Splinterlands Battle Mage Challenge: Up Close and Personal BIG UP THE KRAKEN!

This week's Battle Mage rule set challenge was Up Close and Personal in which only melee monsters may be used in battle...

Up Close and Personal general strategy....

Offensively you will need to choose melee monsters with either reach, sneak or opportunity, in addition to your tank. Plus one melee summoners and inspire are also good buffs, as is blast if you're going for an attacking strategy.

More interesting (IMO) is to play a defensive strategy with shields and repair and let your opponent grind himself down on your defences while you pick away at him with maybe lower fire power.

So protect and plus shield summoners are a good choice. As is shield, also demoralise!

Resurrect can work well with this ruleset because you get full shields with a resurrect, although you run the risk of a lower shielded monster getting resurrected which would be less useful!

Of course piercing and, even better, shatter are great counters to an anticipated shield strategy, but playing that sort of anticipation game is risky!

Up Close and Personal battle exemplar

The battle below shows a battle featuring the Dragon with Water splinter in a comprehensive victory!

Mana and rulesets:

• up close and personal and evens
• 45 mana

** summoner -Kitty, the best!**

• Chain Golem - shield is great against melee attacks
• Djin Chwala - an underrated reach monster and useful second tank with thorns
• Deep Lurker - big damage melee opportunity!
• Vruz - low mana sneak
• Cocatrice - low mana opportunity soak - good for misses!
• Kraken - awesome taunting card!

• Bajikeera -

The battle...

• round 1 - I take out the Torrent fiend, a miss on the Kraken, good start!
• round 3 - I take out the monk, I'm still 6 for 6
• round 4 - I take out the Gargoyle
• round 7 - I take out the Elven Defender
• round 9 - I take out the Deeplurker
• round 11 - It's all over, I take out the Demon Shark.

And I'm 6/6

Final battle analysis

A liquid example of how to play this ruleset, plenty of misses on my Kraken meant I finished 6/6, shield kept the golem alive at the front.

It just took me a while to grind through those shields.

Up close and personal final thoughts...

The Kraken... it's a FANTASTIC card in this rule set!