Thorns And Magic

By Brando_28 | GameFi | 30 Jan 2024

Greetings, Battle Mages!

My SPL week has been really great as I happened to win 2 Rebellion packs in the weekly raffle! They are currently staked in Conflicts but I plan to open those once I get enough potions from the daily chests. Regarding this, I have a question: am I just paranoid but do my potions disappear after some time? If you have an answer to this, please leave a comment below! 🙂👍

This week Splinterlands Battle Mage Secrests challenge is featuring the Briar Patch ruleset meaning all monsters will have the Thorns ability.

I usually approach this by avoiding monsters with Melee as they receive damage themselves after hitting the target. If we assume our opponent thinks as we do, we can use that information to our advantage and emphasize magic and ranged attacks. The use of heavy armour is also a good idea to mitigate the thorns damage if you just have to use melee monsters.

My Team

As a summoner, I picked GENERAL SLOAN whose buff is to boost the attack of all my Ranged monsters.

One might now think that my team would be full of lethal ranged units but actually, I had a completely different strategy on my mind and I chose Sloan only because it was a summoner whose mana cost was the cheapest.

In this battle, I thought to try out something I call “fake tank tactics”. This means the first unit on my team isn’t actually meant to last but instead to win time for the units behind it to do their thing and prepare to step up.

Today, the unfortunate role of being this so-called *fake one* falls to the XENITH MONK.

He has no armour and he is indeed a melee unit so in addition to the opponent’s attacks, he will also receive some damage by attacking himself.

Gladly my Xenith Monk is on level 2 which means he has acquired the Heal ability. This should extend his life span a bit if he survives the first round.

Xenith Monk could also experience a sudden boost to his abilities including health if the guy behind him would be even more unfortunate than him.

VENARI MARKSRAT is my only ranged monster and also the only one benefiting from the summoner buff. However, the reason why he is in this exact position is his Martyr ability.

In the case of my opponent having a Blast monster or units with Opportunity, the early demise of Marksrat could buy some extra time for Xenith Monk and also make the monster behind him stronger.

The monster in question is PELACOR CONJURER and he is my real tank unit.

Conjurer is an excellent card to play with the Briar Patch ruleset. He is a fast unit and the Flying ability will make him even harder to hit with a melee or ranged attack.

He is also well protected against magic attacks thanks to his Magic Reflect ability which is almost similar to Thorns.

Pelacor Conjurer’s stats will increase by 1 if and when the Marksrat goes down so he will be even more difficult to hit and if they manage to do so with magic or ranged, they’ll get some of that damage back.

The coolest thing here is that the Conjurer will also be dealing a +2 magic damage himself after the Weapons Training lessons done by AVES STURGIS.

This excellent teacher unit is a bit fragile when it comes to health but it should be relatively safe here in the middle where he can perform those magic attacks too.

However, the Conjurer wasn’t the only one this wise owl shared his wisdom with.

ALBAHOO FORESTER is another cheap non-attacking addition to my team.

Equipped with the Return Fire ability, this monster can deliver some ranged damage back if they happen to be able to hit this far.

In another scenario in which Albahoo Forester is played in the front, the ability should protect it hopefully enough for it to finish the battle with a +2 magic attack.

I have also added a SOUL FIEND and put it in the back to cause some damage to potential opponent Sneak monsters.

Entering The Arena

One thing I forgot to mention was that I was very confident when choosing a magic team because the Death Splinter wasn’t included in this battle. This means there was no possibility of countering Thaddius Brood would debuff all enemy magic attacks.

Instead, my opponent chose to boost with Obsidian.

Their strategy seems to be using Mycelic Slipspawn as a tank and using Goblin Psychic to heal it. Both of these monsters will be dealing +3 magic which equals my combined magic strength. Interesting and even battle ahead!

The Battle

As always, you can watch the whole battle HERE or/and continue reading my battle report below.

ROUND 1

Thanks to the Taunt ability of Mycelic Slipspawn, our team was now focusing on bringing it down while the opponent team got rid of my Xenith Monk. Still, this was going as planned so far.

ROUND 2

Perhaps my opponent wasn’t expecting such a heavy magic bombardment as we managed to destroy the Splipspawn right at the start of the second round. However, soon after that, it was Marksrat’s turn to leave this planet but not without first activating the Martyr ability.

Pelacor Conjurer was now super strong and packed with these abilities, health and speed.

After their Chaos Agent was down, their Mycelic Morphoid made an attack but being a melee monster, it fell for the Thorns.

ROUND 3

While the opponent Golin Psychic was still dangerous with its strong magic attack, our team was much faster and the Conjurer and Aves destroyed the menace at the beginning of the third round. The game was over and it was like they never had a chance.

Conclusion

My strategy worked well even though I think I could have managed to win against an even stronger opponent as well. The battle felt like it was kind of cut short and I didn’t have the opportunity to showcase some of the stuff I had planned.

One of those is the Magic Reflect on Pelacor Conjurer. This combined with Thorns makes this 2 mana unit a nasty little creature to defeat in a Briar Patch battle.

Thank you for reading!