HELLO to all Splinterlands readers of my humble blog.👋🏻👋🏻👋🏻 Welcome to week 36 of the new iteration of the Splinterlands Weekly Challenges (at least, if I haven't miscounted so far, yet. 😜).

For any old Hivers/Splinterland players who've just come back and are confused, fret not! Even with the name and format tweaks, right at it's core, battles are still the foundation of these posts.

In this week's edition of Battle Mage Secrets, cast aside your shields and armour. Pick up arms and go on the attack! There is nothing to protect you or your opponent from each other now!

No matter! I present to you the ruleset — UNPROTECTED ❌🛡️

The game's description of UNPROTECTED is as follows: "Monsters do not have any armour and do not get any armour from Abilities or Summoner Buffs."

This is a pretty direct ruleset in my opinion. Simply put, armour effectively doesn't exist in this game now. All attacks become similar to Magic Attacks since there is no longer any armour to bypass. This also means certain units which depend heavily on their armour to give them the edge are now more vulnerable.

I will take advantage of this ruleset in my battle showcase today to show how 1 of my units in particular becomes a lot stronger than one would expect with UNPROTECTED. Introducing the Summoner, POSSIBILUS THE WISE.

Possibilus the Wise is a leviathan from the future that has adapted to rule on both land and sea. His mission is to find and secure the lost sacred rune tablets of his race that were shattered into pieces and strewn across time and space by the entity known only as Desolation. In his present time, a war rages on his home world of Nyuuldus, but Possibilus was tasked with traveling into the past and the future to find these runestone fragments and return with them to defeat Desolation.

From Splinterlands Lore on POSSIBILUS THE WISE

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Possibilus The Wise is a Legendary card released during the Chaos Legion expansion. It has definitely found it's place in many Water decks given its availability and usefulness. It's effects on the battlefield are ❤️+2 HEALTH❤️ and it grants the TRAMPLE & REACH ability to all your units. It's summoning cost is, like all other Chaos Legion Legendary Summoners, 6 🧪MANA🧪.

The stat buffs it gives are nothing out of the ordinary, so at first glance, he might look pretty bland. However, all of it combined makes this Summoner one of the strongest in the game!

Reach allows any melee unit on the 2nd spot of your lineup to also attack. While Trample allows your units to launch another attack if it manages to land the killing blow. You can see then how Possibilus has the ability to multiply your army's damage 😱. The battle will very quickly turn against the opponent with a few well placed attacks.

I would venture to say that with the UNPROTECTED ruleset in play, a MELEE centric Summoner is the way to go! Add one and one together and I hope it's glaringly obvious by now that Possibilus is a match made in heaven for this situation. Possibilus gives that extra bit of additional health for your units to survive a hit that might kill most units. Furthermore, his Reach and Trample abilities have the potential to punish teams even further if a unit gets killed! There is no stopping the monstrous Possibilus from devastating the entire battlefield! 🔥

This could make all the difference if the battle comes down to the wire where the slightest advantage is the fine line between victory or defeat! 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻 This is definitely what I'd consider game changing! 😱😱😱

⚔️🛡️My Battle Showcase🛡️⚔️

Let me present a battle I fought recently in which the ruleset UNPROTECTED was in effect. My opponent used the Chaos Legion edition Summoner Quix from the DRAGON splinter as his main pick, while I used the Chaos Legion edition Summoner Possibilus from the WATER splinter too. 🐉 VS 💧

At first glance, it would seem like I was at a distinct disadvantage.

• The opponent's was using a level 2 Legendary Summoner! This put him at literally double my levels!

• His units were likewise higher levelled than mine were!

• The secondary ruleset in this battle was that of BACK TO BASICS!

• All my units thus lost all their abilities.

• My opponent had an an even greater advantage now by virtue of the higher levels giving him a raw stats increase against mine!

I was honestly expecting this to be a really bad matchup for me 😜🤣. This was a team who had an innate advantage in this ruleset. Higher levels with no monster abilities of any sort in play meant it was down to raw stats. Would I be able to turn the tide of battle against such an opponent then? Victory or defeat would lie in the small details.

I would say that the ruleset UNPROTECTED was DEFINITELY the MVP of this match, having played it's role in turning the tide of battle. The advantage it gave my team resulted in me outlasting my opponent in this battle. It definitely provided the edge that I needed to overcome my opponent.

This ensured that the other units could eventually wear down the opponent until victory was achieved! 🏆🏆🏆

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LINK TO MY FIGHT

👯‍♀️👯👯‍♂️LINEUP CHOICES👯‍♀️👯👯‍♂️

1st CARD SLOT

Arkemis the Bear is chosen for this slot. He plays the role of the Main tank perfectly with his great stats. His high HEALTH stat and PROTECT will also allow him to have much longer staying power on the battlefield. This allows all other units to be kept safe until he is taken down.

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2nd CARD SLOT

The Kulu Mastermind takes up the 2nd slot. With his amazing attack damage and the OPPORTUNITY ability, he will be able to mow down the opponents quickly. He will also take the place of the main tank as a backup tank.

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3rd CARD SLOT

The Flying Squid occupies this slot. It's main role here to be next in the line of melee attackers to take to the frontline if needed.

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4th CARD SLOT

The Hardy Stonefish occupies this slot where it's role is to primarily be a cheap filler card that costs only 1 mana.

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5th CARD SLOT

The Djinn Oshannus plays a the role of a DPS unit here, being able to strike at enemies from behind.

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6th CARD SLOT

The Kulu Swimhunter fills the last slot playing the role of a ranged DPS.

I hope you're starting to see the pattern here in my team setup. 😉

⚔️🛡️Battle Action Report🛡️⚔️

As you can see, both of us fielded very different units in our matchup. The opponent went for all melee units while my own units had some ranged and magic dps sprinkled in. 😱

🐉DRAGON🐉 VS 💧WATER💧

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My opponent used Uriel the Purifier as his tank in the 1st slot which was a VERY good choice. With his high armour and health stats, he is more than capable of holding the line.

The Carnage Titan occupied his 2nd slot. This unit is another tanky unit with good damage that can also attack from this slot thanks to it's REACH and DOUBLESTRIKE ability.

In his 3rd slot was the Dumacke Exile. This is a high damaging unit with the SNEAK ability.

His 4th and 5th slots were likewise filled with melee SNEAK units in the form of the Dhampir Infiltrator and the Uraeus.

This was followed by a Deeplurker of his own which would likely seek out my weakest units to target too.

His last slot was filled by the Shieldbearer. This is an amazing tank unit which also has the TAUNT ability.

All in all, I would say that the opponent picked a really strong team.

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The battle started out with all our units just duking it out pound for pound. It was a high mana game with 47 mana as the limit. The rulesets were UNPROTECTED & BACK TO BASICS.

• The first round saw both our sides launch a flurry of attacks but both tanks managed to hold the line without any casualties.

• The 2nd round was a different story as I killed both his Uriel and Carnage Titan all thanks to the Trample and Reach abilities bestowed on my team by my Summoner!

• The 3rd round was a repeat of the same story as his Dhampir Infiltrator and Ureaus fell too!

• It was all over for the opponent now as I eventually mopped up his remaining units. 💀💀💀

Talk about doing WAY MORE than it was supposed to!!! 😱🤯🥳 All I expected was for the UNPROTECTED ruleset to give me a slight advantage. I had expected his units to destroy my unprotected unarmoured units. However it ended up being the entire reason for my win! By capitalizing on the ruleset, I was able to chain multiple kills in the some of the rounds! The opponent simply could not handle all that DPS at all.

Well as you can see here in this video recording of my battle, the results were pretty good! 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

This was truly an eye opener! 😁🏆

Slowly, but surely, I wore down the opponent's team and the match ended up with me inflicting a crushing defeat. My team selection proved to be the edge I needed to eventually overpower my opponent. 💪🏻

🔮🔮🔮Hindsight is 20/20🔮🔮🔮

Would I have done anything differently? 🤔 This might have seemed like a disadvantage at the start but I ended up winning handily. IF I had to use the same cards again, there would be no better lineup than what I had already used for the match. Any other combination MIGHT have resulted in a loss for me. I'm really satisfied with the results against such a worthy opponent. 🏆🥇

💭🧐💭Ending Thoughts💭🧐💭

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I definitely can appreciate the ruleset UNPROTECTED and how it changes the dynamics of usual gameplay. This is one of those rulesets which can be turned into a huge advantage if surrounded with the proper team. The role it brings to the battlefield will give a player the edge in squeezing out every tiny advantage to get the win. 👍🏻

I hope this article has given you some insight into its potential. 😉

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