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Ahoy and welcome to my newest weekly Battle Mage Secrets post.

The ruleset for this week is called "Up Close and Personal". When this ruleset is active only Monsters with Melee attack can be used during the battle. There are some Monsters that have a Dual attack of Ranged+Melee or Magic+Melee, those can be great picks in this ruleset since they offer that extra damage.

You can recognise the ruleset with the following icon.

Monsters with Opportunity or Sneak are great picks since they can attack from within the backline then. Bringing Monsters with the Shield ability to reduce incoming damage can be great. Also the Thorns ability is really great to return some damage to the attackers.

Demoralize can be a great ability to have in the team to reduce the opponents' Melee damage. Inspire can be a useful ability for your team as it increases your Monsters' Melee damage. Mylor Crowling could be a really useful Summoner in this ruleset as he gives Thorns to all your Monsters.

I would like to share a battle that isn't with the use of Mylor Crowling though, and I have had such a battle recently so it's perfect to share. That battle actually has another ruleset where Summoners don't provide their bonuses or debuffs, so yeah Mylor wouldn't have been an option anyway.

That battle is from a recent Tournament. The Summun Infuria Modern Silver GF Invitational Tournament. In that battle I was up against the player anfaenger.

Here is a picture of our initial lineup.

Battle Rules

This was a battle with a 42 Mana Cap. Half of the Elements were available with Fire, Earth and Life being available. The battle had 3 rulesets:

• Up Close & Personal: Only Monsters with Melee attack may be used in battles.
• Silenced Summoners: Summoners do not give any stat buffs or debuffs or grant/use any abilities.
• Rise of the Commons: Only Common and Rare Monsters may be used in battles.

Here is a link to the battle if you want to check it out: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sm_FPnPFTWnJj5dRsx2ge9f&ref=athunderstruck

Battle Lineup

Alright like I said I wanted to share a battle without using Mylor. Earth is available, but there is the ruleset of Silenced Summoners so Mylor wouldn't be able to give Thorns to the team at all. I still want to go with an Earth team lineup so I'm using Obsidian as my Summoner. The reason for that is the Gold Foil Obsidian that I rent is level 4 and the Gold Foil Mylor I rent is only level 3. So Obsidian will allow me to bring a few Monsters at slightly higher levels.

In the front I have Mycelic Infantry with the Shield ability and some Armour on him as well so he's an excellent tank for that frontline damage. Especially since I won't really have to worry about Monsters with Dual attack of like Magic+Melee as only Common & Rare Monsters can be used. Those with Magic+Melee tend to be Epic or Legendary.

My backline starts off with a the Disintegrator. Bringing the Demoralize ability to reduce my opponents' Melee damage by 1.

Then I have the Sand Worm followed by Goblin Thief to have 2 Monsters with the Sneak ability to deal some damage to my opponents backline.

My last pick is Dumacke Orc, this card also has the Shield ability so it makes an excellent backline protection. It also has the Retaliate ability which gives it a chance to attack back when it gets attacked. So that could help me with taking out my opponent's backline. Due to its low Health of 1 it will also be targeted by Opportunity Monsters and protect my Goblin Thief.

Then between Goblin Thief and Dumacke Orc I have the Xenith Monk. I placed it here as a second layer of protection for my Sand Worm and Goblin Thief. Because if Dumacke Orc dies then my opponent's Sneak Monsters would have to hit the Xenith Monk. Since he has the Heal ability he can stay alive for a while to give my Sand Worm and Goblin Thief more turns to attack.

Battle Analysis

My opponent went with a Life team so that they could use Drybone Barbarian as a frontline tank. A great choice too because it has the Enrage ability so once it takes damage it'll gain a lot of extra Melee attack and some Speed as well. Which could make it a hard hitter.

They also have Disintegrator in the team for that Demorilaze, they placed it 3rd position though so they could bring Sunkai Harvester with the Reach ability in the 2nd position.
Then they also have 2 Monsters with the Sneak ability and one with the Opportunity ability to finish off their team.

Round 1

Dumacke Exile attacks my Dumacke Orc for 1 damage against the Armour.
Goblin Thief attacks their Celestial Harpy for 2 damage.
Sunkair Harvester attacks my Mycelic Infantry but deals no damage due to its 1 attack vs my Shield ability.
Celestia Harpy with Opportunity attacks my Dumacke Orc because of the 1 Health. Dealing 0 damage because of the Shield ability. My Dumacke Orc Retaliates and kills the Celestia Harpy.
Drybone Barbarian hits my Mycelic Infantry for 2 damage against the Armour.
Sand Worm attacks their Stitch Leech for 4 damage and kills it immediately.
Mycelic Infantry attacks their Drybone Barbarian for 3 damage, causing the Drybone Barbarian to now get Enraged bringing its Melee attack to 6 and Speed to 3.

That's the end of the first round. Here is how our lineups look now.

Round 2

Dumacke Exile once again attacks my Dumacke Orc for 1 damage against the Armour. No Retaliate here for the 2nd time so perhaps these Dumacke's don't like to Retaliate against their kin.
Goblin Thief attacks Dumacke Exile for 2 damage breaking his Armour.
Drybone Barbarian attacks my Mycelic Infantry for 3 damage, but it still had 1 Armour so that excess damage is completely wasted as it only takes away that 1 Armour.
Sunkair Harvester attacks and deals 0 damage to my Mycelic Infantry.
Sand Worm attacks the Dumacke Exile for 4 damage, leaving it at 1 Health.
Mycelic Infantry tries to attack Drybone Barbarian but ends up missing. (80% chance to hit, 20% chance to miss)

That concludes round 2. No Monsters died during this round. Here is a picture of our lineups (somehow the Enrage icon got bugged on top of Drybone Barbarian's picture.

Round 3

Dumacke Exile starts the round again with attacking my Dumacke Orc and dealing 1 damage to the Armour. This time the Dumacke Orc does actually Retaliate. So scratch my earlier comment about them not Retaliating against their kin. With that Retaliate she deals 2 damage back to Dumacke Exile which is enough to kill him.
Drybone Barbarian attacks Mycelic Infantry for 3 damage (half of that 6 Melee attack because of the Shield ability).
Goblin Thief now attacks their Disintegrator for 2 damage against the Armour leaving it at 1 Armour.
Sunkair Harvester attacks and deals 0 damage to my Mycelic Infantry.
Sand Worm hits their Disintegrator for 4 damage against the Armour that was left at 1 so wasting 3 of its damage as it only breaks that 1 Armour.
Mycelic Infantry hits their Drybone Barbarian for 3 damage.

That's the end of that round.

At this point the victory is pretty much secured for me.
It will tak the Drybone Barbarian 2 rounds to take out my Mycelic Infantry.
Meanwhile this round Goblin Thief and Sand Worm will be able to take out their Disintegrator as they have more Speed they'll be guaranteed to hit it. And the round after that they'll work together to take out Sunkair Harvester.
At that point they'd be able to start hitting Drybone Barbarian as it'll be the only Monster left on their team. While Drybone Barbarian would spend that round destroying the Armour on my Disintegrator.

In this last picture you can see the result of what I described.

Just before Goblin Thief takes out the Drybone Barbarian. GG!

Was My Strategy Successful?

Yeah it was a good strategy to have the Mycelic Infantry up front and the Dumacke Orc in the back for that Shield ability to protect my frontline and backline. Dumacke Orc brings the bonus of also being a distraction for Monsters with the Opportunity ability as we witnessed in round 1.

We both brought a Distintegrator to reduce our opponent's Monsters Melee attack. That in combination with the Shield ability on my front and backline really caused my opponent to do low amounts of damage.

Conclusion

Combining the Demoralize ability with Monsters that have the Shield ability in a battle of only Melee Monsters is really useful. Especially when only Common & Rare Monsters can be used as there won't really be any Magic damage to worry about.

I do wonder how it would have gone if my opponent also played a Monster with the Shield ability to protect the backline. As it would've definitely taken longer for my team to get through that backline then. If I would've taken 2 more turns to get through that backline then their Drybone Barbarian could've started to deal some serious damage to my other Monsters. So yeah that makes me curious to see how it would've gone.

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