Back to Basics: Hardest ruleset in the Game?

For this weeks battle mage secrets, we have the back to basics ruleset. One of the more challenging rulesets in my opinion as there are a lot of challenges with beating your opponent given everyone has the same strategy for the most part. Let us breakdown what the ruleset entails and then the common strategies. Once that is accomplished, we will breakdown a battle with this ruleset that I had in my alpha tournament recently.

Back to Basics

Monsters lose all abilities in this ruleset. That means that pretty much everyone goes for magic and range monsters given they can fire from the back line. Summoner selection is also pretty straight forward as summoners who boost these attacks such as Yodin or are defensive to these attacks like immortalis are commonly used in this ruleset. The challenge with the ruleset is there is rarely ways to counter this approach and so it comes down to a mirror match if both players have the same cards. Card placement is really the difference in these matchups often and show some quick math and strategy for the winning player. I have found high health monsters first as well as fast monsters are the key to winning a mirror match as it can come down to who fires first in the last round or who has one or two more health left. Now that we covered the basic strategy, let us get into a match using some old alpha cards with this ruleset. Link to the full battle is at the following: https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sm_JNDGFLW6x3zO6Y1TpVxn

Round 1

We have back to basics, no shield, and return fire in this ruleset. Naturally with the alpha set, there are not as many monsters to choose from and sometimes picking the heaviest hitters is the best strategy. Selenia is a great summoner being one of the few that boost range and will be important given the no shields as well as return fire making sure the range hits count. My opponent went with alric which is always a pretty solid choice in back to basics given the magic boost. In round 1, both our tanks go down however my speed was able to allow chromatic dragon to hit his second tank and finish him off before going down which was huge.

Round 2

Again, my speed is too much and obliterates his monsters while my heavy hitters in the elemental phoenix and gold dragon are ready to head into the tank position. The ranged damage was a good choice as even with return fire I am able to eliminate his monsters easily with the lack of shield.

Round 3

You can all expect the finish here as my lightning dragon eliminates his mermaid and we get the win with ease.

Using the strategy mentioned above, I was able to use speed and high magic and ranged damage to beat my opponent who went with a little more melee attack and low speed monsters overall. In this situation, the speed was even more important given every monster was going to hit without the shields present. If you enjoyed this breakdown, please upvote or comment and mention any other strategies you use for this ruleset.