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Ahoy, welcome to my latest weekly Battle Mage Secrets article!

The featured ruleset for this week is Target Practice. With this ruleset active all Monsters with Magic and/or Ranged attacks will gain the Snipe ability. Which causes them to attack the first Monster in the backline that has No Attack, Magic attack OR Ranged attack.

You can recognise the ruleset with the following icon.

Your tank usually won't take too much damage then so you have to make sure your backline also has some high Health. Unless your tank is one with the Taunt ability of course or you have one with Taunt elsewhere in the backline, then those attacks will still get redirected to the Monster with Taunt.

The battle I want to share with you for this week's post is from the Gauntlet Wild Bronze GF Invitational Tournament. In this battle I played against the player raynie.

Here is a picture of our initial lineup.

Battle Rules

This was a battle with a 40 Mana Cap. ALL the Elements were available to choose from. The battle had 3 rulesets:

• Broken Arrows: Ranged attack Monsters may not be used in battles.
• Target Practice: All Ranged and Magic attack Monsters have the Snipe ability.
• Earthquake: Non-flying Monsters take 2 Melee damage at the end of each round.

Here is a link to the battle if you want to check it out: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sm_nZLTRaEFSG2RmK3ax4ax&ref=athunderstruck

Battle Lineup

Okay so Monsters with Ranged attack can't be used in battle so I won't have to worry about them. There is the Earthquake ruleset though so that might be a bit of a problem. Brighton Bloom would be a great summoner just to give the Flying ability to all units, but I don't own a Gold Foil version of him and I never really rent him either so that wasn't an option in this fight. I suppose I might just wanna go with some heavy Magic attack lineup and for that Delwyn Dragonscale is a great Summoner as he provides some extra Magic damage to all my Magic attack Monsters.

Honestly I could've just gone with Alric Stormbringer, when looking at my lineup because I didn't use any Monsters from the Dragon element. At first I was thinking about maybe picking one, like Chaos Dragon due to its Flying ability, but then I decided not to and time started ticking down so I just stuck with Delwyn.

I used Torhilo the Frozen up front. With the ruleset giving Snipe to all Magic attack Monsters his Void ability won't be so useful. But the reason I picked him here is that I thought my opponent might be expecting some Thorns in the front from me and if they expect that they could pick a tanky Magic attack Monster up front to avoid the Thorns. So for that reason I chose Torhilo the Frozen then in case my opponent uses a Magic attack Monster up front.

In my backline I start off with Djinn Oshannus, since Ranged attacks can't be used the only damage from Snipe attacks will be Magic damage. Since Djinn Oshannus has the Void ability it makes a great pick here.

Then I have Nerissa Tridawn, she also has high Health like Djinn Oshannus and will be able to survive some rounds of Earthquake hopefully while dealing some damage.

Then I have Spirit Hoarder, with that Triage ability it can help to keep my Djinn Oshannus up for a bit.

Up next is the Sea Genie, this one has the Flying-ability so luckily won't take any damage from Earthquake, while providing some extra Magic damage on my team.

At the end I placed Furious Chicken. This one is just here to fill up my team and be a potential target for Sneak or Opportunity if my opponent brings that. Which could then save 1 hit from the rest of my team.

Battle Analysis

My opponent is using Quix the Devious for their Summoner. The -1 Range won't be of use due to the Broken Arrows ruleset, but the main reasons they picked Quix was probably for the -1 Speed and to be able to use Dragon Monsters. As we can see 3 Dragon Monsters in their team.

In the front they have Failed Summoner, so it seems they might have expected Failed Summoner on my end as well or even thought I might play a Magic attack Monster up front like I thought they might do.

Their first Monster in the backline is Void Dragon, an excellent pick because of the Void ability AND the Flying-ability. So more solid than my Djinn Oshannus.
I would choose it too but I don't own a Gold Foil Void Dragon and never really rent it for Brawls either.

The rest of their backline all has the Flying-ability too to stop them from taking damage from that Earthquake ruleset.
With Regal Peryton, Gold Dragon and Chaos Dragon for Magic attack Monsters.
In the middle they have the Screeching Vulture too, cheeky little Melee attack Monster with the Opportunity ability.

Wow that Gold Foil Gold Dragon. That is definitely a Monster you hardly ever see!

They did pick the Chaos Dragon like I was considering to pick as well. Ultimately I decided against it due to the 14 Mana Cost and this is a Bronze tournament so it doesn't have that Blast ability.
Lets see if it proves useful for them.

Start of the Battle

Their Void Dragon AND Regal Peryton can't hurt my Djinn Oshannus due to the 1 Magic attack.
My Djinn Oshannus does deal 2 damage to their Void Dragon.
Gold Dragon deals 1 damage to my Djinn Oshannus.
OH SHIT CHAOS DRAGON with the Scattershot took out my Spirit Hoarder 😥
Screeching Vulture with the Opportunity eats the Furious Chicken.
Nerissa Tridawn and Sea Genie attack Void Dragon to bring it down to 1 Health.
Torhilo the Frozen attacks Failed Summoner.

Round 2 starts with the Earthquake dealing 2 damage to Torhilo the Frozen's Armour. Followed by dealing 2 damage to the Health of Djinn Oshannus, Nerissa Tridawn and Failed Summoner. Which ends up killing the Failed Summoner, bringing Void Dragon into the first position.

That means Djinn Oshannus can now do its full damage against Regal Peryton as there is no more Snipe target with the Void ability on my opponents team.
Chaos Dragon's Scattershot lands the damage on my Djinn Oshannus this round.
Gold Dragon follows in attacking Djinn Oshannus.
Screeching Vulture now tries to target Djinn Oshannus, but has a craaazy miss there. Just 1 speed difference and it missed! I would say I'm surprised, but this has happened to me too many times so I'm kinda glad to see that happening to one of my opponents every now and then too.
Nerissa Tridawn now takes out the Regal Peryton. This brings Screeching Vulture into the 2nd position, but since it doesn't have Ranged or Magic attack it won't be the target for my Sea Genie.
Instead Sea Genie attacks the Gold Dragon.
Torhillo the Frozen actually ends up hitting the Void Dragon to take it out! Pretty crazy! Which brings Screeching Vulture into the 1st position and now it can't use its Opportunity ability anymore.

That's the end of round 2. Now round 3 starts dealing 2 Earthquake damage to Torhilo the Frozen's Armour and also 2 damage to the Health of Djinn Oshannus and Nerissa Tridawn.

Djinn Oshannus now deals 3 damage to Gold Dragon, bringing it down to 2 Health.
Chaos Dragon with Scattershot hits my Sea Genie who goes down to 1 Health.
Gold Dragon hits my Djinn Oshannus, bringing him down to 1 Health. Which means that if Screeching Vulture didn't miss last round my Djinn Oshannus would've been dead. This doesn't make a difference though because at the end of the round Djinn Oshannus will die from Earthquake anyway so even if it's still alive now it won't be able to deal any damage next round.
Screeching Vulture breaks the last Armour from Torhillo the Frozen.
Nerissa Tridawn kills the Gold Dragon.
Sea Genie deals 3 damage to the Chaos Dragon.
Torhillo the Frozen is really mad that its friend the Furious Chicken was eaten by the Screeching Vulture and takes revenge by killing the Screeching Vulture.
This brings Chaos Dragon to the front.

Round 3 ends. Earthquake deals 2 damage to the Health of Torhilo the Frozen, Djinn Oshannus and Nerissa Tridawn. This Earthquake damage kills Djinn Oshannus.

Well as you can see Chaos Dragon won't be able to Scattershot anymore, it's going to be stuck hitting Torhilo the Frozen for just 2 damage due to the Void ability.
My Nerissa Tridawn and Sea Genie have a combined Magic attack of 7 and that is exactly enough to take out the Chaos Dragon this round as it has 7 Health left.

So that's a victory for me at the of round 4! 😄 GGWP!

Was My Strategy Successful?

Yeah it worked quite well. Though I was a bit surprised when my opponents Screeching Vulture missed my Djinn Oshannus and my Torhilo the Frozen was able to kill their Void Dragon on the first attempt (in round 2). The fact that their Screeching Vulture missed didn't change anything to the outcome because Djinn Oshannus would've died anyway due to the Earthquake damage.
My Torhilo the Frozen killing the Void Dragon there, allowing Djinn Oshannus to start hitting Regal Peryton instead, didn't change the outcome of the battle either. Sure Djinn Oshannus would've had to kill Void Dragon if it had still been alive. But then Nerissa Tridawn and Sea Genie would've taken out the Regal Peryton. And in the next round they'd be able to take out Gold Dragon with the 3 of them combining their Magic attacks. I would just not be able to kill Chaos Dragon in round 4 then since it wouldn't have taken any damage yet. But my Nerissa Tridawn would then take it out in round 5.

Conclusion

A good lineup there with the Void on Djinn Oshannus. Demonstrating as well that even if there is an Earthquake ruleset you don't have to rely on only Monsters with the Flying-ability.
It was sad to see my Spirit Hoarder being the first target of my opponent's Chaos Dragon Scattershot because that meant it couldn't use Triage to heal anyone in my team.
I was tempted to pick Chaos Dragon as well but ultimately decided against it due to 14 Mana Cost being a really big chunk out of that 40 Mana Cap for the battle AND because at level 1 it doesn't have the Blast ability. I'm not the biggest fan of Scattershot by itself.

That win helped me to get a top 16 placement in the tournament, a tied place with a few others though. But I still ended up getting 384 SPS from that tournament so that was pretty awesome!

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