My BATTLE MAGE SECRET Weekly Challenge! Keep Your Distance

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Hello there, this is my entry to the latest "Battle Mage Secret Weekly Challenge!". If you want to participate or learn more about the challenge, click here. This week we must formulate a strategy with the Keep Your Distance ruleset.

RULESET: Keep Your Distance

With the Keep Your Distance ruleset in action, all melee attacks cannot be used, including the units with multiple attack types with one of the attacks being melee attacks.

Keep Your Distance is an interesting ruleset which limits the units that you can use. It doesn't allow the use of Melee units specifically leaving just two attack types to be used. We can use a variety of abilities to buff our units or punish opponents for using ranged or magic attackers. You can use Phase, Void, Void Armor, and Magic Reflect to counter magic attacks. Also, using return fire to counter ranged attacks is a good strategy. But for them, you have to be sure what your opponent is going to use. I prefer giving buffs to my units so I am not dependent on my enemy lineup.

My Lineup

This is my lineup for the battle

Position	Summoner/Monsters
Summoner	Obsidian
Position 1	Mycelic Slipspawn
Position 2	Regal Peryton
Position 3	Queen Mycelia
Position 4	Sporcerer
Position 5	Goblin Psychic
Position 6	Magi of Chaos

It was a 45-mana cap battle and had the following two rulesets.

• Keep Your Distance - As we just saw "Monsters with Melee attack may not be used in battles".

• Ferocity - All Monsters have the Fury ability.

All except the Life and Dragon elements were active during this battle. I went with Earth as I wanted to form a lineup with mages and that's the reason I used Obsidian as my summoner which increased the magic attack of all the mages by 1. That is going to be my primary strategy by overwhelming the opponent with magic attacks.

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I used the Mycelic Slipspawn in the first position as a powerful tank. Although, it has Taunt ability which should ideally be avoided in battles with this ruleset. But I used it as it had enough health to stay alive for a bit and also its magic attack would help me to get more attacking strength. Having 45 mana to spend gave me the confidence to use this too.

Regal Peryton came in the next position, it is a strong unit as well. Deals 2 magic attack damage with incredible speed and combining this speed with its 'flying' ability it will become much harder to hit for ranged attackers during this battle. All this for just 5 mana was a real bargain!

Queen Mycelia was there with its 'protect' ability that gave all the friendly units +2 armour and it helps a lot during any battle, especially against ranged and melee attackers. It would still be useful in this battle even if melee attackers were not allowed in this battle.

In the fourth position in my lineup, I used another strong mage which dealt 2 magic attack damage on its own. It also had a good amount of health. However, its 'rust' ability was not too useful in this ruleset but it still comes in handy against my opponent's tank.

I had to use units with a 'tank heal' ability which would support my tank during the battle and for that purpose I used the Goblin Psychic. It also deals 2 magic attack damage of its own and is super useful in my lineup. This was the only healing unit in my lineup too.

Last but not least was Magi of Chaos, another heavy magic attacker dealing 3 attack damage on its own and costing just 6 mana. I had to use it to increase my overall attacking strength. All of those would get an additional boost of attack damage because of my summoner.

Now that my lineup was set, it was time for battle.

I will share my battle here, which I have uploaded to YouTube.

My Strategy

Since this was a very high mana cap battle (45 mana to spend) and melee attackers were not allowed as well. I couldn't judge if I should use an anti-ranged or anti-magic lineup so instead I went with a heavy magic attack of my own. That's why I used the Obsidian summoner as well which would increase my magic attack by 1.

I could have used the summoner which gives the'magic-reflect' ability but if my opponent had guessed it and used ranged attackers, it would have been such a waste so I went with heavy magic and it helps me ignore shields as well. That's why I used an offensive strategy rather than a defensive one.

I was expecting my opponent to use a similar strategy so I had to make sure I had enough defensive capabilities too. That's why I used a couple of beefy units at the front of the lineup even though one of them had the taunt ability.

This strategy, as you will see, worked in my favour and gave me a comfortable win at the end.

My opponent went Djinn Muirat as their tank and it is a good tank. It comes with a 'Void armour' ability which works well against magic attackers. So, they were expecting me to use magic attackers as well.

My tank was expected to take a lot of beating and it did... that was one of the first ones to be eliminated. But round 1 saw the demise of my opponent's tank as well.

They used a mix of ranged and magic attackers which was beneficial for me as I had extra armour given by Queen Mycelia which soaked multiple hits from ranged attackers while my mages ignored their armour.

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Regal Peryton survived for a long as it healed up during the start of a new round. It happened twice in a row and that was the final nail in the coffin for my opponent. All this time, they constantly lost units at regular intervals.

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One of the weird things is the placement of Will-O-Wisp on my opponent's lineup. It didn't have any attack and was still placed at the end of the lineup, maybe they were expecting me to use multiple 'sneak' monsters? Anyway, I won the battle easily with just my original tank eliminated. It was a one-way street from the start.

Conclusion

Keep Your Distance is an interesting ruleset where you can go with multiple strategies. There is no wrong and right among all the different strategies, be that going for anti-magic or anti-ranged strat, or just going for heavy magic attack damage. I preferred to go with the magic attack as my deck was more oriented that way and I didn't want to get caught if my opponent used a completely different attack type.

Also, going back to the fundamentals of the game is good too and you don't have to worry too much about the placement of the cards and there will be very few surprises too. Let me know which one you prefer in this ruleset.

Thanks for reading...

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Note:

• Text dividers are from freeztag.
• Card images are from @splinterlands.

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