Battle Mage Secrets: Briar Patch

This week's edition of Battle Mage Secrets(TM) covers Briar Patch, the ruleset that gives Thorns to everything in sight.

Thorns is a real pain in the ass for melee units, causing 2 damage on every successful melee hit they make unless they have:

• Reflection Shield which makes them immune to Thorns and Blast damage
• Shield, which reduces Thorns to 1 damage
• A crap ton of Armor which will be reduced instead of Health

You can usually expect your opponent to go ranged and magic in this ruleset, or load up on melee units that have Reflection Shield, Shield, or a fair amount of Armor. Just keep in mind that Armor is always vulnerable to Shatter (e.g., Immortalis, the Soulbound rewards flying pegasus thing in Life and scavenging merfolk thing in Water, Weirding Warrior, etc.). And there are only a few Reflection Shield melee units in Silver League where I like to sit and spin.

Tide Biter

Tide Biter is an affordable epic Chaos Legion rewards card that's definitely worth picking up. Great for low mana battles and a solid melee unit option at all levels and rulesets.

Corsair Bosun

The Corsair Bosun is an excellent Riftwatchers Life card and definitely worth renting or purchasing. Like Tide Biter it has Reach and serves as a tanky and hard hitting second line attacker in higher mana rulesets.

Torch Vizier

Torch Vizier is a Rare Fire Rebellion card with Opportunity and Reflection Shield. Too bad Rebellion cards are $$$ right now due to the ongoing Conflict.

Venator Kinjo

Venator Kinjo is a Legendary Neutral Rewards Chaos Legion card that is awesome in the right circumstances with Camouflage, Reflection Shield, and Immunity at level 2. Definitely worth picking up and very affordable due to the glut of Chaos Legion cards.

In this recent ranked silver modern battle, I was presented with the following ruleset:

The Born Again ruleset makes Martyr + magic or ranged + sustain a natural choice, but I wiffed on my lineup, wasting mana on a gladiator summoner without including a gladiator and getting schooled by an underleveled Kelya all-magic lineup that capitalized on a beefy Martyr'ed up Djinn Oshannus's Phase + Sustain. It's always a good idea to consider bringing Dispel / Cleanse / Affliction to a Born Again matchup if you can figure out how to get it all to fit.

Props to Finsteraar though! A consistently solid player (or scholar, or whatever they are these days).

Full link to battle:

https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_35fff2599a3f1ad1a5bb5a7ce04b6103&ref=anonymouslee

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