My BATTLE MAGE SECRET Weekly Challenge! Up to Eleven

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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 have to formulate a strategy with the Up to Eleven ruleset.

RULESET: Up to Eleven

With the Up to Eleven ruleset in action, all units will gain the 'Amplify' ability. So, having return fire, thorns and magic reflect will be helpful during the battle.

The 'Up to Eleven' ruleset is an interesting one. It gives the 'amplify' ability which increases the return damage given by abilities like 'return fire', 'thorns' and 'magic reflect'. Also having extra armour is useful, especially if you are using the majority of melee or ranged attackers in your battle to avoid those return damages as much as you can.

Let's see how this ruleset affects my lineup and how I strategies for the following battle.

My Lineup

This is my lineup for the battle

Position	Summoner/Monsters
Summoner	Keyla Frendul
Position 1	Drybone Raider
Position 2	Gargoya Devil
Position 3	Edith Emberstar
Position 4	Azmare Harpoonist
Position 5	Sea Stalker
Position 6	Swamp Spitter

This was a 59-mana cap brawl battle and had the following rulesets:

• Ferocity - All monsters have the Fury ability.
• Amplify - All monsters have the Amplify ability.
• Going the Distance - Only Monsters with Ranged Attack may be used in battles.

Only Water, Earth and Death elements were active during this battle. With only ranged attackers allowed I went with water summoner, Keyla Frendul to give my units extra armour and shield myself from potential return attacks. It also increases the speed of all friendly monsters by 1 which is crucial against ranged attackers.

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I placed Drybone Raider in the first position as my tank. It costs a whooping 12 mana but comes with some nice stats. It is a multi-attacker dealing both melee and ranged attacks and has 'shatter' and 'double strike' ability which is extremely effective in this ruleset. It also comes with decent health and armour of its own.

Next in my lineup was Gargoya Devil, another ranged attacker dealing 3 range attack damage with good speed and having 'flying' ability. It comes with a 'close range' ability too so it will still attack if gets into the first position. It also comes with a 'deathblow' ability. Its only weakness was its low health.

Edith Emberstar was my gladiator card in this brawl battle. It costs 8 but deals heavy ranged attack damage and comes with the standard 'bloodlust' ability. If it gets going it can get difficult to eliminate.

One of the best attackers in my lineup was Azmake Harpoonist, costing just 6 mana but dealing heavy 4 range attack damage and having 6 health points of its own is not bad! It also comes with a 'snare' ability so it can't miss even against units with a 'flying' ability.

I placed the Sea Stalker in the fifth position in my lineup. It dealt 5 ranged attack damage and had the 'camouflage' ability which made it very dangerous until the end of the battle. Its 'snipe' ability also adds a bit of a surprise element to my lineup and this is one of the best attackers in my lineup. It costs 8 mana which is a bargain because of its impressive stats.

Last but not least was Swamp Spitter, costing 7 mana and dealing 3 range attack damage with decent speed. But it comes with only 4 health points which is justified by its 'repair' ability that plays an important role against melee or ranged attackers.

Now that my lineup is set let's talk about my strategy for this game.

My Strategy

The 'Up to Eleven' ruleset is an interesting one which grants the ability to 'amplify' to all the units and you must take advantage of this if you can. I didn't have the best of chances to use this as I had a more restrictive ruleset like 'Going the Distance' and had just a few elements active. So, what did I choose? You could go to the fundamentals of the games like I did and support each of them with extra armour.

Using a strong attacker like Drybone Raider at the front supporting it with extra armour and making sure you have armour repair too it gets extremely difficult for your opponent to get rid of your tank, especially with just ranged attackers like I had during this battle.

I went in with a lot of attacking strength rather than worrying about the low health of my units, I knew if I could get some heavy early strikes it would make all the difference in this battle.

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

My opponent went with a similar strategy, they used the Keyla Frendul as their summoner too, but their lineup was not as attacking as mine.

Their tank didn't last long and went down easily by a couple of attacks and that was a big blow to them. It didn't get a chance to get its armour repaired or things like that and when it rains it pours. It was just the start of round 2 when they lost another important unit, the Rune Crafter and now it looked bad for them.

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The 'flying' ability on my Gargoya Devil helped it survive for much longer and it got eliminated only in the third round and my tank was still standing at the front.

It looked like my opponent never got going with this battle and kept losing units one after the other at regular intervals. And getting a ranged attacker at the first position is such a disadvantage when they are unable to attack.

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It only took five rounds to win this battle. And the funny part was my tank was still breathing at the end of the battle. It proved to be an easy win for me, it didn't look like that at the start of the battle.

Conclusion

Up to Eleven ruleset is an interesting one as you will get an advantage if you use units with abilities like 'return fire', 'thorns' or 'magic return' as their return damage will be increased by 'amplify' ability and we know that all units gain this ability during this lineup so using those abilities can be very advantageous.

But don't just rely on them, sometimes this ruleset gets paired with very restrictive rulesets like the one in the above and you can't always have summoners or units that can take full advantage of 'amplify'. In that case, I prefer to go to the fundamentals like using a strong tank in the front, giving all my units extra armour or health and supporting the tank with 'armour repair' or healing abilities. All of these are helpful in most of the battles not just in this ruleset. In the end, just see what you have in your arsenal and try to come up with the best strategy.

Let me know what your strategy is with this ruleset.

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