Aim True and Don't Lose You Armor

Merry Christmas, Splinter fans!

The week has been interesting as I'm constantly watching the card market trying to find those sweet bargains, especially with the new Rebellion cards. Other than that, I feel the battles are somewhat harder... could this be because of the $SPS price surging? Idle players perhaps coming back to play? In any case, competition is always good! 🙂

In this week's Splinterlands Battle Mage Secrets challenge the focus is on the Aim True ruleset which simply means the attacks will always hit the target.

So today, abilities such as Dodge and Flying won't be helping out monsters even though Flying will be very helpful in this battle as another ruleset in play is Earthquake.

As I started building my team, the one thing in my mind was armour. This calls out for some armour.

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My Team

Let's assume my opponent thinks the same way as I do and protects their units with strong armour, we then need to get past those and no better way to do that than to use some magic.

With ALRIC STORMBRINGER as a summoner, my magic monsters will now be a little more dangerous with magic attacks boosted by 1 point.

The key player on my team is the tank unit, DJINN OSHANNUS who can take even the strongest magic attacks with the help of his Void ability.

Oshannus has another useful ability, Phase, that should make him able to dodge magic attacks too but I doubt it will be in play because of the Aim True ruleset.

With a massive amount of health(11), Djinn Oshannus can take hits and earthquakes but is it still enough?

I don't think so and therefore I've chosen a team whose members will each have a supportive role in this battle.

I consider VENARI MARKSRAT to be very much a supportive unit as he will eventually make Oshannus and another monster even stronger while standing in this spot.

Since we have the Earthquake rule in the battle, Marksrat having only 3 health points will at some point make the ultimate sacrifice which will active the Bloodlust ability increasing the stats of adjacent units.

Another member of the Venari tribe, VENARI WAVESMITH, will on the other hand provide armour to all friendly monsters with her Protect ability.

This will of course extend Marksrat's life span a bit too which isn't necessarily a bad thing as the Rat can offer some ranged attack fire power while alive.

The armour given to Oshannus by Wavesmith should be quickly consumed with enemy fire and earthquake shakes so will need something else too...

CRUSTACEAN KING is a tank heal unit who has a little ranged attack too on this level.

Even though the King comes with an armour of its own, the health of this unit is a bit low so I have placed it safely in the middle.

To continue my list of supportive units, let me introduce SWAMP SPITTER to you.

This monster will use its Repair ability to fix the armour of the unit whose armour has taken the most damage.

If my strategy plays out as planned, this unit will be Djinn Oshannus who will probably be under heavy fire but who will also have the best chance to be the last monster on the battlefield when the dust has settled.

TORRENT FIEND is here to attract the opponent Sneak monsters.

Having only one health point, it would get wasted with a single blow in normal circumstances but thanks to the armour provided by the Wavesmith, Torrent Fiend will probably force the enemy to waste not one but two attacks on it.

It seems that I deviated from my original plan to use more magic and instead chose a strategy to support the tank with all I had.

Now, let's have a look at who we are up against.

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Entering The Arena

Oh, yes. It's Malric Inferno, my old nemesis. This ancient summoner will boost the attack of all melee monsters on his team by one point. It seems we are not facing a full-melee team though but instead a mixed one with magic and ranged units there as well.

Their line-up seems to include monsters from the older editions with the exception of Arkemis The Bear. This unit is on level 4 meaning in addition to Protect ability, it will also have the Halving ability. This might cause some trouble for Oshannus as it might take some of the attack strength away from him...

The rest of the opponent team:

• Giant Roc - a flying unit with Reach.

• Kobold Miner - will attack my back-line.

• Goblin Shaman - Weaken will reduce the health of all my monsters by.

• Imp Bowman - another flying unit but not as dangerous as Giant Roc.

• Fire Beetle - ranged unit with Snipe ability.

Interesting opponent! I really like playing against these older decks as I might come across unfamiliar monsters and have some new ideas.

Let's check out the outcome of this one!

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The Battle

You can watch the whole battle HERE or/and continue reading my battle analysis below.

ROUND 1

The battle started as planned: my magic attacks damaged their tank while my tanks armour was repaired by the Swamp Spitter.

Then the thing I feared the most happened - Arkemis hit Oshannus and dropped his attack power from 3 to only 1 using the Halving ability. A major setback for my strategy.

ROUND 2

At the beginning of the second round, an earthquake took out the poor old Marksrat which was of course very sad but as they say, every cloud has a silver lining as the Rats death activated the Martyr ability. This lifted the magic attack of Oshannus to two points.

This was enough for him to kill the Bear and put Giant Roc in the tank position. However, this bird didn't enjoy the spot for very long as it was quickly swept away by our monsters.

ROUND 3

After the second earthquake, the enemy ranks started to look weaker and quickly got rid of the Kobold Miner and Goblin Shaman, followed by Imp Bowman.

The Fire Beetle lived long enough to see the fourth round but was swallowed by the third earthquake right at the beginning - the game was over.

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Conclusion

I really didn't see that Halving ability coming and it certainly managed to throw me off a bit. I was still able to make a nice recovery and my strategy of harnessing almost every other monster to support my tank was very successful.

All in all, the Aim True ruleset is pretty straightforward in my opinion. Either use a lot of armour or magic or do as I did - use both.

Thank you for reading and again, Merry Christmas to those who celebrate! 🎅