Thumbnail for the weekly challenge provided by @splinterlandsAhoy and welcome to my latest Battle Mage Secrets post.
The featured ruleset for this week is Broken Arrows. When this ruleset is active Monsters that have a Ranged attack can't be used in battle. This also includes Monsters that have a Dual attack of either Ranged+Melee or Magic+Ranged. With that ruleset active it can often be good to use the Thorns and/or Magic Reflect abilities to return damage to Melee and Magic attackers. Other abilities as well like reducing damage from those attacks with Shield and Void abilities. One example that I love is using Mylor Crowling in this ruleset with Lord Arianthus up front. At silver levels it has Magic Reflect and then with Mylor I'd be giving it Thorns too.
You can recognise the ruleset with this icon.
The battle I want to share this week is from a tournament that started this weekend and is still ongoing at the time of writing. It's the Shadowalkers Skirmish Tournament. In this battle I played against the opponent reconnectnature.
Here is a picture of our initial lineup.
Battle Rules
This was a battle with a 14 Mana Cap. Half the Elements were available with Fire, Life and Dragon being the ones we could pick from. The battle had 3 rulesets which were:
- Earthquake: Non-flying Monsters take 2 Melee damage at the end of each round.
- Broken Arrows: Ranged attack Monsters may not be used in battles.
- Ferocity: All Monsters have the Fury ability.
Here is a link to the battle if you want to check it out: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sm_MYsrBQcMcrzpxoRobImu&ref=athunderstruck
Battle Lineup
This can be a tricky battle to make a strong lineup for because there is a low amount of Mana available and on top of that there is the Earthquake ruleset which will cause Monsters without the Flying-ability to take 3 physical damage every round.
I decided I want to have a team with some Heal included, but preferably have Flying as well so the Heal is for damage that I take from the opponent's team and making sure I don't take additional Earthquake damage. Uriel the Purifier is one big unit with the Flying ability and at level 2 he has the Heal ability too. Now he does have a high Mana Cost, 11 Mana. That would mean I'd only have 3 Mana left. Luckily there are a few Summoners available that cost 3 Mana as it is a Wild Tournament. My Mother Kala and Lorna Shine aren't at Silver+ levels though so they can't use Uriel at level 2. I could choose either Tyrus Paladium or go with Dragon and pick Camila Sungazer. Since Uriel already has Armor I figured it'd be better to use Camila Sungazer as she reduces the Melee attack on my opponents team by 1.
So I picked Camila Sungazer and chose Life to pick Uriel the Purifier. Now I used up all of my Mana, but we can still put Monsters with 0 Mana Cost. Uriel the Purifier needs to recharge every odd turn and then deals triple damage every even turn.
I picked Soul Fiend and Furious Chicken as they're both 0 Mana Cost cards and put them in front of him. They can take a few initial hits this way.
Battle Analysis
My opponent has picked Tyrus Paladium as their summoner for 3 Mana so they can also use 11 Mana for the rest of the team. Unlike me they did actually go for a full team. With 4 Monsters that have the Flying ability! Pelacor Conjurer up front with some Magic Reflect on it. Then they have Celestial Harpy as a Melee attacker with Opportunity and Flying. They have some Magic damage as well with Light Elemental and Enchanted Pixie both with the Flying ability.
To finish up their team they brought a Soul Fiend and Furious Chicken just like me. With the Soul Fiend behind Pelacor Conjurer so it can take a potential Opportunity hit and Furious Chicken in the back to take a potential Sneak hit.
Celestial Harpy would have 2 Melee damage but because of my Camila Sungazer it gets reduced to 1.
Round 1
The first round starts with their Light Elemental killing my Soul Fiend. Followed immediately by Enchanted Pixie taking out my Furious Chicken.
Uriel the Purifier is just Charging his attack as it's an odd mana round.
Celestial Harpy attacks Uriel the Purifier on his Armor.
That ends the round as there is no other damage that can be done. Here is our current lineup.
Round 2
This round starts with the Earthquake damage. Which destroys the Armor on my opponent's Soul Fiend and Furious Chicken.
Light Elemental and Enchanted Pixie attack my Uriel the Purifier for 3 damage total to his Health.
Uriel the Purifier now has his turn and heals 3 Health, so back to full. His attack is readied so tries to attack and hits Pelacor Conjurer, for 9 damage BUT Pelacor Conjurer has 1 Armor thanks to my opponent's Summoner. So Uriel's 9 damage only destroys that 1 Armor unfortunately.
Celestial Harpy hits Uriel the Purifier against his Armor for 1 damage.
That ends that round. Basically not much has changed, just 3 of my opponents Monsters lost their Armor and 2 of that was because of Earthquake. And my Uriel lost 1 Armor.
Round 3
This round starts with Earthquake again on Soul Fiend and Furious Chicken in my opponents' team. Last round it destroyed their Armor so now it'll kill them.
Light Elemental and Enchanted Pixie hurt Uriel the Purifier for 3 damage to his Health again.
Uriel the Purifier Heals that 3 Health again. This turn he is Charging so he doesn't attack.
Celestial Harpy hits Uriel for 1 damage against his Armor.
That ends this round.
Round 4
No more Earthquake damage this round as all Monsters still alive have the Flying-ability.
Light Elemental and Enchanted Pixie hit my Uriel the Purifier for 3 damage to his Health again.
Uriel once again Heals that back up. His attack is charged and he attacks Pelacor Conjurer for 9 damage killing it. I'm glad he didn't miss or it would take him 2 more turns to try killing it as he'd have to spend next turn Charging again. He only had 10% chance to miss anyway since they both have Flying so just the 1 Speed difference.
Celestial Harpy takes away 1 Armor from Uriel again.
Here is our lineup after that round.
Round 5 and 6
Just like usual Light Elemental and Enchanted Pixie will hurt Uriel the Purifier for 3 damage to his Health which he Heals back up.
During round 6 Uriel will destroy Celestial Harpy's Armor when his attack is ready.
Also in round 6 Celestial Harpy will be able to destroy the last pieces of Uriel the Purifier's Armor and then his Celestial Harpy will finally be able to attack his Health too and then he can't outheal that damage for a moment.
Round 7 and 8
Same stuff as usual, but in round 7 Celestial Harpy hits Uriel's Health for the first time. Which means in round 8 when it's his turn to heal he will have lost 4 Health and only heal back up to 10 Health instead of full as he can only Heal for 3.
Unfortunately for Celestial Harpy she dies in round 8 to Uriel's Charged attack before she has a chance to hurt him again.
I paused the game when Uriel killed Celestial Harpy.
You can see that Uriel is now at 10 Health instead of 11.
In the remaining rounds my opponent can't kill me because now they only have 3 damage per turn left with the Light Elemental and Enchanted Pixie. Which Uriel can heal up every round. It's still going to take a lot of turns for me to win, but at this point Uriel can't die so I'll win after those rounds.
It'll just take a while because Uriel can only attack every 2 turns and he will have to break the Armor on Light Elemental, 2 turns later he can kill it. Another 2 turns needed to break the Armor on Enchanted Pixie and then 2 more turns after that to kill it. So I won't post screenshots of those rounds anymore as it'll just almost be the same every round. You can see I will be able to sustain that damage and win eventually.
Was My Strategy Successful?
Yeah this was a great strategy to pick Uriel the Purifier with his Heal. If my opponent had a Monster with Affliction that could've ruined my team if it landed, but because of the low Mana battle and Earthquake it was quite unlikely that they'd have anything with Affliction in their team. So Uriel did seem like a great choice.
That -1 Melee from Camila was a good pick too, it caused Celestial Harpy to only deal 1 damage per round which caused her to take forever to destroy Uriel's Armor. Now she needed 6 turns to destroy it, otherwise that would've only been 3 turns. Well maybe 4 if I had picked Tyrus instead of Camila but that still would've been faster. Then he would've started losing Health faster too so yeah Camila as my Summoner was a great pick.
Conclusion
My opponent did also make a good play with Tyrus Paladium to give 1 Armor to all of his Monsters. This really slowed my Uriel the Purifier down. He can already only attack every 2 rounds because of Charge and then on top of that he had to break that 1 Armor with his Charged attack. So he needed 4 rounds to kill anything. Because of that the damage from Celestial Harpy really could've added up if I didn't use Camila to give -1 Melee attack to my opponent. Which might have been a close battle then.
The pick of Pelacor Conjurer as a low Mana Flying tank was also a good choice since it has Magic Reflect. Unfortunately for my opponent I didn't bring any Magic attackers but that card was still a good pick in case!
That's it for my Battle Mage Secrets challenge this week. Thank you for reading!
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