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. This week's Battle Mage challenge deals with a ranged monsters getting up close and personal with Close Range. The subject of this particular battle also involves some close range combat, but with an entirely different set of monsters. Today, we will be taking a look at a battle with the Up Close and Personal ruleset!
Up Close and Personal is a fairly restrictive ruleset - it only allows you to select melee monsters, which eliminates ranged, magic, and no-attack options. As you may guess, this is an obvious win for melee monsters. This also gives any monsters with multiple types of attacks some additional utility, as you can throw your opponent a curveball with some types of damage they aren't expecting. Finally, abilities such as Opportunity, Sneak, Reach, Shield, Demoralize, and Thorns are very helpful in Up Close and Personal battles as they can help to increase your team's damage output or decrease your opponent's.
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. Obviously we have Up Close and Personal - the topic of this post, which limits our monster selections to melee attackers. There is also Even Stevens and Taking Sides, which mean we will only be able to bring even costed monsters, and that no neutrals are allowed. Finally, we have a relatively high mana cap of 53 and 3 different splinters to choose from.
When I saw the rulesets and splinters my first thought was to use the Earth splinter and bring Mylor Crowling, since Thorns is amazing in Up Close and Personal battles. However, upon further examination the combination of Even Stevens and Taking Sides meant that if I went with the Earth splinter then I would have a very limited number of monsters to choose from. So I opted instead to go with a Water splinter team for this fight. Possibilus the Wise is great for melee monsters - Reach means that a second monster will be able to attack even without any special abilities, and Trample gives us a very real chance at getting some extra attacks in. Oh, and that +2 health isn't bad either!
I started my team by splurging on my tank and secondary tank. Melee monsters can only attack from the front (or front 2 with Possibilus) positions without special abilities, so I might as well lead off with some winners. Diemonshark is an incredibly bulky tank thanks to its 6 armor and 8 health. With Up Close and Personal in play I am expecting it to be able to put all of that armor to good use. Coastal Sentry is the heaviest hitter on my team - Double Strike and 3 melee attack give it an impressive 6 damage per turn, and Trample from Possibilus gives it the potential to do quite a bit of extra damage. Thanks to Possibilus' Reach ability, Coastal Sentry will have no problem attacking from the second position.
Deeplurker is a great monster for Up Close and Personal battles - when all of the monsters need to be melee, then any monsters which don't need to be in the front position to attack are great for increasing your team's damage output. Deeplurker's Opportunity means it can attack from anywhere in the lineup. As an additional bonus, having Opportunity also means that Deeplurker will have a great shot at killing something and being able to Trample over for some extra attacks.
I closed out my team with a bit of support. Demented Shark is another winner in Up Close and Personal, since Inspire is guaranteed to buff the entire team and give everything some extra damage. Finally, Torrent Fiend was there as a bit of a shield. With just 1 health and in the back spot, it would be a great magnet for any Sneak or Opportunity monsters on the opposing team. For anyone keeping score, you may notice that we are well under the mana cap...but these were all of the monsters that were available for this combination of rulesets.
With the lineup set, it's off into battle! When I see the selected teams I feel pretty good about my chances - my opponent choose a relatively balanced team with Shield at the front and a bit of Sneak and Opportunity attackers, but also was limited by the strict ruleset combination. Most of their monsters don't have much health, which means that if I can manage to get a kill or two off then things could snowball quickly in my favor thanks to Trample.
In the first round of battle my monsters deal heavy damage to the opposing Chaos Knight, while my Torrent Fiend does its job of distracting the enemy attackers. My opponent's entire team is still alive, but with nearly everything on low health the stage is set perfectly for a big Trample round.
As predicted, the next round was a big one - all three of my main attackers managed to get off an extra Trample attack, and when the dust settled there was just a single monster remaining on the enemy team. A few more attacks and the victory was sealed by the end of the third round. 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 - the combination of buffs from Possibilus the Wise and Diemonshark resulted in my team having a sky-high damage output, which was able to quickly mow through the enemy lineup. Up Close and Personal battles can occasionally turn into slogs, but this was certainly not one of those fights!
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:
You Can't Always Get What You Want - Battling with Broken Arrows! - Last week's Battle Mage Secrets challenge, featuring the Broken Arrows ruleset!
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.