Up Close and Personal ruleset in Splinterlands - which strategy prevails?

Yay, my beloved audience we are about to go for another shared match of mine in the Splinterlands! I hope you all had a wonderful weekend and grabbed some good Black Friday offers. Last time I checked prices for Splinterlands cards still were still at a rather low price point, but otherwise I did not encounter too much sale offers.

"Up Close and Personal" that is the name of the ruleset of the week. And basically it is a "melee units only"-ruleset.

However we are given a bit more info in the fineprint:
"Only units with melee attacks can be used.

Use Thorns and Demoralize to counter melee attacks.
Units with 2 types of attacks (including melee) can be used."

I think the implications of this ruleset are somewhat clear. So let us just go and enjoy one of my battles here:
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_98aa3012eca2643cde74f36ad09b7b96&ref=jdike

Surprise, surprise there are a lot of melee units on the board. Again me and my opponent had somehow similar, but not equal strategies. He wanted to prevent me from dealing damage to him as he had several units aiming at reducing damage taken. My idea was more of dealing a lot of damage all the while trying to hinder my enemy from dealing damage.

Round 1 did not go too well for me, as I already lost a unit in the rear and was in turn only able to take my opponent's cheap (secondary?) tank off the board. My opponent's additional shield stat really made things harder.

To be honest the next round seemed even worse for me. Just compare the number of my units left to the number my opponent still had at his disposal.

But after I finished my opponent's Ferox Defender the spell had been broken and I was still able to win this fight!

So anything to learn here?

1. I personally always like Disintegrator in this kind of matches. When you know your opponent will strike per definition (ruleset!) with melee attack at you, he is rather competent!
2. The Ferox Defender, a unit which gives extra shield/armor stat to units is very useful, too.

So obviously if the Ferox Defender would have been placed in a later position I would not have been able to win this match. Therefore 3) Positioning is vital!

Stay tuned and read you next week!

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