Strategy Corner #12 - Close Range Ruleset - Should we even care about it ?

Unfortunately last week there was no Strategy Corner article. As some of you know I'm in semi-holiday mode, so my time, resources and internet connection is limited :). That last hurts the most :). I tried to solve our prediction blog game from two weeks ago on the last stream, but my connection wasn't stable enough. I hope you'll forgive me somehow :). This week we are going to talk about Close Combat, and of course, I prepared another blog prediction game for you. We will see how and when it will be solved because of my Splinterlands.tv schedule probably will be changed.

Ok, enough about boring stuff let's see what we know about today's rulset and what could be the best way to be prepared for it.

Description:

Monsters with ranged attacks are allowed to attack in the first position.

Firstly, the description of the ruleset in the game is not perfect, sometimes you got just general information which not giving you all information you need. Best way to read the full description as above from the game documentation at least once. You can check all here.

I seriously encourage you guys to check this site, here is the precise link, even more advanced players could find something interesting there.

In my opinion, close range is not a very defining ruleset, as some of which we discussed in previous articles. Sometimes I just totally ignored it, or just try to get some counterplay if my opponent would like to use some powerful range units against me.

Let's see the exemplary fight and my explanations for why I choose it.

As I mentioned above, I had to make not so easy decision :). I got prepared two fights for you and I couldn't decide which one should I choose. One of them was a strategy to almost completely ignored Close Range ruleset and got some tank especially to counter any physical damage. But finally, I decided to present some of the battles which really try to take advantage of the ruleset. I think it will be better to cover that. Let's see our setup:

I think the Earth team got one of the best-range monsters. I decided to choose Mylor as a summoner to counter any melee monster strategy. Unfortunately opponent used almost all range team, but still, Coeurl Lurker is a dangerous unit, so any thorn damage which could help us kill it faster is significant.

Round 1.5, both teams have very high-damage monsters, so let's slow down a little bit and analyze the situation between rounds. So Coeurl is down, besides healing ability, thorn damage was helpful here. Our team is a little faster, but now it's opponent's turn with lower-speed powerful units.

Round 2, as I predict, seems like it's quite even after the first round, both players lost 2 solid units. Now I hope our speed advantage would be enough to kill the opponent's unit before they will have a chance to take revenge.

Round 3, definitely speed is the king here, earth range units are just so much better in this situation. Now we got a very strong tank with scavenger ability and already ten health points. There is no chance for an opponent.

Final Blow - Round 3 - it's over, we still have quite a big firepower on the battlefield, opponent even with General Sloan range attack buff couldn't do anything here. Let's see why :)

I said it already, the Earth range team in my opinion is just the best. I don't have much experience with Yodin, you can check the previous article when a great player schnapoon using him against me :), maybe in some circumstance Fire them could be better. Back to the topic, earth summoners are great with range units: Prince Rennyn - very powerful cards, I always try to use it in higher league play, Fernheart, maybe not be the best card for our today's ruleset, but definitely worth mentioning. In our today's battle as we could see pure damage advantage is not enough, on paper General Sloan's team seems stronger. It definitely will be in the reverse speed ruleset. Here it was just butchered :)

MITICA HEADHUNTER, it's not the cheapest card, as most of older. before Chaos Legion set. cards are, but sometimes it's worth at least renting. Very high damage and speed are crucial here, snare ability helps a lot with hitting any flying monsters. In higher leagues, we get additional Piercing skill which could be very important if you trying to fight a hard armored opponent.

VENARI SEEDSMITH I think this card and IZA THE FANGED is the staple cards for Close Range ruleset. With the Scavenger Ability they grew monstrously and the only problem is positioning. I don't like any of them on the second position, 3rd or 4th is my opinion optimal. Here I used only one of them, I bet my odd for more speed, but going with two is not a bad idea.

EARTH ELEMENTAL, old Alpha/Beta card but I like it very much. On silver-level it gains self heal ability so it is even more useful. I play it usually on second position in this ruleset. For modern card if Elemental is not available I usually use Barking Spider, high health points range monster which could give our damage dealer a lot of time to eliminate any treats.

Close Range is quite an interesting ruleset, maybe not as important as some others already discussed on my blog. You can sometimes totally ignore it and play a normal team as always, or sometimes you could try to take advantage with some good range units which now can easily attack from the first position. I would say in 33% of fights I try to avoid giving any hints to opponents, so if I see Close Range I don't actually start thinking only of range units line-up. Usually, it's the opposite, but now it starts again some mind game that I mentioned before. That's the thing that I think still sticks me to this game :) Everything is not as obvious as it seems :) Remember think two steps before your opponent :)

I hope you like this kind of battle and strategy presentation. More strategy analysis, discussion, and prediction games you can find on my Wednesday Splinterlands.tv stream. You can check the schedule here

If you have any comments, please do not hesitate. Do you think I could improve anything just tell me :)

If you wish to try out Splinterlands you can use my reference link.

Thumbnails and other pictures borrowed with permission from the Splinterlands team or made in Cooltext

We continue our game from the previous week, today new battle, new card to win :).

I come to some idea, I hope you will like it and participate. Every week I will publish one battle, and your goal is to point out first victim of the battle and who will be the winner. This game is exactly the same as my prediction game which I run on my Wednesday Splinterlands.tv stream. I know that not everyone can attend the stream, so I hope you will still have fun in that way. More about the rules can be read here.

Among all participants who get the correct answer I will randomly (probably on my Wednesday stream) choose one winner.

The prize of blog prediction game for the lucky winner will be the epic card:

Here we got the battle with Close Range ruleset:

Game instruction:
Try to point out which monster will die first on the battlefield and who wins the battle

• t - top player
• b - bottom player
• number - order counting from the first position

Examples:
t2b = monster on the second position of top player die first, the bottom player wins
b6t = monster on the sixth position of bottom player die first, the top player wins
t3t = monster on the third position of top player die first, the top player wins

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