Battle Mage Secrets Weekly Challenge! Fire & Regret!

[Source]

Hi everyone! It's time for the weekly Battle Mage Secrets challenge and the challenge this week is the Fire & Regret Ruleset.

About the Ruleset

Fire & Regret

The Fire & Regret ruleset states that "All Monsters have the Return Fire ability". This means that Ranged monsters are at a disadvantage as they will take damage every time they attack.

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Battle Ruleset(s)

Details of my battle with this ruleset is as follows.

Fire & Regret: All Monsters have the Return Fire ability
Weak Magic: Magic attacks hit Armor before reducing Health
Keep Your Distance: Monsters with Melee attack may not be used in battles
Mana Cap: 32
Available Splinters: Fire and Life
Format: Brawl, Rebellion and Gladiator only

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Cards & Line Up

The Summoner vs

Summoner: Avina of the Wolf - You can either increase the Speed of 2 monsters by 2 or grant the Heal ability to a monster.

The Line Up

Position 1	Position 2	Position 3	Position 4	Position 5	Position 6

vs

Position 1	Position 2	Position 3	Position 4

[Card image source]

Position	Name	Description
1	Grimbardun Smith	It has the Immunity ability, and has a decent amount of health to tank, but no attack. I granted the Heal ability to it as well.
2	Moxian Rebel	It has the Weapons Training ability and is placed here to provide. Grimbardun Smith and Albahoo Forester with 1 Magic attack.
3	Albahoo Forester	It's low mana cost and is here to soak up damage while Captain Katie does her magic.
4	Captain Katie	It has the Snipe and Bloodlust ability, and is here as the main damage dealer.
5	Meriput Magician	It has the Tank Heal ability, and is here to pile on heals on the Tank.
6	Aria Bandit	It has the Snipe and Dodge ability, and is here as the help out Captain Katie with the damage, since they will target the same monster.

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Strategy

The ruleset here meant that (1) Ranged monsters will take damage every time they attack, (2) Shields will absorb magic damage first before health takes a hit and (3) Melee monsters cannot be used.

As this battle does not allow for melee monsters, I opted for the Life Splinter with a mainly magic based deck. Ranged monsters cannot be used in the first position and they take damage everytime they attack. I placed Moxian Rebel between Grimbardun Smith and Albahoo Forester so that all my monsters are able to do damage. I used Captain Katie and Aria Bandit to target the second position, to avoid battering on a potentially strong tank.

The opponent opted to use Chuul Jujinchi as his summoner, which allowed the use of Earth and Life monsters. Not really that useful here since only Fire and Life is allowed, but it is a low cost summoner. He used a high cost tank here, which allowed him to place only 3 more monsters as a result. It worked in my favour too, since i'm mainly targeting the second position. That allowed me to take out the rest of the deck before working on the high health and shield tank.

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Thoughts on the Fire & Regret Ruleset

The Fire & Regret ruleset puts ranged monsters at a disadvantage. The usual strategy would then to use a mix of melee and magic monsters to work around this problem. In this battle, the ruleset did not allow for melee monsters, and magic attacks will hit shields first. They made it even more challenging since all attack types are somewhat disadvantaged. As such, I felt that concentrating on the backline would be the best stategy in this case.

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Battle

Watch the battle here