Splinterlands BATTLE MAGE SECRETS - Featuring Weak Magic in Bronze Brawls!

Featuring Bronze League Summoner and Monsters in Action!

I'm back featuring another Brian's League battle and strategy this time featuring weak magic in a bronze League brawl. This brawl happened before the release of rebellion, so it will still be under the classic rule sets or the more wild rulesets I believe. It'll be interesting to see what brawls I get into with the new release of rebellion but that's her different time.

CHALLENGE RULES

RULESET: Weak Magic

Description: Magic hits armor first before hitting health.

Add another layer of Protection to extend the life of your units.
Shatter or Pierce any armor your opponent dares place.

Reasons Why I like it

Magic at times can be one of the hardest attacks in the lineups to overcome. A strong magic lineup seems to cut through your monsters relentlessly and pays no attention usually to armor or Shield and go straight against health. Well there are a few ways to counter this, it's can can be really challenging. I like the fact that weak magic now turns all of the armor into essentially avoid armor and means that it all has to hit the armor first before reducing health. This also turns some of those uncommon monsters that have exceptionally high armor and low health into good choices. Things that might have seven armor but only one health now look fairly attractive especially if you can add in repair.

The Matchup - Where Rules Sets, Splinters and Mana Collide

The Rule Sets

Watch the Match Here

https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sm_O3vhdlt6JewrsF55nzmE&ref=senstless

MANA: 34

Ruleset: Keep Your Distance: Monsters with melee attacks may not be used.

Ruleset: Tis but Scratches: All Monsters have the Cripple ability.

Ruleset: Weak Magic: Magic hits armor first before hitting the health.

SPLINTERS: Fire, Life, Dragon

Initial Rule Set and Mana Gameplay Thoughts

• Rulesets
  This is a fairly complex rule set being a three rule set match. Working my way through the rule sets, I feel that the ones that will have the biggest impact on my monster selection will be keep your distance since it reduces my population of card significantly. Losing only melee cards leaves only non-attack, ranged, and Mantic. Having weak magic reduces the effectiveness of their attack and leaves risk for never impacting health while it is but scratches is a nice addition that means healing monsters are less effective as the rounds progress.
• Mana
  34 mana should allow me to pick just about any monsters I want but not have unlimited legendary and high manic cards to play with. I'm usually pretty happy with anything over 30 and can feel good about my laps
• Splinters
  Leaving only three splinters to choose from it's going to be difficult. My thoughts are to play Life and that my opponent will also play Life. I feel that this is likely to be a heavy match in many instances and will try to play and counter that.

• Summoner ILTHAIN
  Since melee monsters are lost, in magic monsters will hit armor first and decided to try to increase my damage delivered by having return fire which will reflect a reduced amount of damage back to anyone fighting arrows.

• First Position IZIAR
  While this is typically suited for an anti-magic match, I figured having void Plus return fire and high health means is the perfect tank. If they choose to play magic it will not take as much damage, while it's high health will help it return as much damage to attacking monsters as possible.

• Second Position VENARI MARKSRAT
  Clearly I want to give a boost to Captain Kate when it gets knocked out. While it is a magic attack I feel that if I can get some bloodlust growing it might not matter. It's also my second highest health card which hopefully can be healed a few times before tis but scratches reduces it

• Third Position CAPTAIN KATIE
  Kind of an interesting play I thought, hoping to get some low man and knockouts that don't have armor with this. It's a bit of a risk but I love playing magic snipe with bloodlust.

• Fourth Position TEMPORAL MASTER
  Not a typical choice for me for three manners but losing melee monsters really limited card selection and while I did not want to really focus on magic, I decided that it would be an okay choice to play here. Even if the attack doesn't impact the health, it can impact the total potential health through the rule sets

• Fifth Position VENARI CRYSTALSMITH
  Perfect card for this match, it will heal the tanks as well as deliver a damage from arrows

• Sixth Position HALFLING ALCHEMIST
  I'm going to really miss halfling alchemist in battles these days now that it's rotated out of modern, but I love having the option to reduce a potentially big monsters attack by half

Opponent Lineup & Match Play

• Summoner ETERNAN BRUNE
  Good solid choice, if we're going to play weak magic then reducing my armor by two is always a good choice if you're going to play magic or in fact pretty much any other card
• MOLTEN ASH GOLEM
  A really solid choice for no melee matches. It's decent health and close range attack from the first position makes it a logical choice to be there first
• VENARI MARKSRAT
  Absolutely love this card, the Mark her it provides is going to be big in almost every match and adding it to lava launcher is always troublesome
• LAVA LAUNCHER
  The second close range card they've played and a good one at that. Plus after it gets a motor boost it's going to really be dealing out some damage.
• FIRECALLER
  An interesting choice for five mana cost. It seems a bit excessive considering it's unlikely to get attacked on boost the surrounding cards. Without a real threat of sneak and a limited threat of snipe it's usefulness seems diminished here
• DJINN APPRENTICE
  Not a bad choice, even with weak magic having a magic attacker isn't bad considering you have four attackers ahead of it using arrows. Likely the army will be gone and it will do some good work starting in a second round

Round 1

Since we start off round 1 I'm feeling like I have a good matchup and a good chance to win. I don't know how much will happen in the first round. But let's go through it

The first elimination comes from Captain Katie knocking out Markscrat which provides a martyr boost to both Ash Golem and lava launcher. While also triggering Captain Katie to get a bloodlust boost. So far things are looking great and while there is a tremendous amount of action the rest of the round the biggest impact is the amount of damage I've delivered with return fire. Every single time an arrow monster attacks I'm delivering damage back and either reducing health or reducing their armor position

Round 2

As round two starts I believe that the combination of return fire, and having six attackers is really starting to show. Things have definitely swung in my favor.

I finally lose Iziar with a blow from lava launcher. I then quickly knock out Ash gollum before losing Markscrat. That provides me martyr boost to Captain Katy bringing her stats to a ridiculous five magic damage 5-speed and nine health. Overall that is a very impressive stat line, and also put her in first position which keeps me from giving lava launcher a martyr boost by sniping fireball.

As the round winds down halfling alchemist delivers a blow to lava launcher, effectively cutting its damage from 4 to 2 which is a big impact to my opponents total damage potential. The round winds up with a Miss from fire color to the captain Katie four speed differential.

Round 3

Round three starts I'm pretty sure it's all in the bag. It starts off with a knockout for the captain and triggering another bloodlust. This is quickly followed by my last two attacks and leaving them with only one low health magic attacker in the back row.

Round 4

In a totally unnecessary addition, the captain gets another knockout for bloodlust which brings him to seven magic 7-speed and brings up their health potential by one. This leaves only one monster in my opponent's team. While it has been boosted by its magic attack up to three I believe it's inconsequential. I just happen to have great luck and it is the round for temporal Master to attack. Given that it's charged into triple damage it takes away three of the health from my opponent leaving them only one which is knocked out with the final victory blow from half Lane alchemist again.

Overall Thoughts

I really think having returned fire on all of my monsters in a match where my opponent was likely to use very high amounts of arrow attacking monsters was key for me. It allowed me to start to reduce their health and armor before they got to the front row. While I played an untraditional magic heavy lineup in a rule set meant to reduce magics effectiveness, I believe that the fact melee monsters were eliminated means many of the remaining choices did not have high armor content to contend with and we're left unprotected for most magic attacks. It was certainly an interesting three rule match to contend with but I was happy to get the victory for myself and my guild.

~~@senstless

#sbi-skip