of 51 and the Fire splinter eligible, I would often think to go with a Yodin Zaku team. In this particular ruleset though, Explosive Weaponry already gives every monster Blast. This makes Yodin a little worse than he would be normally because not only is one of his summoner abilities redundant, but also that the enemy team's Blast damage is likely to be able to easily knock out any ranged attackers which might be a little more on the fragile side. In this case those factors are enough for us to go with an alternative strategy - a more balanced team composition with Tarsa to boost our melee attackers.
Keeping in mind that Explosive Weaponry means that there is likely to be a lot of Blast damage going around, we'll try to load up on plenty of armor to mitigate it. I started my team with my tank and secondary tank who both have the Protect ability. Arkemis the Bear and Ferox Defender will give our entire team a whooping 4 additional armor to start off the battle. Going with this tank configuration means that our front monsters will be a little lower on the damage output, but hopefully the additional bulk they will provide to the rest of our team will more than make up for it.
With only a small amount of damage coming from the front line, it is important that the rest of the lineup has some heavy hitters in order to provide enough firepower to knock out the enemy team. Lava Launcher and Blood Maker both fit the bill well here - Lava Launcher has a sky-high attack with 4 ranged damage, and Blood Maker's Scattershot ability has the potential to deal double Blast damage if it can hit the middle of the enemy lineup.
We'll round out our team with as much damage as we can fit in. Similarly to Blood Maker, Countess Sinash could potentially hit the center of the opposing team and deal Blast damage to 2 additional enemy monsters. Tenyii Striker gets a boosted attack thanks to Tarsa, and has the Dodge ability which is particularly useful in Explosive Weaponry games. If Tenyii Striker can make an opposing monster miss, then that will offset both the attack itself AND its Blast damage - practically a 2 for 1 deal!
With the lineup set, it's off into battle! When I see the selected teams I am hopeful - my opponent has choosen a decent team for this ruleset, with plenty of Sneak damage, and even some Opportunity and Scattershot attackers mixed in. However, many of their monsters are on the more fragile side, which means that a bit of Blast damage can easily take out a lot of their damage output. In contrast, my team is a bit more robust and has a lot more bulk - particularly with the bonus armor from double Protect monsters.
In the first round of battle I like what I see - my team's armor is doing a great job at withstanding the enemy attacks. Every monster is still on the battlefield, but many of the opposing monsters have taken a couple of hits and are looking awfully fragile.
It only took one more round for the dominoes to fall - a few more attacks and plenty of Blast damage, and the opposing team was quickly whittled down to just 2 monsters, both of whom were on their last legs. A couple more quick attacks and my victory was assured! And again, if you wanted to see the whole battle for yourself, you can see it right here.
Battles with Blast damage can play out quickly, and this fight with Explosive Weaponry certainly turned out that way - my team's additional armor ended up being pivotal as it allowed my attackers to outlast the enemy monsters. This fight showed the importance of not only trying to attack your opponent as quickly as possible, but also being aware of your team's weaknesses and taking the steps to Protect them.
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:
Lir Long and Prosper - Battling with Going the Distance! - A Splinterlands battle analysis, featuring Going the Distance!
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!
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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.