This weeks Battle Mage Challenge is about the What Doesn't Kill You rule.
Splinterlands tells us the following about this rule:

All units gain the Enrage ability which multiplies their speed and melee attack by 1.5x rounded up.

    The attack multiplier only affects melee units.
    Units with Inspire will increase your melee attack
    Demoralize will decrease your opponent's melee attack.

What Doesn't Kill You is a rule that favors melee attack monsters and summoners who base their strategy primarily on them. Melee units that have Enrage triggered will gain higher damage, sometimes to levels where they will be able to take down opponent monsters in a single strike.

However, there is also a downside to playing melee units in this rule: Since speed is also increased by the same multiplier as attack, fast units can become very hard to hit. If a monster doesn't hit its attack, it doesn't matter how powerful that strike would have been. For that reason, magic units can be used in this rule if you expect that the opponent will go for a high-speed tank. It is also worth noting that Phase can be used to also dodge magic hits, and since magic units generally have lower speed than many of the popular melee monsters, this can be a total showstopper for magic setups in the What Doesn't Kill You Rule.

The table below shows how much extra stats a monster gains from Enrage:

Base Attack/Speed	Value When Enraged	Difference (Amount gained with Enrage)
1	2	1
2	3	1
3	5	2
4	6	2
5	8	3
6	9	3
7	11	4
8	12	4
9	14	5
10	15	5

So Enrage becomes stronger the higher the base value of attack/speed is. This is extra relevant for high values of speed, since it provides dodge chance. At 9 speed, the unit gains an additional 50% dodge chance when it becomes enraged.

We can also note that odd numbers for the base attack/speed gain slightly more effect from Enrage than even numbers, because of how the effect is rounded.

Incompatible Rules

What Doesn't Kill You is compatible with all other rules.

Desirable Abilities

( Swiftness, Slow, Phase, Inspire, Demoralize, True Strike, Piercing )

As seen in the table in the introduction, Enrage becomes more powerful the higher the base values of attack/speed your monsters have. So in this rule we want to amplify those stats as much as we can, and reduce them for our opponent monsters. Swiftness, Slow, Inspire and Demoralize achieve those goals. Phase allows us to also dodge magic attacks, and True Strike makes sure that we can't miss. Finally, monsters with Piercing will be able to get the full effect of their strikes, without being stopped by armor.

Advantaged Summoners

Disadvantaged Summoners

Skargore is the summoner that is hurt the most by this rule since it provides her ability for every other summoner too. Yodin will Blast and enrage multiple of the opponents units, while Mylor can similarly end up enraging a lot of the melee monsters with his Thorns.

Desirable Monsters

These four are generally quite accsesible and incredibly good cards for the What Doesn't Kill You rule. Apart from those, these cards are generally quite useful for this rule (Either high speed, or provides Swiftness or Slow ):

Disadvantaged Monsters

My Battle : What Doesn't Kill You battle

My battle had the following configuration: Modern Champion league. 46 mana. Rules: Aim True, What Doesn’t Kill You. Splinters: Death, Dragon, Earth.

My lineup

I went with a very high-risk setup, betting that my opponent is going to place Agor Longtail, or some other high-mana monster in front. The gamble is that the Desert Dragon will Enrage and Retaliate, which can be absolutely devastating to units which will take extra damage from Giant Killer. The remainder of the lineup consist of Djinn Muirat, in case the opponent goes for heavy magic damage, and Queen of Crows in case they go for ranged. With those two, I have tanks that cover every attack type. Behind them I placed two support units, which both have Tank Heal and of course Oshuur also provides Resurrect. I spent the remaining mana on the Soul Strangler.

Opponent's lineup

My opponent did indeed go for a setup with Agor Longtail. They have the classic frontline with Agor+Oshuur which protects from Blast and is generally quite durable. They added another set of Tank Heal and Resurrect, and then rounded off the lineup with Regal Peryton and Doctor Blight.

Battle progress and Result

So I did indeed face a magic-heavy lineup, and the Desert Dragon is going to be less effective than if there were more melee units involved. However, I did predict the Agor frontline correctly, and it will be interesting to see how the battle develops. The speed advantage is clearly on my opponent's side, and both the Regal Peryton and Agor will attack before any of my units.

So they do, and my Desert Dragon is taken down to three health before Agor does his melee strike into the Desert Dragon's armor. My Desert Dragon is now enraged because of the magic attacks. RNG works in our favor and the much wanted "retaliate" text appears above the Desert Dragon:

Not only does the Desert Dragon retaliate for 18 damage, it proceeds to strike a second time right after, dealing a total of 36 damage (!) to Agor in succession. It then triggers Trample, and proceeds to destroy Oshuur in a single blow:

However, Agor is resurrected by the Spirit Druid Gron, and is still alive to tank a bit more. But so far only one of my units have attacked, and I also have a second Giant Killer unit, so the damage is more than enough to take him down. My Desert Dragon takes a few more hits and eventually falls, but is brought back to life by Oshuur. When we get to round 2, the game state is like this:

Now my Desert Dragon dies for the second time, but his position is now taken by Djinn Muirat, who is much better suited to tank magic damage. My magic attackers take down the Regal Peryton without any issues, and Djinn Muirat starts reflecting the incoming magic attacks back at my opponent's monsters.

In the beginning of Round 3, the game looks very much to be decided. Two of my opponents units are very low on health, and even though Doctor Blight has stacked up a bit of health, there is no way he can deal enough damage to take down all my remaining units. Djinn Muirat takes a beating and is in fact finished off, but reflects back some damage, and then its my turn to attack back. After a few strikes, Doctor Blight is left standing all by himself.

The game ends after a few strikes in round 4. Due to the gigantic effort by Desert Dragon, this game ended in my favor. Had he not triggered Retaliate however, the game could easily have ended another way. Victory for me, and some good Reward Points and SPS secured!

Alternative lineups

Immortalis

Obsidian

Thaddius Brood

Byzantine Kitty

Helios Matriarch

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Best of luck in Splinterlands!
Kalkulus

Battle Mage Challenge: What Doesn't Kill You. Strategy, My Battle and Alternative Lineups