_{Thumbnail for the weekly challenge provided by @splinterlands}

Ahoy fellow Splinterlands players, welcome to my next Battle Mage Secrets post.

This week the featured ruleset is Armored Up. With this ruleset active all Monsters gain 2 Armour at the start of the battle. Those that already have Armour will get an additional 2 Armour on top of their default Armour. Using abilities like Rust or Shatter can be good to deal with this. Rust will remove 2 Armour from all enemy Monsters. With the Shatter ability when your Monster hits the opponent it will destroy ALL of their Armour.

You can recognise the ruleset with this icon.

The battle I want to share with you for this week's challenge is from my recent tournament battle in the Gauntlet Wild Bronze GF Invitational Tournament against the player jenna16.

Here is a picture of our initial lineup.

Battle Rules

This was a battle with a 49 Mana Cap. We had the Fire, Life and Death Elements available, so half of them. The battle had 3 rulesets which were:

• Armored Up: All Monsters have 2 Armor in addition to their normal Armor stat.
• What Doesn’t Kill You: All Monsters have the Enrage ability.
• Holy Protection: All Monsters have the Divine Shield ability.

Here is a link to the battle if you want to check it out: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sm_s66dlkSyPEgeXbuRy8RE&ref=athunderstruck

Battle Lineup

Since this was a Gold Foil cards Tournament I have less Summoners and Monsters available than usual, but it did also coincide with the Brawl for which I rent a bunch of additional Cards. Which includes Uriel the Purifier and Adelade Brightwing. I also have the War Pegasus in Gold Foil from the Soulbound Reward Cards and it has the Shatter ability I mentioned before, so I wanted to go with a Life team as that one can attack first and Shatter all Armour if a Monster has more Armour.

I picked General Sloan as my Summoner. I might have chosen Lorna Shine BUT all Monsters get Divine Shield from the ruleset so that would be pointless. Much better to pick General Sloan then so my Ranged attackers in the backline could deal more damage.

Up front I place Uriel the Purifier as he has the Flying-ability that gives him an increased chance to evade attacks and when he gets Enraged his Speed goes up making it even slightly harder to hit him. His drawback is that he will take 1 turn to charge up and then every 2nd turn he can attack, if his triple attack that way hits the Armour it would be kinda sad.

Behind him I have the Luminous Eagle. This card has the Reach ability so it will be able to attack from there for some nice extra damage.

Then I have Adelade Brightwing, I brought her for the Repair ability so she can help with keeping my Uriel the Purifier alive a bit longer hopefully by repairing his Armour so my opponent would need an attack or two to break it again.

This was a Bronze league tournament and Uriel the Purifier doesn't have Heal yet at level 1, so I brought Venari Crystalsmith with me for some Ranged damage AND the Tank Heal to heal up my Uriel a bit.

Up next is the War Pegasus I talked about it with the Shatter ability. It will also protect my team from Sneak attacks and if my War Pegasus takes damage from Sneak attacks its Speed will increase from Enrage and that paired with the Flying-ability will make it harder for it to be hit.

Last but not least I decided to pick Gobson Bomber, just like Uriel it will need a turn to charge up and then every 2nd turn it deals 3x damage. Thanks to the General Sloan Ranged buff its damage is increased to 3 so that 3x damage every 2nd turn means 9 damage. It has the Camouflage ability so it can't be targeted directly. That's why I placed it behind War Pegasus so Sneak attacks would hit War Pegasus as they can't target Gobson Bomber.

Battle Analysis

My opponent made a great pick with their Summoner choice as they are using Eternan Brune who removes 2 Armour from all of my Monsters. Meaning that the Armored Ruleset buff on my team is completely nullified. It also allows them to bring a Gladiator and they did that by bringing Chimney Wallstop. With a Martyr up front to give him an early buff which could make him quite a bit stronger especially when he gets Enraged.

In the earlier picture of our initial lineup you could notice my team didn't have any Armour as I took the screenshot after the Summoner Buffs/Debuffs were applied.

Round 1

Round 1 my Uriel the Purifier and Gobson Bomber charge their attack.
War Pegasus goes first and attacks Venari Marksrat. Dealing NO DAMAGE because of Divine Shield BUT that hit did connect just dealt no damage because of Divine Shield so because it was a hit the Shatter ability still triggers to take away that Armour. Which makes War Pegasus really excellent here.
My Venari Crystalsmith and War Pegasus join forces to kill that Venari Marksrat which gives my opponent the Martyr buff to their Chimney Wallstop.
My opponent has 1 Monster with the Snipe ability so that one will be targeting my Adelade Brightwing all the time. At least it's only for 1 damage per turn and well round 1 that is just taking away the Divine Shield.
Chimney Wallstop takes away the Divine Shield on my Uriel.
My opponent has a Gold Foil Sorriel the Bale, a Legendary Soulbound Reward Card. That Double Strike with Magic is really sweet! It goes straight to my Uriel's Health, which goes Enrage him.
That Enrage on him brings him to 5 Speed and so that Speed + Flying causes my opponents' Molten Ash Golem and Firecaller to miss my Uriel.
Adelade Brightwing his Chimney to remove his Divine Shield.

At the end of the round our teams look like this.

Round 2

Due to the Enrage status on Uriel he is now faster than War Pegasus, which means he goes first and his 3x attack from 5 Melee attack now does 15 !! damage but unfortunately most of that goes to waste as it only breaks that 6 Armour from Chimney Wallstop.
War Pegasus attacks now dealing 3 damage to Chimney Wallstop.
Which enraged him bringing him to 9 Melee attack, but he is also forced to break the Armour on my Uriel and the extra damage is thus gone to waste for him as well.
Venary Crystalsmith now heals my Uriel to 9 Health, which keeps him just below max and so he does stay in that Enraged status.
Gobson Bomber's attack is also charged up and he now deals 9 damage this turn against Chimney Wallstop, killing him.

I tried to capture it in the screenshot but was too late to include it showing the damage, but you can see Chimney's health at 0.

Further in the round I take away Divine Shield from the Firecaller and damage it.
Adelade Brightwing repairs 2 Armour on Uriel but he also gets hit by Molten Ash Golem for 1 on his Armour.

Round 3

It's an uneven number round so this time Uriel the Purifier and Gobson Bomber have to charge their attacks again and won't be able to do anything this round.
War Pegasus and Venari Crystalsmith team up to kill the Firecaller, by doing that a Martyr buff is provided to Sorriel the Bale who now has 3 Magic attack meaning he can deal 6 damage per turn thanks to his Double Strike. That's going to be quite painful for my Uriel.
War Pegasus takes away Divine Shield from Sorriel allowing Adelade to hit its Health. But it still has the Armour so my Melee/Ranged Monsters still have to deal with that.

At the end of the round our teams look like this. And you can see Sorriel the Bale with his 3 Magic attack.

Round 4

Now that Sorriel the Bale had a Martyr Buff AND got Enraged by Adelade Brightwing's magic attack on him he has the same Speed as Uriel. When Monsters have the same Speed then their turn order depends on Magic attacks first, then Ranged attackers and then Melee attackers. So Sorriel the Bale can now go first because of this and that allows him to kill my Uriel. His Double Strike then takes away Divine Shield from my Luminous Eagle.
War Pegasus destroys the Armour on Sorriel the Bale and then Gobson Bomber with his Charged attack on this even turn deals 9 damage completely destroying Sorriel the Bale.

At the end of the round our lineups look like this.

It's safe to say now that this battle is in the bag for me. My opponent has max 1 damage per turn to my Luminous Eagle and 1 per turn to my Adelade Brightwin. My Luminous Eagle will always be healed for 2 per turn while Venary Crystalsmith lives so yeah it'll just take a few attacks from my team to take out the Molten Ash Golem and then the Lava Spider. GG!

Was My Strategy Successful?

Yeah it was a great strategy. Having Uriel the Purifier with high Health, decent Speed and the Flying ability makes him a great tank. Especially as he can be harder to hit from that Enrage status. Good combo of damage and support on my team. With Adelade Brightwing to Repair the Armour and Venari Crystalsmith to Heal Uriel to keep him alive longer.

War Pegasus was a great backline pick too with that Shatter ability to help me getting rid of Armour. We didn't see it in this battle but it could've been a great protection against Sneak attacks too.

Conclusion

My opponent did also make good and interesting choices. The Summoner Eternan Brune was a great choice to get rid of the Armour that my team gained from Armored Up ruleset. If my Uriel the Purifier didn't have any Armour of his own that would've completely destroyed my Repair ability from Adelade.
It's that Armour that Uriel still had from himself that really put a stop to my opponent's plans with Chimney Wallstop as he couldn't find any kills for Bloodlust after he gained the Martyr buff.

That Sorriel the Bale was a really good play too! He did quite a bit of damage especially once he got a Martyr buff and he did succeed in taking out my Uriel the Purifier eventually!

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

If you haven't signed up for Splinterlands yet and want to check it out, you can do so with my referral link at: https://splinterlands.com?ref=athunderstruck