Splinterlands Weekly Challenge Battle BATTLE MAGE SECRETS! BRIAR PATCH

Every week there is a Splinterlands challenge to share a rule set using a specific card and on this week's post it is a battle with the Briar Patch rule set. I also encourage Splinterlands players to partake in the challenge because you get to try different strategies and earn some crypto in the process.

Rule set, Battle and Plan

The ruleset this time is back to basics and briar patch. This means that all monsters lose their abilities and all monsters get the thorns ability. There is also 23 mana available and I am left with the choice of any splinter except for life.

The summoner I choose to use this time is Bortus. In a match like this, I think that reducing magic damage by 1 will make it easier for me live longer. This lets me do more damage over the course of the match and my cards can be played at their highest level.

Splinter	Mana Cost	Position	Reason
Bortus	3	Summoner	-1 magic
Hardy Stonefish	1	1st	Filler tank
Torrent Fiend	0	2nd	Filler tank
Djinn Oshannus	8	3rd	Magic damage and backup tank
Ice Pixie	2	4th	Magic monster with armor
Venari Wavesmith	5	5th	Magic damage
Coral Wraith	4	6th	Magic damage
Total Mana:	23

My plan is just to have a lineup using a few filler monsters up front to take a few hits. These filler monsters will have low mana cost and I will follow things up with a good magic tank. I moved Ice Pixie afterwards because it has armor and it deals less damage compared to the rest of my magic damage dealers.

Round 1

At the first glance of my opponent's lineup, I think I have the stronger lineup due my focus on magic monsters. The +1 armor that my opponent gets will not hurt me much but it's too bad that my -1 magic will only affect one card. It will be a fight to see who can take out the front cards first but I will have that advantage in the later part of the fight due to my focus on magic rather than range.

Round 2

We both traded two cards. In terms of damage, I have more left but it will still be a close match. I will skip forward to when something else in the fight dies.

Round 4

Both of our Djinn Oshannus have died but I have the advantage now. My opponent is left with only ranged monster and this lets me deal more damage than my opponent per round by far.

As I expected, I won without many issues because my magic attacks can't miss either.

Conclusion

The battle this time around went exactly as I expected. The lineup I went for had focused more on dealing magic damage and giving my magic damage dealers enough time to deal enough damage. This worked out quite well given the rule set I played under.

The -1 magic from Bortus did help reduce the damage my opponent had by 1. This let my first card live longer so I think it was quite helpful. The fight would have been closer if it weren't for this. On my opponent's side, I think my opponent did a decent job of setting up his lineup but it was focused more on trying to survive ranged or physical attacks and my lineup was full of magic damage. So the +1 armor he had was worthless but the +1 speed did let him attack before me in most cases. It wasn't a bad lineup at up but it just didn't work out for my lineup.

You can see my entire match here.

What did you think of my match? Was there anything you would have done differently? I think it is quite interesting to see how different players use the same card.