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Ahoy fellow Splinterlands players. Welcome to my latest Battle Mage Secrets post!

This week the featured ruleset for the challenge is Taking Sides. With this ruleset active you can't use any Neutral units at all. There is one Neutral Summoner, Lux Vega, who I believe is still available with this ruleset. But then again she's a Summoner and in the context of this ruleset units means Monsters. I don't own a Lux Vega so have never tried to play her in the ruleset but I do believe I've seen an opponent use her.

You can recognise the ruleset with the following icon.

With this ruleset active you really have to focus on the available Elements as several strategies you like to use may not work now that no Neutral Monsters can be used.
If the Dragon Element is available you could still pick that one so you can use Dragon Monsters and Monsters from your element of choice.

The battle I want to share with you this week is from the brawl that took place this weekend. I had a pretty sweet battle with the Taking Sides ruleset where I used Alric Stormbringer and my opponent used Byzantine Kitty. In this battle my opponent was the player schnee from the guild Legendary Wizards.

Here is a picture of our initial lineup.

Battle Rules

This was a battle with a 24 Mana Cap. The Fire, Water, Earth and Dragon Elements were available. The battle had 3 rulesets;

• Taking Sides: Neutral Monsters may not be used in battles.
• Holy Protection: All Monsters have the Divine Shield ability.
• Up to Eleven: All Monsters have the Amplify ability.

Here is a link to the battle if you want to check it out: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sm_XJmGtgzfmAp36kgXNQvp&ref=athunderstruck

Battle Lineup

Alright not a whole lot of Mana available so I have to be a bit selective with what I use. Preferably pick a 3-4 Mana Summoner so avoid using too much Mana there. There's also the ruleset giving Amplify so I was thinking for a moment maybe I'll play Mylor Crowling to have Thorns on all my Monsters, perhaps with Failed Summoner up front for some Magic Reflect too. But ultimately I decided I'll go with Alric Stormbringer as my Summoner and have a team with some Magic attacks. Part of that is one unit with Blast that could help me get rid of the Divine Shield on another Monster faster due to Blast damage.
Another reason for picking some Magic damage is that if there is a lot of Armour I won't have to worry about it as much either. Monsters with the Void Armor could be really annoying though, but there aren't many available here.

I want to use Djinn Oshannus in the front. With his high Health and good Speed he can be a solid frontline. Also if my opponent decides to play a team with some Magic damage too then he's also a great tank thanks to the Void and Phase abilities. This is of course a lot of my Mana used already as he has a Mana cost of 8 and my Summoner Alric is 3 so that's already 11 of the 24 Mana.

Up next I bring Venari Wavesmith. This card has some good Magic damage too and gives Armour to my whole team. That means any Melee or Ranged units from my opponent will have to hit to break the Divine Shield and then a second attack will be needed to break that Armour before they can hit my Health. I placed it second so that it is protected from the front and back in case my opponent has some Sneak units.

Then I picked the River Nymph for my 3rd card with Magic attack. She has the Cleanse ability so if my opponent lands some debuffs on my Djinn Oshannus she will be able to cleanse them, while also helping out with some good Magic damage. She's only level 2 because I only ever got 1 Gold Foil version of her and I already have my regular foil levelled up a bit higher. Maybe some day I'll get the Gold Foil levelled up too.

Next up I have the Crustacean King, very slow Monster but it has the Tank Heal ability which can help my Djinn Oshannus stay alive. It also comes with its own Armour and a Ranged attack.

Last but not least I bring the Pirate Archer. With the Blast ability it could help get rid of the Divine Shield on a second Monster. Because the Blasted damage to the adjacent Monster will break that Divine Shield on them. I have it fully in the back since Ranged attack Monsters can't attack from the front, and it can also help protect my healer in case my opponent has some Monsters with Sneak.

That team is actually 25 Mana in a 24 Mana Cap battle. This is because in the Brawl we have the Barracks building. Once it's level 4+ you get Surge 1 which adds +1 Mana to the Mana Cap for all guild member's Brawl battles.

Battle Analysis

Oh my opponent is using Byzantine Kitty. It seems they might have chosen it to bring both Vruz and the Dhampir Infiltrator, an excellent Sneak attack Monster as it has Double-Strike. Especially when it's at a higher level where it has 2 Melee attack. That +2 Speed from Byzantine Kitty could really help them out too as they can attack faster. The Tank Heal might be wasted here though due to the low Health on all their Monsters. If their Sneak attacks and Opportunity can take me out really fast that Tank Heal from them wouldn't matter anyway.

Let's see how it goes.

Because of the +2 Speed from Byzantine Kitty my opponent has a few Monsters faster than mine that go first.

Pelacor Bandit hits my Pirate Archer to break the Divine Shield. Then Vruz takes away 1 of the Armour provided by my Venari Wavesmith but not all of it yet. Their Isgald Vorst has Opportunity instead of Sneak so she attacks my River Nymph and breaks her Divine Shield.
Time for my Djinn Oshannus to break the Divine Shield on their Hardy Stonefish.
Now their Dhampir Infiltrator attacks my Pirate Archer to break the Armour and another 2 damage against its Health leaving it at 1 Health.
Their Hardy Stonefish breaks the Divine Shield on my Djinn Oshannus.
My Venari Wavesmith takes out their Hardy Stonefish.
River Nymph takes away the Divine Shield from the Pelacor Bandit.
Pirate Archer actually succeeds in hitting the Pelacor Bandit, dealing 1 damage and then the Blast damage reaches their Vruz to take away the Divine Shield.
Crustacean King tries to attack Pelacor Bandit too but ends up missing.

Here's our lineup at the start of round 2.

Well Pelacor Bandit is at 3 Health instead of 4 which means Byzantine Kitty's Tank Heal does heal that back up to 4. Now that Heal is also going to mean my Djinn Oshannus can't take it out, it'll require 2 of my Monsters to take out the Pelacor Bandit now.

Pelacor Bandit goes first again so it destroys the Armour on my Djinn Oshannus.
Vruz kills my Pirate Archer, seems like he got pretty mad that my Pirate Archer took away his Divine Shield.
Isgald Vorst is still targeting River Nymh, now she destroys River Nymph's Armour. Meaning she's still unable to secure a kill for the Bloodlust though.
Djinn Oshannus hits Pelacor Bandit for 3 Magic attack bringing it down to 1 Health.
Dhampir Infiltrator breaks the Divine Shield on my Crustacean King and then hits against the Armour taking 2 of it away, leaving the Crustacean King with its own 1 Armour that it always has at this level.
My opponent also brought a Merdaali Guardian that has Tank Heal too. It didn't do anything last round, but this round it is able to heal Pelacor Bandit for 2 Health. It also protects my opponents backline from potential Sneak attacks, but I didn't bring any.
The heal that Merdaali Guardian gave doesn't matter though as the Pelacor Bandit is at 3 Health and my Venari Wavesmith has 3 Magic damage so it kills the Pelacor Bandit.
River Nymph then hurts Vruz for 2 damage.
Crustacean King is able to hit Vruz at the end of the round to take it out. Which means his Martyr ability is triggered providing +1 in all stats to Isgald Vorst.

At the start of round 3 our lineups look like this.

Isgald Vorst will attack my Djinn Oshannus now, causing him to lose 4 Health.
Djinn Oshannus hits back against Isgald Vorst but deals no damage as his attacks just destroys her Divine Shield.
Their Dhampir Infiltrator attacks my Crustacean King to destroy that last Armour and then Double-Strikes for a 2nd attack bringing its Health down to 1.
Now my Venari Wavesmith hits Isgald Vorst for 3 damage followed by River Nymph hitting Isgald Vorst for 2 damage and that's enough to kill Isgald Vorst.
Crustacean King closes out this round by healing my Djinn Oshannus for 3 Health back to 10 Health.

Here is what our lineups look like now.

With Isgald Vorst gone, my opponent really doesn't have much damage left. Just the Dhampir Infiltrator. Which still has a good amount of damage thanks to the Double-Strike ability, but nowhere near enough to mean any harm to my team.

Djinn Oshannus takes away the Divine Shield from the Dhampir Infiltrator.
Dhampir Infiltrator now deals 4 damage to my Djinn Oshannus because it doesn't wanna go out before at least showing some of its damage!
After that my Venari Wavesmith takes out the Dhampir Infiltrator.
River Nymph destroys the Divine Shield on the Merdaali Guardian.
Crustacean King finished the round by healing my Djinn Oshannus for 3 Health again and dealing 1 damage to the Merdaali Guardian.

Since my opponent only has Merdaali Guardian left that has no attack and I still have 4 Monsters with attacks I will be winning this battle in the next round! GG!

Was My Strategy Successful?

Yeah this was a good strategy. I had a really solid frontline. And most importantly a well protected backline. That Divine Shield from the ruleset of course does a lot, but also as you can see the extra Armour from my Venari Wavesmith helped out a lot too as it required my opponent to attack me more often. One example is Isgald Vorst hitting my River Nymph. Without the extra Armour she would've needed 2 turns to take out my River Nymph (once to break Divine Shield and a second time to kill her). Due to the Armour I gave my team Isgald Vorst spent that 2nd turn breaking River Nymph's Armour and being unable to get a Bloodlust. This helped my River Nymph stay alive so that I kept having a really solid amount of Magic damage each round.

Conclusion

It's good my opponent may not have expected much Magic damage! But I did wanna see how it would've went if my opponent also used a Monster with the Void ability in the frontline.

This was a great Brawl battle for me! I had 5 Wins this Brawl and only 2 Losses so a pretty good winrate.

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