Hello everybody, how are you today? I hope you have a great weekend. Today I will make a post about the Splinterlands contest Battle Mage Secrets Challenge. This Week's Theme is Close Range 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

• Fire & Regret, all monsters have Return Fire ability.
  • When hit with a Ranged attack, Monsters with Return Fire will return reduced damage to their attacker. Damage returned is equal to the damage of the attacker divided by 2, rounded up.
• Are You Not Entertained, can use 1 Gladius Card.
  • The Gladius card usually can be used only in a brawl, but with this ruleset, we can use this card in battle rank. All Gladius card has Bloodlust ability, every time the monster kills the enemy monster all the stats will increase by 1.
• Close Range, range monsters can attack from the first position.
• mana cap.
• can use all elements except Earth.

My Lineup and strategy

We have an advantage when using range monsters because they can still attack even though they are in first position, as well as a disadvantage in this battle, Fire & Regret causes the range monster's armor/HP to decrease every time it attacks the enemy. But because this is a battle with large mana where large mana monsters/units tend to have large HP/armor, we decided to stick with range monsters because their abilities are useful in this battle to support our main attacker. We hope that before our range monster dies due to being hit by the reflection of an attack from Fire & Regret ruleset our main attacker will be able to kill many enemy monsters. We do not intend to use the Gladius Card so we ignore the Are you Not Entertained ruleset.

This is my lineup :

Summoner or monster	Abilities	Description
	Possibilus the Wise, summoner. Has the buff of +2 HP, and gives Trample and Reach abilities to all friendly monsters	With +2 HP boost our survival capability., with this summoner Reach ability all melee unit in the 2nd position now can attack the enemy in the first position. Every time our monster kills the enemy, it will immediately attack the monster behind because it has the Trample ability.
	Diemonshark, 1st position, attacker and tanker. Has the Ability Trample, Enrage, and Retaliate.	This monster has high HP, armor, and good speed, suitable to become a tanker, *Enrage ability will increase the damage and speed which is already high enough, to activate Enrage ability of the monster's it's HP needs to be decreased. The Retaliate ability is a good ability when facing the melee monster it has a chance of 50% that this monster will counterattack the attacker. If the enemy monster we attacked dies then with Trample's ability this monster will attack the monster behind.
	Coastal Sentry, 2nd position, Attacker and 2nd tanker. Has the ability Double Strike, and Piercing.	I think This is the best attacker (damage and speed) we have from all of the elements we can use in this battle. With Double Strike this monster will attack twice each round giving 5 damage each for a total of 10 damage with the Piercing ability if the attack by this monster hits the armor and destroys it, then the remaining damage will hit the HP make this monster easier to kill the enemy. Usually, this monster can attack from the first position, but because of the summoner Possibilus it can attack from 2nd position, this monster does not have a strong defense/ability, against many attackers will die quickly, so I put it behind our tanker.
	Merdaali Guardian, 3rd position, Support, has the ability Tank Heal, Repair, and Strengthen.	We use this monster to increase the survival of our monster in the front and 2nd position Heal our monster in the first position and restore the monster armor that has the highest damage. The Strengthen ability will increase all of the ally monster HP to +1. I put it behind our 2 tankers to make it safe from front and back attacks.
	Supply Runner, 4th position, attacker and support. Has Swiftness, and Strengthen ability	We need this monster Swiftness ability to increase the speed of all our monsters by +1. The main goal is to improve the ability of our main attackers in positions 1 and 2. Strengthen ability enhance the HP of all our monsters by +1
	Swamp Spitter, 5th position, attacker and support, has ability Repair and Giant Killer.	We use this monster because has the Repair ability, this ability will restore the monster armor that has the highest damage. I hope it can restore the armor of Diemonshark or the Coastal Sentry. The Giant Killer ability will make Swamp Spitter do double damage when hitting the enemy who has 10 more mana cost. We put it here to defend against back attack, to protect our Merdaali Guardian from the enemy monster who can attack from behind in case our Wave Brood in the last position dies.
	Wave Brood, 6th position, attacker and tanker. Has the ability Taunt, Close Range, Void, and Return Fire.	We need this monster's Taunt ability that ensures that enemy monsters will attack this monster if they can, this will increase the survival rate of our monster in the first position because almost all enemies will attack this monster temporarily. Although Wave Brood is a ranged attacker, its Close Range ability is the same as the ruleset in this battle. The Void ability will decrease the enemy magic attack damage by 50%. Wave Brood Return Fire ability is same like Fire & Regret ruleset. We have two same ability with the ruleset.

Our Formation is finished and we are ready to battle :

Did your Strategy Work?

Our strategy is going well. The enemy decided to follow the existing rules because of the Fire & Regret ruleset, they did not use ranged monsters but magic type attackers. With the presence of our Wave Brood which can reduce the enemy's magic damage by half, it is difficult to kill our Wave Brood, allowing our attacking monsters to kill the enemy monster in the first position safely without being attacked by other monsters. Thanks to our Swamp Spitter and the Giant Killer abilities, we can quickly kill the enemy monster Arkemist The Bear (a monster with 11 mana).

With the death of **Arkemist the Bear, our Coastal Sentry can deal full damage to the next monster that advances to first position, increasing our chance to win. When hitting Arkemist the Bear Coastal Sentry only have 1 damage because Arkemist the Bear's Forcefield ability which reduces all damage of 5 or more to 1 :

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