This week's Battle Mage Secrets challenge features the Weak Magic ruleset! Weak Magic is one of those rulesets that is a little more complicated to unpack - in Weak Magic battles, magic attacks are treated just like regular attacks when it comes to armor. As a newer player it is easy to look at Weak Magic as a low impact ruleset and pay it little to no regard while constructing your team. However, it DOES have an effect and ignoring it can easily lead to a loss, or a suboptimal team.
Weak Magic is a ruleset that is a "soft" counter in that it lowers the value of some specific monsters. The clear losers in Weak Magic battles are the monsters with magic attacks - while magic will normally bypass armor, in these fights magic attacks will instead have to go through a target's shields first, just like melee or ranged attacks do. There are also a far number of winners in Weak Magic. Armor becomes much stronger singe it is effective against all damage. This means that monsters with armor or monsters and summoners that grant armor to your team gain quite a bit of additional usefulness.
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. Of course we have Weak Magic, which means that magic attacks will be prevented by armor. To go along with it we have Armored Up and Fog of War. This means that all monsters in the battle will gain 2 additional armor, and that Sneak, Snipe, and Opportunity abilities will have no effect in this fight. This is an interesting interaction, since Weak Magic combined with Armored Up means that all monsters will have some protection against all types of attacks right from the start.
For out summoner we'll go with the Water splinter's jack of all trades - Kelya Frendul. Kelya's speed buff is welcome in nearly any situation (barring reverse speed battles, of course!), and her armor ability is particularly useful in Weak Magic. To top it off, the water splinter has plenty of solid high mana costed monsters to use with the relatively high 53 mana cap for this battle.
We'll start of the lineup with my tank and secondary tank. Diemonshark and Flying Squid are a great frontline combination - both have plenty of bulk, and they can dish out respectable amounts of damage while protecting our monsters further back in the lineup.
Up next were Djinn Oshannus and River Helondale. Both of these monsters are solid magic attackers, with Djinn Oshannus doubling as an excellent tertiary tanks and River Hellondale providing some support with the Resurrect ability. Resurrect is a noteworth ability in Weak Magic, since a monster will get resurrected with just a single point of health but full armor. With Weak Magic a resurrected monsters is much less likely to immediately get killed a second time.
We'll round out our team with as much ranged damage as we can fit in. Drybone Raider is excellent in this ruleset, because Shatter will get rid of any armor provided by enemy team abilities or the Armored Up ruleset. Finally, Swamp Spitter pitches in some additional ranged damage while also Repairing my teams own armor - a great combination for a support monster in the Weak Magic ruleset!
With the lineup set, it's off into battle! When I see the selected teams I am not sure how the battle will turn out - my opponent has selected a team with Immortalis, whose Shatter ability is excellent in this particular ruleset combination. They are also packing some heavy hitters with Grund as well as Runemancer Florre.
In the first couple of rounds both teams exchange heavy blows. My team is able to knock out both of the melee monsters on my opponent's front line. My Diemonshark actually dies, but is Resurrected thanks to River Helondale. At this point I am cautiously optimistic - the enemy lineup has lost a lot of its damage output, while my team is still intact.
By round 5 the battle is nearly won - at this point there are just two monsters remaining on the other side of the battlefield, and once Runemancer Florre is taken out then the enemy Hunter Jarx will be unable to attack.
One round later we were just about done - Runemancer Florre was down to just a single point of health, and was poised to get taken down by my Djinn Oshannus. A few quick attacks and my monsters were able to mop up the enemy team and claim the victory. And again, if you wanted to see the whole battle for yourself, you can see it right here.
This battle showcased how some monsters gain quite a bit of power in Weak Magic. My army's collection of armor buffs paired with Repair and Resurrect negated a large number of enemy attacks, even when the entire opposing team had the Shatter ability. In the end, my team was able to gain a small advantage early that snowballed into an overwhelming victory in the end.
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:
Check Your Armor at the Door - Battling with Unprotected! - A few things to keep in mind as the Rebellion release approaches!
Eyes On the Prize - Setting your Splinterlands Goals - Starting out in Splinterlands? Be sure to come up with a plan!
Rebellion Sale Plans and Goals - My plans and goals as we approach the Rebellion release!
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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.