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Ahoy and welcome to my latest Battle Mage Secrets post.

For this week's challenge the featured ruleset is "Aim True", with that ruleset active all Monsters gain the True Strike ability which means they can't miss. So during this ruleset even your slower Monsters could deal their damage without any worry of missing so that's great for them! You also don't have to worry about your opponent having abilities like Flying, Dodge or Blind at all.

You can recognise the ruleset with the following icon.

While your Monsters can't miss the opponent's, it's still good to keep Speed in mind because it still matters for which Monsters are going to attack first.

The battle I want to share with you for this week's challenge is from the Poseidar Wild Silver Invitational Tournament. The battle itself was against ehmaywuntee.

Here is a picture of our initial lineup.

Battle Rules

This was a battle with a 15 Mana Cap. All the Elements were available. The battle had 3 rulesets:

• Earthquake: Non-flying Monsters take 2 Melee damage at the end of each round.
• Lost Magic: Monsters with Magic attack may not be used in battles.
• Aim True: Attacks always hit their target.

Here is a link to the battle if you want to check it out: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sm_HKDwzb1m6twaVPoAhzeb&ref=athunderstruck

Battle Lineup

There isn't a lot of Mana to work with here, only 15 and some of that needs to be spent on the Summoner as well. So a low Mana Summoner is definitely the best way to go. With Aim True we wouldn't really benefit much from Monsters with the Flying ability but for this fight they're still a great idea because of the Earthquake ruleset.
Monsters with Magic attack can't be used in this battle and with such a low Mana battle there likely won't be a lot of Ranged attackers. So I will focus on my opponent bringing Monsters with Melee attack.

I choose Camila Sungazer as my Summoner, she's a 3 Mana Dragon Summoner so not a lot of Mana spent on the Summoner. And she reduces the Melee damage from all my opponents' Monsters by 1. Which can be a great help to take less damage from them.

The main star of my team build for this is going to be Uriel the Purifier as he uses up almost all my Mana with his 11 Mana cost. I decide to place him in the back because of the Recharge ability he won't be able to attack in the first round anyway. He also has the Flying ability so he won't take any damage from the Earthquake ruleset and he has a self Heal ability to keep him alive vs my opponents.
Up front I place some Monsters that can take some initial hits while Uriel charges up his attack.
In the first place I have the Furious Chicken and in second place the Soul Fiend. Both of them cost 0 Mana.
In the third place I have Kra'ar Xoc, this card has the Scavenge ability so when the Furious Chicken and Soul Fiend die this card will gain more Health and be able to take some hits from my opponent and the Earthquake ruleset. I'm hoping after taking some hits it does die in time for Uriel to be able to use his first Recharged attack.

Battle Analysis

My opponent is using Lorna Shine as his Summoner, an excellent choice because it gives the Divine Shield to all of their Monsters. That ability negates the first direct damage that they receive. Which also works for the damage from Earthquake!

He placed Pelacor Conjurer up front as a nice little tank while Luminous Eagle is in the back with the Reach ability to have some damage against me.
The Furious Chicken is placed up next in an excellent way to be a target for any Opportunity Monsters.
Speaking of Opportunity Monsters, that's what he has up next with the Celestial Harpy. Which also has the Flying ability so it won't be going down to the Earthquake ruleset which makes it a really great pick here.
Then they have Halfling Alchemist, a great low Mana cost card with the Halving ability, the first time it hits a target the target's attack is cut in half. Really good way to stop a strong frontline (or Taunt) by reducing their damage output. It only has 1 Health at that level but also 1 Armour so that Armour is going to save it from 1 Earthquake hit AND with his Summoner giving the Divine Shield it can survive 2 rounds of Earthquake. Making it another great choice here.
Last but not least he has Sould Fiend in the back as a good way to stop potential Sneak attackers from harming that Halfling Alchemist too early.

Round 1

Uriel the Purifier starts Charging his attack.
Luminous Eagle attacks and kills my Furious Chicken, giving Kra'ar Xoc +1 Health from Scavenge.
Soul Fiend hits the Pelacor Conjurer taking away its Divine Shield.
Celestial Harpy kills my Soul Fiend, giving Kra'ar Xoc another +1 Health from Scavenge.
Halfling Alchemist hits Kra'ar Xoc for 1 damage. The Halving ability doesn't do anything because Kra'ar doesn't have an attack.

That's the end of round 1.

Round 2

Now comes the Earthquake damage.
Earthquake deals 2 damage to my Kra'ar Xoc. Then it takes away the Divine Shield from the Furious Chicken, Halfling Alchemist and Soul Fiend on ehmaywuntee's team.

Unfortunately Uriel the Purifier wasn't in first position yet at the start of the round so his Charged attack has not been able to do anything and he'll have to start charging it again next round.
Luminous Eagle kills my Kra'ar Xoc.
Celestial Harpy attacks Uriel the Purifier and deals 1 damage to his Armour.
Halfling Alchemist also attacks Uriel the Purifier dealing 1 more damage to his Armour and applying that Halving ability which makes my Uriel's attack go from 3 to 1 as it gets halved and rounded down.

This is annoying for my Uriel the Purifier because now he can only deal 3 damage every 2 turns instead of the 9 damage. (as his attack charges for 1 turn and then the next turn deals 3x the damage)

That wraps it up for Round 2.

Round 3

The 3rd round starts with Earthquake taking out my opponent's Furious Chicken and Soul Fiend. It also damage Halfling Alchemist but destroys its Armour so that one still lives.

Here are our lineups after that Earthquake damage.

Uriel the Purifier has to spend this turn Charging his attack.
Luminous Eagle deals 2 damage to Uriel's armour.
Celestial Harpy deals 1 damage to Uriel's armour.
Halfling Alchemist deals the final 1 damage to Uriel's armour that breaks it and now Uriel's Health is exposed.

Round 4

The round 4 Earthquake is the last one we'll see as it takes out the Halfing Alchemist. All other Monsters left alive have the Flying ability so none of them will suffer Earthquake damage from now on.

Uriel the Purifier has his attack charged up so he hits his 3x damage attack but yeah because of the Halving putting him at 1 Melee that is unfortunate just a poor 3 damage hit against Pelacor Conjurer still leaving it at 2 Health. Which means Uriel will need 2 more turns (1 to charge the attack, the 2nd turn to deal the damage) before he can take out the Pelacor Conjurer.
Luminous Eagle hits Uriel for 2 damage to his Health dropping him to 9.
Celestial Harpy hits Uriel for 1 damage further dropping his Health to 8.

At the end of Round 4 our lineups look like this.

Round 5

Uriel the Purifier has taken some damage, but as mentioned before he has the Heal ability. So he starts round 5 by charging his next attack and by also healing himself for 3 Health.

The previous photo showed Round 5 at 1/4 where Uriel had taken damage from the hits in round 4. Now in this next photo I share Round 5 part 2/4 which is right after Uriel Healed himself and you can see he is back at Full Health.

So yeah my opponent deals 3 damage per turn to Uriel and Uriel heals himself for 3 Health at the start of each round. Which means my opponent can't kill my Uriel the Purifier. That means it's going to be a win for me. A slow one though as it takes Uriel 2 turns to deal 3 damage. Sure in round 6 the Pelacor Conjurer will go down.

But then it will take him 6 rounds to take out Luminous Eagle. He needs 2 rounds to take away the Divine Shield on Luminous Eagle. Then another 2 rounds for 3 damage and another 2 rounds for the remaining 3 Health. Then followed by another 4 turns to take out Celestial Harpy. So yeah I'm not going to show that round per round. You can check it out in the battle link if you want.

GG!

Was My Strategy Successful?

Yeah it was a really solid strategy. It didn't entirely go according to plan as I was kinda hoping Kra'ar Xoc would before Uriel's turn in round 2 so he could deal his damage immediately, but oh well that just made the fight last 2 rounds longer it didn't have any impact on the outcome just on the total rounds for the fight.

My choice for using Camila Sungazer as my Summoner was really great to reduce my opponent's damage output. As I was expecting mostly Melee attackers. Normally the Luminous Eagle would've had 3 Melee attack and the Celestial Harpy would've had 2 which would've been 5 damage per turn. In that case my Uriel would've slowly lost 2 Health per round as he would only heal for 3. He would've still been alive for long, but since he'd also take really long to get through that Pelacor Conjurer and Luminous Eagle it might've been possible they could've beaten him just in time. So yeah that -1 Melee attack was a great choice!

Conclusion

A great choice of teams for both of us really! My combo of -1 Melee attack thanks to Camila Sungazer as my summoner and combining that with Uriel the Purifier with his self Heal was a solid strong choice.
My opponent also picked a really good team. Protecting his backline from Opportunity and Sneak with that Divine Shield from his Summoner. Which really protected his Halfling Alchemist in a great way for it to have a guaranteed chance thanks to Aim True ruleset to land a hit on me to half my attack.
That frontline with Pelacor Conjurer and Luminous Eagle with a Celestial Harpy in the back was a great pick too, strong damage and they wouldn't take any damage from Earthquake!

That's it for my Battle Mage Secrets challenge this week. Thank you for reading!

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