Damour's weekly breakdown of the Battle mage secrets

CHALLENGE RULES

RULESET: Fog of War

Description:

All units lose the Sneak, Snipe and Opportunity abilities.

Scattershot still works in this ruleset.

• A good tank and a balanced line up of Magic and Ranged monsters is the trick to win in this ruleset.
• Keep your monsters in an ascending order of their HP.
• Be ready for magic or range lineups
• Two opposing ways to approach this fight Taunt or Scattershot
• Glass cannon monsters can be used to dish out tons of damage without worrying about them getting taken out by those nasty sneak/snipe/opportunity monsters.
  

Ruleset Nerfs

Rulesets that don't support	Reasons
Back to Basics	Takes away all abilities that could make your monsters shine.
Unprotected	Takes away the void armor counter. You could go with speed as the winning option here.

Ruleset Buffs

Rulesets that support	Reasons
Armored up	Having high armor will help you absorb some extra damage.
Holy Protection	Divine shield will protect you from one source of damage.
Up to eleven	This ability works so well with this ruleset good chance that your opponent does bring range and magic to this battle so make sure to bring reflect magic and return fire to the party.

Monsters breakdown

Buffs

Bloodlust
Bloodlust is a great ability to use in Fog of War if you can squeeze it in especially in the backline. A backline hard hitter that can potentially get bigger with each kill is a great win condition.

Repair
Having the repair ability allows you to repair the armor of your monsters.

Protect/Void armor
Having high armor will help you absorb some damage. Similarly for magic, you can use Void Armor ability to protect against magic. Protect ability can give you two additional armor while the Repair ability will help you regain your damaged armor.

Taunt
Taunt works very well with a Bloodlust monster. If you aren't able to slot in a backline monster with Bloodlust, try putting it on the front line and have a Taunt monster in the backline allow your tank upfront to survive longer and gain bloodlust stacks. Please note that Scattershot will circumvent this.

Double strike
Double Strike gives you more damage it will help you reduce enemy numbers quicker by doubling up on damage output.

Counters

Scattershot
As mentioned earlier, this is the best counter for this ruleset. Not only does it override the ruleset, it also overrides Taunt. Of course, it comes with it's own downside being the randomness of the hits.
Headwinds/Demoralize/Silence
You can still survive longer if you can reduce the damage from the opponent's attack. Abilities like Demoralize, Headwinds, or Silence reduces the melee, ranged, and magic damage respectively will help you achieve this strategy this will be an ideal way to hurt their damage output.
Shield/Void
Shield reduces the damage from melee or ranged attacks while the Void reduces the damage from the magic attacks. Since we are expecting range and magic damage having another ability like Shield or Void can reduce it by 1 and can be even sometimes be reduced to zero damage.

Summoners breakdown

Summoners buffs	Reasons
Summoners that give speed	Dealing damage first can often be the difference between winning or losing.
Kelya	Having speed as mentioned above is great but the added armor here has many benefits.
Lux	Same reasons as Kelya with the added bones of some more health as well.
Jacek	Giving everyone +2 speed and scattershot can be particularly difficult to deal with for your opponent not to mention piercing there is ofc the RNG factor which some people hate.
Grandmaster Rathe	Giving everyone void armor can be particularly difficult to get through regardless of the damage type.
Immortalis	Giving everyone shatter can be painful for opponents who have gone with armor plays.

Summoners nerfs	Reasons
+1 Melee summoners	You wont get much benefit by going this route in this ruleset.

If you can think of any more please let me know.

Without further delay lets dig into a battle to see some of our recommendations in action.

Battle

My opponent chose Sloan as the summoner and me going with the Grandmaster Rathe for anti magic and +1 shield and Amplify.I went with a mini tank up front with a secondary tank to back it up after the first tank dies. My backline is a good mix of magic and range damage. I have countered a lot of the damage with triage and void armor. The amplify also help kick back a little harder.

Damour the merrier
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