Battle Mage Secrets for the Up Close and Personal Ruleset

Here's the ruleset for this week's battle

In the up close & personal ruleset only monsters with a melee attack are allowed. I like to use Mylor to inflict thorns damage on every one of my opponent's attacks. From there I like to build a team that can absorb and minimize my opponent's attacks.

My ideal lineup for this type of ruleset has Mycelic infantry in the tank position for the shield ability. I follow that up with Disintegrator for the demoralize ability and I like to put stone golem in the rear tank position to soak up sneak attacks with the shield ability.

Now that we have Dumacke Orc, I may start to choose that over Stone Golem as it will attract sneak attacks and opportunity attacks.

Here's the starting frame from my battle

We both went for Mylor but the rest of my team is built to soak up hits and allow the Thorns to work while my opponent opted to lay down some hits of their own.

think about how this might play out before you watch the battle

https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_1ca7e0d1f1bb9dcf9402cc3820e0953a&ref=jingo-submo

Let's talk about my lineup

Summoner: Mylor Crowling

Mylor gives the thorns ability to all of my monsters. My opponent's monsters all have melee attacks, so they'll take thorns damage whenever they attack.

Tank: Mycelic Infantry

The shield ability on Mycelic infantry cuts all the damage it receives from melee attacks in half. You'll get used to the way this damage is rounded if you aren't yet familiar with it. Anything hitting this monster for 1 damage will deal 0. Anything hitting for 2 damage will deal 1. Anything hitting for 3 damage will deal 2. Anything hitting for 4 damage will deal 2. Anything hitting for 5 damage will deal 3. So the damage is rounded up except when it's just 1 damage which gets rounded down. The shield ability works like this for melee damage, ranged damage, thorns damage and earthquake damage. There is no reduction in magic damage or poison.

1st position: Disintegrator

The Disintegrator cannot attack from this position which works to my advantage when my opponent has also used Mylor as their summoner. I use Disintegrator for the demoralize ability which reduced all of my opponent's melee attacks by 1. Ideally it ends up reducing all my opponent's melee attacks to 1 but frequently they'll have some bigger attacks.

2nd position: Battering Ram

The Battering Ram dies to just about anything. If it gets hit then it dies and if it hits an opponent with thorns, it dies to that. I only had 2 mana left at this point and there is a chance that it will help out somewhere.

3rd position (rear tank): Fungus Fiend

This Fiend can't attack from here, but it can soak up a hit from a sneak attacker and apply thorns for 0 mana.

Did we win?

Yes. My opponent brought a great lineup but beat themselves by running into my thorns over and over.

What will I try differently next time?

Nothing. This is my approach for up close & personal whenever the earth splinter is available. I looked at pairing Dumacke Orc with Stone Golem as front and rear tanks with Disintegrator between, but there wasn't enough mana for that. This general approach has won more than 90% of matches for me in bronze and more than 80% of matches in silver. In gold this gets a little dicey as I haven't been able to level up my copy of Mylor yet. Relying on thorns to do a majority of my damage isn't always adequate when my opponent has enough self healing on their monsters to overcome it.

Thanks for reading and thanks for all the upvotes, reblogs, comments and follows. I'll see you in the game. I hope the updated format that I'm using is helpful. Feel free to share any specific feedback in the comments.