This week's Battle Mage Challenge is about the rule "Keep Your Distance"

Splinterlands tells us this about the rule:

Units with melee attacks may not be used.

    - Use Phase, Void, Void Armor, and Magic Reflect to counter magic attacks.
    - Use Headwinds and Return Fire to counter ranged attacks. 
    - Units with 2 types of attack (which include melee) cannot be used.

This rule is straightforward. If the monster has any melee damage, you can't use it in this rule. Indeed, like the help text says, any protection against ranged or magic damage are going to be high priority in this rule.

The match is often defined by which tanks that are available to use. Most often, it will be some form of magic attacker with high health, or alternatively a tank without any damage. A few typical ones are:

There are some ranged attackers that can be used as tanks aswell, but at least in my experience, these are often not as reliable as the magic/no-attack tanks.

Given that we are likely to face a tank with Void, it can be a good idea to go heavy on the ranged attackers. Shield is not nearly as commonly available for the tanks in this mode. The few I would consider worthy of using as a tank for Keep Your Distance matches are:

Incompatible Rules

(Briar Patch, Melee Mayhem, Stampede, Super Sneak)

Keep Your Distance is incompatible with four melee-specific rules. All four of these rules would do nothing in Keep Your Distance matches.

Keep your distance is also not a valid rule in Alpha only tournaments.

Desirable Abilities

(Void, Magic Reflect, Silence, Headwinds, Return Fire, Oppress)

Advantaged Summoners

Pretty good bunch of summoners that are better than usual in this rule. Life and Death have the largest selections; Life being particularly strong with and against ranged units, while Death has very strong magic counters.

Disadvantaged Summoners

All summoners who provide +- melee damage are not ideal for this rule. In addition, Possiblius and Mylor provide abilities that only affect melee monsters, so these are also at a disadvantage. Possibilus can sometimes work in this ruleset too because the +2 health can sometimes make a big difference (for example in Noxious Fumes matches).

Desirable Monsters

Disadvantaged Monsters

There are a whole lot of unplayable monsters in this rule. I will not include those in this list. Apart from that, any monster that has Demoralize, Inspire, or Thorns, are not efficient.

My Battle: Keep Your Distance battle

My battle had the following configuration: Modern Diamond League, 25 mana, rules: Weak Magic, Keep Your Distance, and Silenced Summoners. Fire, Death and Dragon available.

With Silenced Summoners, I'm 100% of the time going to pick Quix because I have no cheaper summoners. Dragon is the default choice because there are more cards available. With Weak Magic, its tempting to include an armored frontline units, but Fire and Death don't really have too many of these available. Lava Launcher would be an option, but its too costly for this match. I'm a big fan of Void Dragon, so thats what I'm going to go for as my frontline.

My lineup:

The idea behind my lineup was to focus on ranged damage, and boost up the Void Dragon with speed, slow and strengthen, to make it as annoying a tank as possible. I didn't want to go for magic damage because Magic Reflect is quite commonly played, and could devastate my team if I wasn't careful. I put Venari Marksrat behind the Void Dragon just in case my opponent plays a snipe unit. Even if they dont, Flying tanks are quite common (like my own, Riftwing, Pelacor Conjurer etc), so the Snare might come in handy to remove the miss chance for my ranged units.

Opponent's lineup

My opponent went for Owster Rotwell (silenced summoners though, so its just because he costs less mana) with some tanky non-attacking monsters up front. They included a Tank Heal, and a Snipe unit. The lineup is balanced with the two ranged attackers Supply Runner and Soul Strangler.

Battle Progress and Result

Going into this battle, I'm very confident that my team is going to secure the win quite easily. I have a speed advantage on all my units, and Void Dragon's Flying ability should ensure it dodges a lot of hits.

BUT, in round 1, the Chaos Agent cheats the dice, and dodges three hits, while my Void Dragon only dodges one. At least my Lava Spider manages to land a poison. Round two starts off like this:

Again, the Chaos Agent dodges my Void Dragon, dealing more backfire damage. My Void Dragon only dodges the hit from Tortisian Chief, and dies from the Soul Strangler hit. Now I'm in trouble, because he has enough magic damage to force my rangers frontline. Round 3 starts like this:

The Scavo Chemist wasnt able to dodge anything either, and its clear that I'm gonna lose here. Round 4 starts like this:

The magic attackers simply finish off the remainder of my team. RNG was not on my side here, but I'm satisfied with my team choice anyway. According to Splintertools, I have slightly below 90% winrate here.

Alternative lineups

With Silenced Summoners, and dragon splinter available, most lineups should use a dragon summoner (more cards available). The only exception is if there is a cheaper summoner in terms of mana in another color.

Quix the Devious (fire)

Quix the Devious (death)

Owster Rotwell

Final words

I hope you found this post interesting. If you did, you might also enjoy my other content:

Battle mage challenges

Battle Mage Challenge: Holy Protection
Battle Mage Challenge: Healed Out
Battle Mage Challenge: Going the Distance
Battle Mage Challenge: Ferocity
Battle Mage Challenge: Fog of War
Battle Mage Challenge: Fire & Regret
Battle Mage Challenge: Explosive weaponry

Game system analysis

Optimizing Soulbound card farming
A problem with the staked-SPS reward system

Card usage statistics

Card popularity in Modern Bronze League, Summoners, Gladiuses, Souldbound cards

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Best of luck in Splinterlands!
Kalkulus