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Ahoy fellow Splinterlands players. Welcome to my latest weekly Battle Mage Secrets post.

For this week's challenge the featured ruleset is "Up to Eleven". When this ruleset is active all Monsters gain the Amplify ability. What this ability does is: Increases Magic Reflect, Return Fire, and Thorns damage to all enemy units by 1. So bringing one or more Monsters that have the Magic Reflect, Return Fire and/or Thorns abilities could be a great idea to get some of that damage returned if Monsters with the right attack type do attack your Monsters with those abilities.

You can recognise the ruleset with the following icon.

There isn't always a great opportunity to make use of this ability as it depends on what is available to play and the other rulesets too. In my recent battles where this Up to Eleven ruleset came up I haven't been able to make much use of any of those 3 damage returning abilities, so those didn't feel good to share. But then I checked the Tournament from bunsbagsandcaps that I mentioned in my latest End of Season video. I won that Tournament and earned some DEC and a Chaos Legion Pack.

During that Tournament in the semi-final round I had a battle with the Up to Eleven ruleset where I made use of Thorns. That one then felt prefect to share! In that battle I was up against the player brimostark.

Here is a picture of our initial lineup.

Battle Rules

This was a battle with a 21 Mana Cap. Only the Fire and Earth Elements could be used in this battle. The battle had 3 rulesets:

• Healed Out: All healing abilities are removed from Monsters and Summoners.
• Up to Eleven: All Monsters have the Amplify ability.
• Equal Opportunity: All Monsters have the Opportunity ability.

Here is a link to the battle if you want to check it out: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_787678f043a9db9fb8fd0e59ed9a66f9&ref=athunderstruck

Battle Lineup

With this battle only Fire and Earth were available. A Fire team would likely consist of mostly Monsters with Melee attacks. An Earth team might be more focused on Magic with Obsidian, or perhaps anti-magic focused with Immortalis in which case there could be some Melee units too. I did also notice my opponent used Scarred Llama Mage in some other battles this Tournament before we faced each other. I won't really expect a Llama + Kron combo though because of the Healed Out. Sure a Last Stand Kron would still do a lot of damage, but since it won't be able to heal it might be taken down by having a few Monsters on the team.
I also don't expect Obsidian that much because of the Opportunity ruleset. Earth's Magic attack Monsters are generally slower, with some exceptions, so some of them could be taken out with Opportunity before they even get a chance to attack.

With those thoughts I decide I'll go for Mylor Crowling, giving the Thorns ability to my whole team, then I can deal Amplified Thorns damage if my opponent has Melee Monsters that attack me.

I place Hill Giant up front so it can serve as a tank to deal with the enemies' frontline.

Then I bring Pelacor Bandit as he's got some solid Health, also some Armour to protect from at least 1 Melee attack. He also has the Flying ability so there's a chance they'd miss him. I don't wanna place him in the front though cause I want him to make use of that Opportunity ability to attack from the backline.

Then I place Fungus Flinger between Hill Giant and Pelacor Bandit so that once it dies its Martyr ability will buff up Hill Giant and Pelacor Bandit.

With that in mind I place Venari Marksrat on the other side of the Pelacor Bandit to have a 2nd Martyr buff. Well actually that'll be the first one since it has lower Health and will be attacked because of the Opportunity ruleset before the Fungus Flinger.

On the other side of the Venari Marksrat I place Venator Kinjo. Since this one has Camouflage it won't be able to be attacked by Opportunity at all. Its only downfall could be a random Scattershot. With it not being able to be attacked and then getting buffed by Martyr it is a nice little damage addition.

Lastly I place Fungus Fiend. It costs 0 Mana and is great to just take 1 or 2 initial hits from Opportunity before the rest of my team takes damage and might help them deal some damage first.

Battle Analysis

Well it seems my opponent decided to use Scarred Llama Mage as their Summoner for that Last Stand ability. Like they used against other people earlier in the Tournament. But as expected it is without Kron because all Monsters lost their Healing abilities, making Kron less viable.

Instead it seems their play is to have Venari Knifer go into Last Stand to increase its Health, Speed and Melee Damage. Which would make it quite a bit stronger and that increased Speed could make it harder to hit. There is a Fungus Flinger in front of it too to buff up its stats more.

On top of that the Venari Knifer has the Thorns ability too, so by playing that one my opponent is also going to make use of that Up to Eleven ruleset. They also brought the Failed Summoner to have some Magic Reflect as well in case of me bringing Monsters with Magic attack. So that's also good. Unfortunately for them I didn't bring any Magic attack Monsters though. The Scarred Llama Mage Summoner also makes all of their Monsters slightly tankier with giving +2 Health to all of them.

Round 1

Their Venari Knifer attacks my Fungus Fiend, killing it, but also taking 3 damage from the Amplified Thorns in the process.
My Venator Kinjo attacks their Fungus Flinger, dealing 1 damage to it.
Pelacor Bandit now attacks and kills their Fungus Flinger. Which gives its Martyr buff to their Failed Summoner and Venari Knifer, increasing all of the stats they have.
Their Venari Scout attacks my Hill Giant dealing 1 damage to it, but then taking 3 damage from Amplified Thorns in return. Leaving it at 2 Health.
Now my Venari Marksrat deals 1 damage to their Venari Scout.
Then it's my Fungus Flinger's turn and it also deals 1 damage to their Venari Scout and killing it, which brings their Failed Summoner to the 1st position.
My Hill Giant ends the round by trying to attack the Failed Summoner, but ends up missing! With 1 Speed vs 3 Speed that was 80% chance to hit or 20% chance to miss. Seems like that Martyr buff which increased Failed Summoner's Speed has paired well with RNG to make it evade my attack.

Here is the batlefield after Round 1 ends.

Round 2

Round 2 starts with their Venari Knifer attacking my Venari Marksrat. Thanks to the earlier Martyr buff it got it now has 3 Melee attack which is exactly enough to kill my Venari Marksrat. In the process of doing that the Venari Knifer does take 3 damage from Amplified Thorns.
My Venari Marksrat is dead now and gives its Martyr buff to Pelacor Bandit and Venator Kinjo, increasing all their stats by 1.
Due to that Amplified Thorns damage their Venari Knifer took it now has less Health than their Failed Summoner, which will make it the target of my attacks because of the Opportunity ruleset.

That means my Venator Kinjo now attacks the Venari Knifer. My Venator Kinjo has the Reflection Shield ability which means it doesn't take any damage from Thorns, so it can deal 2 damage to that Venari Knifer without having to worry about its Thorns ability!
Then my Pelacor Bandit also tries to attack the Venari Knifer, but it ends up missing!! That's 3 Speed vs 5 Speed so it was the same 80% chance to hit, 20% chance to miss as my Hill Giant had vs their Failed Summoner in the previous round.
My Fungus Flinger now tries to attack the Venari Knifer too, but ends up missing as well! This one was more likely to miss though with 4 Speed difference it had 60% chance to hit and 40% chance to miss.
Hill Giant finished this round by hitting the Failed Summoner and dealing 2 damage to it.

The battlefield after Round 2 is over.

Round 3

Venari Knifer goes first again with that high Speed. It attacks my Fungus Flinger for 3 damage, leaving it at 1 Health. But it takes that Amplified Thorns damage from hitting me even without that Amplify the Thorns was enough to kill the Venari Knifer upon that contact.
That means their Failed Summoner is now the only Monster left on their team, gaining the Last Stand which brings its Health up to 9 and its Speed to 5.

At this point that means it is a victory for me! That Failed Summoner can't deal any damage except for Magic Reflect but I have no Monsters with Magic attack.
The increased Speed could mean I miss a few hits though and that could make the fight last 1 more round.
And yes my Fungus Flinger ends up missing, which left Failed Summoner at 1 Health at the end of round 3.

So the fight did go into a round 4 where Venator Kinjo did the final hit. GG!

Was My Strategy Successful?

Yeah it was a good strategy to use Mylor Crowling here for giving my whole team the Thorns ability. As there wasn't a high chance for many Magic attack Monsters and definitely not a high chance for many Ranged attack Monsters with the low Mana Cap.

Having the Venari Marksrat between Pelacor Bandit and Venator Kinjo was really great too as the Martyr buff increases all their stats by 1. And Venator Kinjo has the Camouflage and Reflection Shield abilities so it can't be attacked directly and it also won't take Thorns damage. Making it extremely useful additional damage for a low Mana cost.

Conclusion

As expected there could be a chance for my opponent to use Scarred Llama Mage but it would likely be without Kron then because of no Healing abilities. He'd still get a lot of Magic damage and high Health if he'd go into Last Stand, but then I would've had strength in numbers and likely have been able to take him out easily. It would depend a bit on the RNG with hits like this fight I had 2 misses with just 20% chance to miss. That could still make a huge difference if he did bring Kron.

His idea of getting a Martyr buff on Venari Knifer and trying to get that Venari Knifer into Last Stand was a great idea though! It would've been pretty strong! But that plan got ruined because it took all that Amplified Thorns damage bringing its Health lower than the Failed Summoner's Health and causing it to get attacked from the Opportunity ability.

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