Hello guys!

Yeeeeey I'm back again with my Splinterlands post. This is my second post to follow Splinterlands Mage Secrets Battle Challenge Briar Patch. This means that all monsters will have Thorn. So do you still dare to use monster Melee in these rulesets?

Well, I'm not a professional player or a tournament hero. I merely like to discuss battles and strategies that in my opinion are worthwhile. I participated in this combat using my Scholarship account with IGN BLTZR-WIZARD-700. I played in the Diamond league at modern rank while using a Full main Chaos Legion edition card and several Reward cards. The battle strategy that I shared may not be effective in other leagues because of the different levels of each league.

Ok guys, without further ado, let's get straight to the main point of this post!

BATTLE PREPARATION

Challenge Rules

RULESET: BRIAR PATCH

Description:

All units receive the Thorns ability at the start of the battle. Enemy units that use melee attacks receive damage back.

Damage returned is equal to damage of the attacker divided by 2, rounded up.
Melee attack units with the Reflection Shield ability do not take damage from thorns.
The Amplify ability increases damage.

Battle Rulesets

There are 3 rulesets in this battle with only 13 capacity and active elements Earth, Life, Death and Dragon.

• Back to Basics, its mean All monsters lose their abilities. Melee monster only attack in first position, Range only attack when its not at first, and magic More flexibility in placement because the bus attacks from any direction both in front and behind positions.
• Briar Patch, The core rulesets of this challenge, as described above are that All units receive the Thorns ability at the start of the battle. Enemy units that use melee attacks receive damage back. Damage returned is equal to damage of the attacker divided by 2, rounded up. Melee attack units with the Reflection Shield ability do not take damage from thorns.
  The Amplify ability increases damage.
• Up to Eleven, All monsters have the Amplify ability. When combined with Briar Patch, then the use of Melee monsters without the ability reflection Shield really should be avoided. This also applies to range and magic monsters, where with Amplify, damage due to reversal of Reflect Magic, Return Fire or Thorn will increase by +1.

Line Up and Strategy

By considering the existing rulesets, I compiled a line-up with a strategy that I will explain in the table below. In general, some of the strategies that I will apply are:

• Minimize the use of Melee monsters or even not use melee monsters at all.
• Due to mana limitations, Focus uses 1 main attacker which is placed at the rearmost position, while other monsters are only as an attack barrier so that the main attacker does not die quickly.
• Still maximize the use of speed, either by choosing monsters with high speed, or using summoners with buffs or debuff speed.

Monster	Position	Abilities	Strategy
Quix the Devious	Summoner	-1 Range, -1 Speed	In Back to Basic rulesets, Magic monsters are actually more flexible and also their attacks are more effective than Melee and Range seranags. But if the opponent uses an Immortal summoner who provides void buffs, then the magic attack will be very weak because the Void will reduce the attack received. So, as an anticipation, I will use summoner with speed and damage reduction games, and the best choice is Quix the Devious because I chose Quix The Devious because by using Dragon Summoner, I can combine monsters from 3 elements, namely Dragon, Neutral and also 1 element from other decks where in this battle I chose Life element.
Pelacor Conjurer	First	Loss of all abilities	Even though Pelacor Conjurer doesn't have damage, it has a large HP, so I chose this monster as the main tank. Considering that in this battle there are only 13 mana costs, the selection of monsters really has to be considered. Pelacor Conjurer only requires mana 2 with HP 8 and speed 5 where melee or range attacks still have a chance to miss.
Soul Fiend	Second	Loss of all abilities	Soul Fiend is the only melee monster in this line-up. The reason I use this monster is because this monster doesn't need mana, because it has 0 mana. This monster also only acts as an additional tank, so I ignore the melee damage it has.
Chaos Agent	Third	Loss of all abilities	Almost the same as Pelacor Conjurer, I chose to use Chaos agent because this monster has good HP, and high speed but only requires a small mana, which is 1. This monster also has no damage, because the focus of this monster is only on protecting the monster behind it, not as an attacker.
Naga Assassin	Fourth	Loss of all abilities	Naga Assassin is a range monster that has a very high speed. This monster is an attacker, but not the main attacker in the line-up that I compiled. Although this is a range monster, it also doubles as a tank to protect the main attacker behind it.
Time Mage	Fifth	Loss of all abilities	The last position is Time Mage, who is the main attacker in the line-up that I compiled. I chose this monster as a maon attacker because it has 3 magic attack damage and high speed. Even though the opponent uses a Void monster, this monster is still able to deal decent damage. Compared to putting this monster in fourth place, I chose to use the magic monster in the last position in the hope that if the worst condition happened, where all monsters number 1-4 died, the fifth monster could still attack even alone. If the position is reversed, if there is a range monster left in the last position, the monster will not be able to make an attack and just wait to die. Range monster can't attack if in the first position, but it can still be an attack barrier for the monsters behind it.

You can see the complete line-up of both teams in the picture below. The opponent uses Summoner Obsidian who increases magic attacks with 2 attackers, that is Regal Peryton and Djinn Biljka.

BATTLEFIELD ARENA

(Click the image above to direct to the battle link)

If you only look at the total attack damage at the beginning of the round, it is clear that the opponent has greater damage, with 8 magic damage, while I only have 3 magic damage and 2 range attacks. But who would have thought that defense is also important. The number of monsters I have is more than the opponent who only has 4 monsters without strong tanks. Ok, let's take a look at this battle round by round!

The first round begins with a Buff and a debuff from the Summoner. The speed of Regal Peryton is still the highest, so it has a chance to attack for the first time. Pelacor Conjurer resists the attack well. Followed by counterattacks from the Dragon Assassin and Time Mage. The Fungus Fiend who was in the first position died immediately. Mycelic Morphoid dies after performing an attack due to being hit by Thorn + Amplify. The first round ended with Djinn Bilka's attack which killed Pelacor Conjurer. There are 2 monsters left on the opponent's side, and I myself still have 4 monsters left.

The second round began with Regal Peryton killing the Soul Fiend in one strike. Then retaliated with an attack by the Dragon Assassin and Time Mage on Regal Peryton. Chaos Agent also died because he was attacked by Djin Biljka. The second round ended with 2 monsters left.

The Third Round begins, Regal Peryton's attack is still restrained by the Dragon Assassin, then the Time Mage's counterattack kills Regal Peryton. The Dragon Assassin died from Djinn Biljka's attack at the end of the third round. Each team has 1 monster left.

In the fourth round, Djinn Biljka died shortly after the fourth round began due to a Time Mage attack. I narrowly won with only 1 last monster left and was saved because the last monster had high speed. You can see the final result of this battle in the picture below.

CONCLUSION

The strategy I applied worked well in this battle. I won with 1 monster left because I was saved by the last monster's speed advantage. Even though it lost the amount of damage, in fact being restrained was strong to help me in this battle. And my decision not to use the Melee monster was the right decision, seeing the attack from Mycelic Morphoid to Pelacor Conjurer was suicidal, where the monster only had 1 melee damage but received a reversal attack of 3 damage.

Ok guys, I think my post is enough here, thank you for visiting my blog, don't forget to upvote and leave a comment. If you want to start playing Splinterlands and don't have an account yet, don't hesitate to use my referral:
https://splinterlands.com?ref=anif1908

Credits:
The wonderful divider by kyo-gaming
Thumbnail created using canva
All images taken from Splinterlands website