Magic Reflect: Amplify and Triage for the Win!

For our battle mage secrets this week, we have the magic reflect ruleset. This can be challenging for new players to navigate given magic is meta and there are many ways to play it based on summoners and teams available. To summarize, magic reflect deals back one damage to your magic monsters if they hit their target. This can be increased or amplified using the amplify ability which we will show in the battle breakdown. Let us cover a few strategies with this ruleset present and then get into the battle. Link to the full battle will be here: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_1605ac6fc1462413c847e3163c4b4e1c&ref=bluedevil0722

Strategies

1. Do not use magic monsters: pretty straight forward here where you avoid magic monsters and stick with ranged or melee. This can be countered however by your opponent expecting this and playing a tank with thorns or return fire

2. Void monsters: Probably my go to strategy is playing void monsters or a void summoner like immortalis. Your monsters will take no return damage unless they have greater than two magic attack or your opponent has the amplify ability.

3. Self Heal monsters: Anything that can heal itself is already pretty special but you can definitely get a leg up when you can deal damage and receive damage back but heal through it. The gold dragon is a fantastic card for this in the magic reflect ruleset.

The following battle mainly focuses on the amplify ability as well as triage given the thorns ruleset also being present. My plan was to outlast my opponent while also dealing damage that my monsters could handle.

Round 1

We have magic reflect, thorns, and melee from any position rulesets here for this matchup. My expectation was to see some melee dealers that were shielded as well as ranged damage given the rulesets. I was tempted to use immortalis with the void and go full magic however the lack of protection for the backline scared me which is why I went with lily being able to protect the back line. Lily also brings the triage which you will see is heavy helpful to keep my dragon alive and also my amplify monster in the cabalist. In round 1, I was a little worried as the scatter shot was a great play with his ranged attacks and counters my lily play. The LOD takes out his repair monster and stays alive to deal some damage to his chain golem. A few lucky lack of hits toward my ravenwood was clutch keeping my shields up for the melee and ranged attacks.

Round 2

Both our tanks go down in round 2 as well as my ravenwood which took away my shields making the backline more vulnerable. The good news for me is that I have two melee and a magic remaining while he is just range heavy not allowing him to attack at the front line.

Round 3

My cabalist is healed by lily at the beginning of the round making his monsters attack it twice to eliminate it. The desert dragon knocks out his cannon but dies to the thorns simultaneously. We both have two monsters remaining however I can attack up front and have a healing tank with the haunted spirit while he has two range dealers.

Round 4

Lily heals up my supply runner making him unable to eliminate even if his scavo hits it. The tank heal and melee attack up front is too tough to deal with and the game ends in round 5.

Both of us went away from magic here given the reflect ruleset as mentioned in one of the strategies above. The amplify helped to knock down some of his monsters especially his chain golem as he would have had no damage dealt back without the amplify being present. Lily healing my backline monsters made his scatter shot slightly less effective and any time you can have a self heal monster who is getting returned damage on him that is a good thing. If you enjoyed this breakdown, please upvote or comment on any other strategies you use for the magic reflect ruleset.