My BATTLE MAGE SECRET Weekly Challenge! Going the Distance

Hello there, this is my entry to the latest "Battle Mage Secret Weekly Challenge!". If you want to participate or learn more about the challenge, click here. This week we have to formulate a strategy with the Going the Distance ruleset.

RULESET: Going the Distance

With Going the Distance ruleset in action, only Monsters with ranged attacks can be used. If the unit is multi-attack type one of the attacks has to be ranged.

This ruleset is very easy to understand as only those units which have ranged attacks can be used. This ruleset restricts many units in your lineup. It is important to note that a multi-attack type unit can be used as long as it has a ranged attack as one of the attack types. This makes those multi-attack units quite powerful.

As we know we are going to face ranged attackers in this ruleset. we can start strategising against them or use units which debuff all of the opponent units. There are many options and I used one of them in my battle.

Let's see how this ruleset affects my lineup and how I strategies for the following battle.

My Lineup

This is my lineup for the battle

Position	Summoner/Monsters
Summoner	Ilthain
Position 1	Gargoya Devil
Position 2	Runeslinger
Position 3	Halfing Alchemist
Position 4	Venari Crystalsmith
Position 5	Pelacor Arablast

It was just a 28-mana cap battle and only had the "Going the Distance" ruleset.

All elements except Death were active during this battle. I went with Life as I wanted to punish the ranged attackers by giving all of my friendly units 'Return Fire' ability and Ilthain was the summoner who gave that ability to all.

I used the Gargoya Devil in the first position as it was the only ranged attacker in my lineup who had the 'Close Range' ability and could attack from that position. It costs 7 mana and comes with 'Flying' ability which helps it dodge more attacks.

RuneSlinger came in the next position, it is a strong unit dealing 2 ranged attack damage with impressive speed. It also comes with a 'stun' ability and has enough health to last for some time in case it comes at the first position.

In the next position, I used the Halfing Alchemist. It comes with an impressive ability called 'halving' which reduces its target attack in half and this can change the fate of the battle alone. It only costs 2 mana and comes with a shield too so it was an easy choice for me to use this one.

In the fourth position in my lineup, I used a healing unit, Venari Crystalsmith. The 'tank heal' ability helps a lot in these low to mid-cap mana battles. It only costs 4 mana and comes with relatively good health.

Last but not least was Pelacor Arbalest. It costs 6 mana to use but justifies this cost by its sheer strength. It deals 2 ranged attack damage twice in each round because of its 'double strike' ability.

Now that my lineup was set, it was time for battle.

I will share my battle here, which I have uploaded to YouTube.

My Strategy

Since this was only a 28 mana cap battle with a very restrictive ruleset of only ranged attackers allowed. I wanted to punish all those ranged attackers and it can be done when you use units with 'Return Fire' ability. So, I used the Ilthain which gave all my friendly units the aforementioned ability. Equipped with 'Return Fire' my opponent's units with get punished and receive damage with each attack they do.

Now, I used Gargoya Devil in the first position so it could attack from this position and supported it with healing provided by Venari Crystalsmith from the back.

Halfing Alchemist was placed in my lineup to reduce the attacking strength of my opponent. Along with units which deal a good amount of damage like Pelacor Arbalest.

This strategy, as you will see, worked in my favour and gave me a comfortable win at the end.

My opponent went with an interesting strategy of increasing the ranged attack of all their units by 1. But I was prepared for this and as more damage was dealt by them they would receive even more damage back because I had the 'Return Fire' ability on all my units.

Unfortunately for them, they didn't have any units with 'Close Range' ability and they didn't even use a strong tank at the front of the lineup.

Zenith Archer was the first one to go and soon Aria Bandit followed it too. This was a great start for me.

But wait, it went from bad to worse for my opponent as their Pelacor Arablast died from the return damage after hitting my Gargoya Devil. All this happened in the first round must be tough to see for my opponent.

In the next few rounds, their Venari Crystalsmith tried to save the day but it was too little too late.

This was an easy win in the end and it was possible partly due to my better-level units and partly because of my strategy of using Ilthain and punishing the ranged attackers.

Conclusion

Going the Distance is a challenging ruleset as you would find yourself with a lack of choices and less number of units to form a lineup. And ranged attackers don't usually attack from the first position unless they have special ability so it makes this ruleset a bit harder to come up with a good lineup. But since we know that they can only use ranged attackers we can use this to our advantage just like I did in the above battle and punish them for using more attacking power by giving back damage. Having 'Fire return' or abilities which give debuffs to all the enemy units is recommended.

However, there should be a good balance of attack and defence, especially in low to mid-mana cap battles.

There could be multiple strategies in this ruleset and it is all based on what type of deck you have. Let me know which one you prefer in this ruleset.

Thanks for reading...

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Note:

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