Hello everybody, how is your weekend, I hope you are all having a great holiday and a great battle in Splinterlands :). Today I will make a post about the Splinterlands contest Battle Mage Secrets Challenge. This Week's Theme is Briar Patch ruleset.

I play in the Modern Format Diamond League, using my scholar account from **Balthazar I only use cheap cards like Chaos, Reward, and some Neutral.

Battle Link

If you want to watch the Battle Link
Video link:

Ruleset

• Close Range, range monsters can attack from the first position.
• Briar Patch, all monsters have Thorns ability.
  • Thorns ability, when hit with a Melee attack, does damage back to the attacker.
• Armored Up, All Monsters have 2 Armor in addition to their normal Armor stat.
• mana cap.
• can use element Earth and Life.

My Lineup and strategy

Some guidelines we can use :

• For Briar Patch and Armored Up let's say no to the melee unit, because all monsters now have armor, and we need to destroy the armor first to kill the enemy, the problem is, every time a melee monster attacks an enemy and is hit, it will be counterattacked/got damage by 2, so we should use range or magic monster.

• Battle in this element we have 2 tankers who can deal with all types of attack (magic, range, and melee) Chaos Agent from Neutral element and Pelacor Conjurer from Light elements. So we choose to use Light Element because the Pelacor Conjurer has more speed and HP, and has a better chance to evade the enemy attack.
  

• Close range, It's better to use the Light element because the range attack can attack in the first position, and we have a summoner who can increase the range attack from Light element.

This is my lineup :

Summoner or monster	Abilities	Description
	General Sloan, Summoner. This summoner can increase the range attack damage for +1	With this summoner, our Range attack will have more damage, and with the Close Range ruleset set, our monsters can attack from the first position. it's perfect to use in this battle .
	Pelacor Conjurer, 1stposition, Tanker. Has the ability Flying, Magic Reflect, Divine Shield, and Phase.	We use this unit because with 2 mana 5 speed, and 8 HP, can evade any type of attack including the great ability to evade the enemy attack. This monster every time attacked by a magic attack reflects the damage to the enemy. The ability Magic Reflect deals damage equivalent to the attacker's damage divided by 2, rounded up. The Flying ability can increase the chance to dodge enemy ranged attacks by 25%. This monster can evade the enemy's magic attack because has the Phase ability.
	Blinding Reflector, 2nd position, tanker. Has Magic Reflect and Blind ability.	Like Pelacor Conjurer this monster can reflect back the magic attack and give damage to the attacker. Blind ability is almost the same as the Flying ability but the increased chance to evade the enemy attack is smaller only 15%. This monster can't attack in this position because it's a melee unit that needs to be in the first position to attack the enemy unit. We use this unit because we guess the enemy will not use melee monsters with the Sneak/opportunity ability (unit that can attack our monster from behind), so we used a double tanker for more protection to face enemy attacks from the front.
	Soul Fiend, 3th position, tanker. Has Swiftness ability.	We don't have mana left anymore, already used up all mana in the monster in the front and back position, so we use this monster with the zero cost mana. This monster is very good because can give +1 speed to all our monsters. With better speed, our chance to attack first, hit the enemy, and evade the enemy attack will increase.
	Xenith Archer, 4th position, tanker. Has no ability.	Akthough not have any abiliy, with the General Sloan buff range damage will have good damage (remember this monster only cost 2 mana so with buff got 3 damage is great), this is our main attacker .
	Venari Crystalsmith, 5th position, attacker and support. Has the ability Tank Heal, and Dispel.	This is our Healer, it can heal monsters in the first position. Dispel ability will delete all positive buffs from the enemy in the first position. Put in this position to make sure this monster does not die earlier and can keep healing the unit in front. Apart from that, this unit has more damage than Xenith Archer so the last position is the best place for this monster.

Our formation is finished and we are ready to battle.

The Battle

Did your Strategy Work?

Yes, our strategy went well, according to our estimates the enemy also did not use monsters that could attack our units in the rear and focused on attacking our monsters in the first position, even though the second tanker and their main attacker Karst Harpy had good evading ability like Pelacor Conjurer but this unit has Scattershot ability, the attack damaging random enemy can't focus on killing our monster in the first position. Because they use Grandmaster Rathe who can give their armor which is limited and has fewer monsters than us. We have more speed because of Soul Fiend and damage from the General Sloan buff.

Summary

In this battle, we have 2 elements that we can choose, which is Earth and Life. Earth is good at magic monsters, and Life has a great attack range monsters. The main reason we chose the Light element is because :

• A better tanker from the Earth element is the Pelacor Conjurer (hard to be hit by magic monsters that have low speed), this tanker can deal with magic attacks from the Earth element, if we use the Earth element we can only use the Chaos Agent.
• Earth elements are weak against ranged attacks, their monsters usually don't have good armor.

Thank you, my friend, for taking the time to review my battle report. I appreciate your efforts and would be grateful if you could provide me with feedback on any mistakes you find by leaving a comment.

If you are new and want to try this fantastic strategy card battle game feel free to use my referral code https://splinterlands.com?ref=poplar-22 to join.

Credit

• Thumbnail using Canva.
• Divider took from @kyo-gaming.
• Card description, Image, and graphic were taken from https://Peakmonsters.com and https://Splintercards.com