Briar Patch - Be careful with your choice of units when you encounter this ruleset

Here we are in for another week and another dive into the Splinterverse. I have the honor to share another battle of mine with you and have a look on another ruleset in Splinterlands!

This week's ruleset is called 'Briar Patch' and it is basically like giving the 'Thorns' ability to all battle participants, still there are some thin lines attached.

Description reads: "All monsters receive the Thorns ability at the start of the battle. Enemy monsters that use melee attacks receive damage back."

And clarifies in more detail: "Damage returned is equal to damage of the attacker divided by 2, rounded up.
Melee attack monsters with the Reflection Shield ability do not take damage from thorns.
The Amplify ability increases damage."

Let us have a look at one of my battles including 'Briar Patch' ruleset:
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sm_tWHF3qdOq4HetEX05ccm&ref=jdike

Again this battle comes from brawl format (as mentioned before I still find it hard to find THE relevant battle for a given week's topic). This time will be somewhat different, though. ;)

Well my idea was to circumvent 'Biar Patch' ruleset by mainly utilizing magic attacks. I made a mistake, though. Have you already spotted it?
My opponent had a similar idea of using magic and ranged attacks ... and a legendary summoner, too.
The summoner's ability effectively outmatched my whole tactic of guiding enemy damage to my Mycelic Slipspawn.

Quite at the start of round one my healer was taken off the board and Quora had taken some hits, too. Already the battle did not really look in my favor.

However I made a mistake right at the beginning in my choice of units. Which you might ask? -I chose Grund. Grund has this awesome ability of attacking twice per round. But when confronted with 'Thorns' that means he will take damage twice per round, zoo. So consequently Grund took himself off the board already in Round 1 after his second attack.

Well I was in Round 2 and it did not look nice for me. And...

...so was the result: I lost!

In essence I think 'Briar Patch' ruleset and 'Thorns' ability is not such a no-brainer anymore like it was when Mylor was basically the only way to provide the 'Thorns' ability. However whenever this ruleset comes up it shifts the choice of units more into the direction of magic and ranged attack units.

Still most of the time a player will go for a melee tank which is okay and a lot of players do this. Just do not choose a unit that attacks twice per round with melee attack. It might benefit your opponent more than yourself!

That's it for this week here! You are stil not into the Splinterverse, but you consider joining? -Consider using my sign-up link, too: https://splinterlands.com?ref=jdike