Hello, battle mages!

This week's Splinterlands challenge called the Battle Mage Secrets is all about the Briar Patch ruleset. I have a feeling someone is going to get stung so let's find out who's bleeding after this battle!

Entering The Arena

Here are my scouting results. Seems like my opponent favors Fire and Water splinters and I planned my strategy with the latter one in my mind.

In this 38-mana battle, all the possible splinters were available except for Dragon. The rules of combat included two rulesets:

Briar Patch is giving every monster on the battlefield the Thorns ability while Earthquake will deal 2 melee damage after each round to non-flying units.

My first thought was that it's too bad I don't have any monsters with Amplify currently on my team since that would have dealt even more thorns damage. Still, I have a couple of ideas on how to play with these rulesets, let's check them out!

My Team

My all-time favorite summoner - the old man Alric Stormbringer.

Still haven't found a replacement for him although I've thought about Delwyn Dragonscale who also provides +1 magic but is a bit more expensive costing 5 mana points.

Delwyn is also a Dragon splinter summoner but of course, I could still go with my favorite water magic monsters.

Still, like so many times, I'll be heading to this battle with the trustworthy Alric.

Djinn Oshannus was my choice for a tank unit for a couple of reasons. First of all, it has that great Void ability. This will come in handy if my opponent would like to avoid melee monsters and go with magic(as I did) since this is all thorns battle. Even if this would be the case, many players still use melee tanks so Oshannus will probably have an advantage with magic & thorns against them.

It gets even better. Venari Wavesmith will provide +2 armor to Osnannus making him endure those possible melee attacks better and deal some damage himself too. Wavesmiths Protect ability will also protect herself and other units which might be crucial since the Earthquake ruleset is in play.

Riverboat Captain offers excellent firepower with his +2 to magic which will be boosted to 3 because of Alrics summoner buff. If this wasn't enough he will also deal some additional damage to adjacent monsters with the Blast ability!

The fragile but sometimes lethal Ice Pixie is one of my latest addition when I went on a shopping spree just a while ago. A solid choice for an earthquake battle because of her Flying ability.

Here's another fresh addition to my water magic team. Sea Genie brings a nice +2 amount of magic to the table. He is quite expensive costing 6 mana and isn't the fastest unit but just like Ice Pixie, he has the Flying ability which justifies his spot in this battle.

Swamp Spitter is just one great Soulbound monster! Even on level one, he is really useful with his Repair ability. If the opponent should have Sneak monsters who will target the last monster, Swamp Spitter still has a good chance to survive cos he'll repair his own armor. That's why he is standing in the last spot.

So, these are my guys, now let's see what they got.

Opponent Team

And yes, I am facing up another water team but with Kelya Frendul leading the charge.

A couple of notions:

- Disintegrator is an interesting choice as a tank monster. Perhaps they are counting on its armor and the idea that I would bang my head against doing damage to myself because of the Briar Patch ruleset.

- Diemonshark is another one I'm wondering about...Trample ability will make it perform another strike if it manages to destroy one of my monsters. Is it a good or a bad thing, that remains to be seen.

- Djinn Oshannus is also on this team but it's hiding in the middle. They probably want to save it for later.

- Merdaali Guardian is a tank healer, one that I'm missing. This might prove to be an excellent choice for a battle with earthquake ruleset. If I don't manage to hit it, she will be able to heal the tank maybe three times.

- Deeplurker has the opportunity ability which means that it'll target my weaker units. Not a good thing.

-  And lastly there is Ice Pixie, the only flying on the team.

All in all, it seems to me that instead of flying monsters they seem to count on the armor provided by Kelya Frendul to minimize the damage done by earthquakes. I would have expected to see more magic or ranged units though.

The Battle

If you want to watch the whole battle just click this link or/and continue to read the highlights!

ROUND 1: Speed seemed to be the key here. They had the advantage but their fastest units only tickled Djinn Oshannus. When it was my turn, our fastest monsters quickly took out the Disintegrator. Their Deeplurker made a miss and Diemonshark was defeated with a couple of swift magic attacks.

ROUND 2: The second round started with earthquakes that stripped off the armor from many monsters. After a few attacks on both sides, it seemed that I was in a better position having two flying monsters left. Besides that, their healthiest unit was a melee one that would be taking damage since we all have the thorns ability.

ROUND 3: Interesting start for the round! An earthquake took out their healer and we took their Oshannus. Deeplurker was now in front with 4 health left and after Ice Pixie took half those away, it made sort of a kamikaze attack on Djinn Oshannus. The battle was over - their Ice Pixie had no chance to fly away.

Conclusion

Well, this was probably not the best example of Briar Patch ruleset even though my opponent used a couple of melee monsters. I still believe the best way to play with it is to use magic & armor(protect). Therefore I'd say my strategy worked perfectly.

As for Thorns ability, Cursed Windeku and Djinn Chwala are both monsters I use quite often because of this ability so it's kinda cool to use different tanks with Briar Patch and imagine how powerful they would be with Thorns.

Briar Patch & Earthquake rulesets are an interesting combo since both could be very harmful to your monsters so there is a lot to take into consideration!

Thank you for reading!

Credits:

Thumbnail background image made with Canva
Other pictures are screenshots from Splinterlands

Follow for more here on Publis0x or on Hive

- Check out my other post about Terracore, a new blockchain game on Hive!