_{Thumbnail for the weekly challenge provided by @splinterlands}

Ahoy, welcome to my latest Battle Mage Secrets post.

The featured ruleset for this week's challenge is Heavy Hitters. With that ruleset active all Monsters gain the Knock Out ability. This allows them to do double damage to targets that are Stunned. So to be able to benefit from this ruleset you would have to bring at least one or more Monsters that have the Stun ability.

You can recognise the ruleset with this icon.

This week's battle I'm sharing with you is from the recent Gauntlet Wild Bronze Invitational Tournament where I played against zer0cool11.

Here is a picture of our initial lineup.

Battle Rules

This was a battle with a 44 Mana Cap. Only the Fire, Water and Death Elements were available. The battle had 3 rulesets which were:

• Wands Out: Only Monsters with Magic attack may be used in battles.
• Aimless: All Monsters have the Scattershot ability.
• Heavy Hitters: All Monsters have the Knock Out ability.

Here is a link to the battle if you want to check it out: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sm_cQvqtU62he9gTF653Qk8&ref=athunderstruck

Battle Lineup

Alright so one of the rulesets is that we can only use Monsters with Magic attack. That makes Water a great pick here because it's a Wild Format Tournament so Alric Stormbringer and Valnamor are available. Death could be good options too as we have Owster Rotwell with Magic Reflect or Thaddius Brood to lower the Magic attack on the opponent's team. Because of the addition of Scattershot ruleset I decide I'll go with Owster Rotwell as that way my random hits against the backline combined with their backline taking Magic Reflect damage could help take some out fast.

Up front I bring Djinn Muirat because it has the Void Armor ability and can keep the enemy frontline busy for a little while hopefully.
Then I have Prismatic Energy, even if there is the Scattershot ability it's good to have another high Health unit for when the tank goes down.
Usut is my next pick, I could've placed him further back but yeah with the way RNG works I just wanted to keep the higher health up front.
Cabalist is up next, I'm bringing this one because he has Amplify ability at level 1 and that is really going to pair well with the Owster Rotwell Summoner pick as that Magic Reflect damage my opponent will take is gonna be stronger.
My next pick is Revealer to have a Monster with the Stun ability in my team. It's big RNG cause first Stun has to land and then the Scattershot from another Monster has to hit that same one to make use of Knock Out but wanted to try anyway.
Last but not least I have Spirit Hoarder with the Triage ability to hopefully Heal my backline a bit from the Scattershot damage.

Battle Analysis

My opponent went for Valnamor. I would prefer to see Alric Stormbringer because well Valnamor gives +1 Speed and +1 Health on top of the +1 Magic damage. Which isn't ideal as it makes their team faster and that extra Health could also cause them to survive a hit.

Round 1

Round 1 starts with Djinn Oshannus hitting my Djinn Muirat for 3 damage to the Armour, leaving that at 1. He takes 2 damage back from Magic Reflect. Would've been more but yeah he has the Void ability.
Ruler of the Seas goes next. He targeted my Usut! Causing the Blast damage to hit my Prismatic Energy and Cabalist as well. One good thing here is that Magic Reflect first returns the damage from the Blast before the initial hit. So Ruler of the Seas first takes 2 reflected damage from Prismatic Energy, another 2 from Cabalist and finally the Magic Reflect from his direct hit to Usut for 3 damage. Which ends up killing the Ruler of the Seas and that triggers Bloodlust on my Usut!
My Usut gains +1 Magic, +1 Speed, +1 Armour and +1 Health from the Bloodlust.
Runemancer Kye hits my Djinn Muirat to destroy his Armour, since she hit the Armour she doesn't Lifeleech. She takes 3 damage back from Magic Reflect.
Coral Wraith attacks my Cabalist and kills him, taking 3 damage from Magic Reflect back.
Captain's Ghost hits my Usut for 3 damage bringing him down to 4 Health and taking 3 damage from Magic Reflect.
Prismatic Energy hits Captain's Ghost for 1 damage.
Djinn Muirat hits Djinn Oshannus for 1 damage.
My opponent's Spirit Hoarder heals his Captain's Ghost for 2 Health. Then attacks my Revealer for 2 damage and taking 1 Magic Reflect damage.
Usut hits and kills Coral Wraith. Triggering Bloodlust again so he gains another +1 Magic, +1 Speed, +1 Armour and +1 Health.
Revealer hits Spirit Hoarder for 1 damage and stuns it! Any hit against my opponent's Spirit Hoarder will be double damage now because of Knock Out.
My Spirit Hoarder heals Usut for 3 Health and then hits my opponent's Captain's Ghost for 1 damage.

This is the end of the first round. Here is a picture of our lineups now.

It was really too bad I lost my Cabalist during round 1 already as that made me lost the Amplify ability.

Round 2

Djinn Oshannus hits my Djinn Muirat for 3 damage, and takes 1 damage back from Magic Reflect.
Runemancer Kye hits my Djinn Muirat for 3 damage too. She Life Leeches to gain +2 Health and then takes 2 damage from Magic Reflect.
Usut hits my opponent's Spirit Hoarder for 8 damage!! Because Spirit Hoarder got Stunned by my Revealer. It is serious overkill though as it only had 2 Health 😂😂 Because of this kills Usut triggers Bloodlust to gain +1 in all his stats again.
Captain's Ghost kills my Spirit Hoarder, taking 2 Magic Reflect damage.
Prismatic Energy hits Djinn Oshannus but deals no damage because of Void.
Djinn Muirat hits Djinn Oshannus for 1 damage.
Revealer hits Captain's Ghost for 1 damage.

That's the end of this round, here is a picture of our lineups now.

Round 3

Djinn Oshannus kills my Djinn Muirat and receives 1 damage from the Magic Reflect.
Usut hits Runemancer Kye for 5 damage.
Runemancer Kye hits Prismatic Energy for 3 damage, gains +2 Health from Life Leech and takes 2 damage from Magic Reflect.
Captain's Ghost hits Prismatic Energy for 3 damage as well and takes 2 damage back.
Prismatic Energy hits Djinn Oshannus but deals no damage because of Void ability.
Revealer also hits Djinn Oshannus without dealing damage. No Stun either.

That wraps this round up, so let's look at our lineups now.

Round 4

Djinn Oshannus kills Prismatic Energy and takes 1 Magic Reflect damage.
Usut deals 3 damage to Djinn Oshannus.
Runemancer Kye kills Revealer, Life Leeches to gain +1 Health this time because Revealer only had 2 Health and even though she dealt 3 damage it only takes into account the actual Life of the target when considering the Life Leech ability. Because of that she got to 2 Health and dies from the 2 Magic Reflect damage.
Captain's Ghost attacks Usut for 3 damage, takes 2 damage back and that Magic Reflect damage kills him. Which triggers Usut's Bloodlust and he gains another +1 to all his stats.

This round is now over. Not much of a lineup left as we're both down to our last Monster. Let's see it though.

Well this 5th round really speaks for itself. Djinn Oshannus is still faster so he will attack Usut but Usut is still at 7 Health while Djinn Oshannus can only deal 3 damage. So he will damage Usut but then die from the Magic Reflect damage. GG!

Was My Strategy Successful?

This strategy did work out quite well. Some stuff came down to RNG though. Like Ruler of the Seas hitting my Usut in round 1 causing Usut to get the Bloodlust on that kill from Magic Reflect. Ruler of the Seas would've died from Magic Reflect no matter what as long as it didn't hit my Djinn Muirat or Spirit Hoarder (cause then only 1 other Monster would've been hit my Blast and he would've only taken 5 Magic Reflect damage to his 6 Health).
Cabalist helped out quite well with the Amplify ability too to make the Magic Reflect stronger. Unfortunately he did go down during the first round but at least his Amplify worked for a few hits.

Conclusion

Usut with the Bloodlust ability was quite nice, cause whenever he killed something or he gets his and the Magic Reflect kills something he triggers Bloodlust to get stronger.
At the end you could see him with 7 Health meaning he would've survived 2 more hits from Djinn Oshannus. Even if Runemancer Kye didn't hit Revealer but hit Usut instead he would've still had a Health left after being hit by both of them.
Revealer only stunned once so I didn't really get to make use of the Knock Out from Heavy Hitters except for that 1 Overkill hit from Usut against the Stunned target XD
So at least I did use the Knock Out one time!

That's it for my Battle Mage Secrets challenge this week. Thank you for reading!

If you haven't signed up for Splinterlands yet and want to check it out, you can do so with my referral link at: https://splinterlands.com?ref=athunderstruck