Rulesets

As mentioned in my previous post we're going to look a little bit more at rulesets. I could go through them all one by one but that would probably bore you and why do something that's already been covered brilliantly by Splintercards. Go visit their site and via their gameplay menu you can look at 'Rulesets', you'll find everyone of them with a detailed description. So why continue to read this then I hear you say - because I'm going to show you that rulesets can help you win, not only that, they help you beat players with far better cards!

Rulesets don't feature that often in Bronze league however, once you move up into Silver league and beyond you will be faced with rulesets in almost every match. These can effect your battle considerably. Sometimes your opponents won't have checked them properly, sometimes they'll drop into robot mode and pick their team forgetting about the ruleset, sometimes we just make mistakes - hey, we're only human.

Let's take a look at some examples where you can cash in on other peoples errors...

Fog of War

The first match we'll look at had 'Fog of War' as it's ruleset. It also had 'Rise of the Commons' but I want to focus on the loss of both the Sneak and Snipe abilities. Rise of the Commons limits your monster choice so you can't effectively make a mistake, whereas with Fog of War you can still select monsters with Sneak and Snipe for battle when that ability can't actually be used - room here for error.

As you can see my opponent choose to play a Sand Worm which would normally have the Sneak skill. Of course this has been made redundant by the ruleset, making his Sand Worm completely ineffective until it lands in the first position. They were essentially playing with one less monster for most of the match.

You can watch the whole battle here: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_42755bd6b29813d39162b8f228a2f039&ref=kaljerico

Back to Basics

This match had 'Back to Basics' as its ruleset. This basically means monsters lose all of their skills. The only thing you have to work with in this scenario is your summoner's powers. I constantly find myself picking out monsters for these matches and including certain ones due to their skills, having to always go back and get rid of them when it dawns on me their skills are redundant. I need to focus more!

You can see my opponent has decided to include three monsters that in a normal match would be very useful, effective and at times can be quite frustrating... yes Mr Armorsmith, I'm talking about you! But when we introduce this ruleset they are more or less useless - Divine Healer and Armorsmith have no attack in this battle and are taking up slots where you could play a ranged or magic user. And let's not forget poor old Feral Spirit, who has lost the nasty Sneak which means it's sitting there until it drops into position one where it will be disposed of fairly quickly. Look at the mana cap as well, plenty of room for some big hitters.

You can watch the whole battle here: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_30a9e163cffc0887af8ea94330150af0&ref=kaljerico

Healed Out & Melee Mayhem

This match had both 'Healed Out' and 'Melee Mayhem' rulesets applied. So all healing abilities are removed from both monsters and summoners. And melee monsters can attack from any position. So on that basis I was going to be looking at some big melee hitters and wouldn't think twice about selecting any healers.

So have you spotted the mistakes yet? Again, Divine Healer makes an appearance where she is completely useless and takes up a valuable spot for a heavy hitting melee monster. The mana cap is at 44 again, so plenty of room for some big cards here. You could potentially question the use of the summoner, Byzantine Kitty, but then it does give the +2 speed boost and True Strike even if the heal is negated. The Enchanted Pixie and Elven Mystic aren't bad cards, but I question why you wouldn't put some more big hitting monsters with melee in there (like Clay Golem or Dragon Jumper) considering the rule set. Even if you're insistent that you want to go with the magic damage, then at least make it count and get some better attack numbers in there.

So, hadn't they checked the rulesets properly? Or had they simply thought that Kitty could win it for them, no matter who they were up against? Who knows. What I do know is that it felt great to win when I was up against cards like Kitty and Kralus!

You can watch the whole battle here: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_cb53d1fa131f1beb53ad23fb3e3ee650&ref=kaljerico

Summary

So, in summary, rulesets are really important. They'll completely turn the tide of a battle and if you select your summoner and monsters with a little bit of thought and care, taking notice of the rulesets, you'll be in a great position to win, no matter who you're fighting against... even if it is Kitty!

If you don't play Splinterlands then why not give it a go, it won't cost you a penny to try it. Oh and if you do decide to jump on the Splinter Train, use my referral link to sign up (https://splinterlands.com?ref=kaljerico) and purchase the Summoner's Spellbook and I'll gift you a free card to use!