This week's Battle Mage Secrets challenge features the Explosive Weaponry ruleset! Today's rule is for anyone who likes big splashy effects, or all things that go BOOM. Explosive Weaponry makes the battle have much more of a bang by giving every monster the Blast ability. Blast allows attackers to hit adjacent monsters for half damage, in addition to dealing normal damage to the primary target. This can make for fast paced battles that can snowball quickly.
Explosive Weaponry is somewhat equal as it gives every monster Blast. However, that ability benefits some monsters more than others. Monsters who already have Blast don't gain any added value in these battles. On the other hand, 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. 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!
Here are the rules for our battle. We have Target Practice, which means that every monster has the Snipe ability. And of course, we also have Explosive Weaponry, which grants all monsters Blast. And finally, we have Stampede, which allows monsters with Trample to trigger their ability multiple times. Finally, we have a rock bottom mana cap of just 12, and 5 splinters to choose from.
There is a particularly interesting combination of rulesets here with Explosive Weaponry and Target Practice. While the specific interaction has a minimal impactf on this particular battle, those two rules together make ranged and magic attackers extremely powerful - they have a much greater chance of hitting the middle of a lineup and getting that additional Blast damage!
For my summoner I decided to go with Tarsa. Tarsa is a great low mana summoner, and 12 mana is about as low mana as you can get! While some other summoners may shine more in higher mana Explosive Weaponry battles, in micro-battles such as these you want to be as cost efficient as possible - to me that means melee attackers, and Tarsa works incredibly well with melee monsters!
I was working under the assumption that my opponent would likely be forced into also playing some form of melee attackers, and I choose my front tank accordingly. Antoid Platoon is a great anti-melee tank thanks to its Shield ability, and it bas a very respectable amount of bulk for its cost of just 4 mana.
For the middle of my lineup I wanted to buffer my team with some cheap meat shields to soak up Blast damage - after all, Antoid Platoon has the benefit of Shield, but my backline monster (which we'll get to in a second!) does not. Chaos Agent and Scorch Fiend are both cheap bodies that I was hoping would buy some time for my attacking monsters to deal heavy damage to the enemy team.
My final monster was Gobalano Soldier. Thanks to the Sneak ability he'll be able to attack the enemy back line, and with Ambush he gains an additional attack at the start of the battle. Remember that this is a low mana battle - that means that lineups and monsters are likely to be much smaller than they normally are, and that every single attack can make a difference!
With the lineup set, it's off into battle! When I see the selected teams I feel pretty good about my chances. While I went with a pair of attacking monsters to divide and conquer, my opponent instead chose to go with a single bulkier monster. While this would normally be a good choice in an Explosive Weaponry battle, this also meant that my team gets to take advantage of Tarsa's summoner buff twice, while my opponent was limited to their single Heal summoner ability. It looks like a close one, but I think that the math should be in my favor.
Do note that the display says "Round 3", but this is after a single round of normal attacks - Ambush has some funny interactions with the Splinterlands UI. One round into the battle and things are progressing the way I expect them to - my Gobalano Soldier has taken out the opposing Soul Fiend and then worked with my Antoid Platoon to knock off all of the enemy Imperial Knight's armor.
One more round and my team was just about ready to earn a victory - the opposing Imperial Knight made a good fight of it, but its Heal ability wasn't enough to outlast my tag team of Gobalano Soldier and Antoid Platoon. 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 my opponent brought along a monster which was stronger than any of my individual cards, my lineup of multiple attackers with buffer monsters to soak up Blast damage was enough to out-damage the enemy team and earn a big win.
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:
Double Trouble - Battling with Even Stevens! - A Splinterlands battle analysis, featuring Even Stevens!
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.