Hello, battle mages!

I was struggling a bit to find an interesting battle(read: that I won) for this week's challenge but finally found a pretty exciting one in which I also got to test new strategies.

Let's see how it all went down!

Entering The Arena

Since this is my entry for the weekly Splinterlands challenge named Battle Mage Secrets, Close Range was obviously one of the rulesets while the other one was Armored Up. At the first glance of this 23-mana battle, I saw some of the cards shining golden which is never a good sign and while taking a closer look I noticed I was up against a much stronger team than mine.

They had chosen a level 3 Tyrus Paladium as their summoner adding to every unit's armor by one.

I was very disappointed to see their tank unit with its Magic Reflect ability. Rusty Android is a monster I rarely meet on the battlefield nowadays and now it's here - the one time I thought I had an unbeatable strategy!

Here's a list of their other nasty creatures:

- Pelacor Conjurer on level 4 also has the Magic Reflect. Dammit.
- Baby Unicorn is here to Strengthen fellow team mates. I thought about it too.
- Divine Healer with a magic attack. This is just getting better and better...
- Silvershield Archers are way stronger than mine.
- Peacebringer has a formidable range attack of three.

It might look like I'm in some serious trouble but it ain't over until someone sings, right? Now let's take a look at my team while at the same time, I try to explain my strategy!

My Life Team

As a summoner, I chose the newly upgraded General Sloan whose buff is to provide a +1 attack to all my ranged units.

My idea was to leave the ranged monsters in the back to maximize the improved attack damage and if all else fails, they'd still be able to use that strength in the front line.

General Sloan is currently the cheapest summoner in the game costing only $0.76. With prices like that, I'm giving it some serious thought about upgrading it to level 3 since I got some pretty decent ranged monsters who would greatly benefit from the buff.

My "tank" unit is a gold foil Pelacor Conjurer. On level 3 three he has some pretty decent stats for a lower mana battle like this one. While having 4 speed and 5 health, his best attribute is the Flying ability to make it harder for melee and ranged monsters to hit him.

Unfortunately, Pelacor Conjurer has no attack. Wait, but now he does! As a part of my master plan, I chose Aves Sturgis to take second place behind the Conjurer.

Aves was pulled out of the daily chest just yesterday and I couldn't be happier because he is adding an interesting element to my tactics. His Weapons Training ability will provide adjacent monsters half of his attack power if they don't have offensive strength of their own. How great is that!

To take the full benefit of Aves' ability I also added another no-attack unit behind him. Armorsmith has the Repair ability and will repair the armor of a friendly unit that has taken the most beating. So, thanks to Aves, Armorsmith can now do some magic damage too!

Next to him, Silvershield Archers may not look that impressive if just looking at the stats but with armor provided by the ruleset, they could very well be alive if played to the front spot where they could still operate thanks to the Close Range ruleset.

Venari Crystalsmith is an important part of my strategy. Her primary mission is to heal the one who happens to be in the tank spot. What's great is that if she should end up in that position herself, she would then heal herself and still be able to attack.

Last but not least, Venari Marksrat is placed in the last spot to offer some ranged support but also to lure out enemy Sneak monsters. If he should die, his Martyr ability would then make Veneri Crystalsmith even stronger.

The Battle

To find out who won click here to watch the whole crazy battle or/and continue reading my highlights. I won't go through every round because this turned out to be a very looong one. That being said, it was still very exciting and worth watching!

ROUND 1

Pelacor Conjurer, our tank unit held up quite well but the problem was Rusty Androids magic reflect which started to drain the health of my three front-line magic units.

ROUND 2

By the very first attack the opponent Peacebringer managed to take out the Conjurer. Unfortunately, he was without armor and a direct +3 ranged hit did the trick. Aves and Armorsmith were suffering also in this round but we were successful in bringing down the Android.

ROUND 3

Not again! Now the Peacebringer defeated Aves again with a first strike and it was Armorsmith's turn to take the tank spot. Things were certainly not looking good for us.

Then something strange happened. Armorsmith was caught in this repair/healing loop in which he always had fresh armor when the Peacebringer attacked. This attack was then "wasted" while other monsters managed to hurt Armorsmith but not enough to kill him because Venari Crystalsmith was always there to heal him.

This went on for quite a bit and in round 11 we managed to destroy the one monster who posed a threat - Silvershield Archers with their Snipe ability. Then Peacebringer was played to front and while still able to operate, the Armorsmith was always armored up.

In round 15 the Peacebringer was gone and to my surprise, we had won.

Conclusion

To be completely honest, I think I got pretty lucky with this one. Although my initial strategy to give magic attacks to peaceful monsters failed, I think will be working on that in the future - not always I'm going to be head-to-head against magic reflect.

Even though Armorsmith lost his attack because of the sad demise of Aves, I think he proved to be a great choice for this battle. Actually, just the other day I was having second thoughts about my investment into this monster but hey, he's a special guy for special battles.

As for the Close Range ruleset, I simply didn't get to make the most of it since the Armorsmith stood his ground so I guess this battle, and this post, turned out to be a showcase of just how good monster Armorsmith can be.

Thank you for reading!

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And be sure to check out these games as well: Rollercoin, Rising Star

Credits:

Thumbnail background image made with Canva
Other pictures are screenshots from Splinterlands
Links LeoGlossary: Splinterglossary