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Introduction

I'm here to share my Battle Mage Secrets blog post for the Battle Mage Secrets Challenge. The theme featured this week is Briar Patch. In this ruleset, all creatures have the thorns ability which basically returns half of the attacking melee creatures attack. I will be sharing some strategies that are good to use in this ruleset as well as feature one of my battles under this ruleset.

Strategy For Briar Patch Ruleset

In Briar Patch ruleset, you want to try to avoid playing melee monsters as they will hurt themselves but of course there is an exception to that and that is melee monsters with the reflection shield ability. In this ruleset, a summoner that can help buff or counter magic/range is ideal. Some summoners that are good in this ruleset are Rathe, Obsidian, Ilthain, Thaddius, Quix, Mimosa. Also ideally, you want to use non-melee creatures unless it has reflection shield but there are some special cases that melee is ok without reflection shield and that's if you feel there's enough value it brings that even with the damage to itself it's worth playing. You want to have a tank infront like Chaos Agent, Failed Summoner, Pelacor Conjurer or Almo Cambino. Then behind this tank you add your magic and melee monsters and you're all set.

The Battle

I played this battle on my account, shawnnft. The battle link can be found here. This battle is in brawl; the fray is #10 in tier 2 which is silver league Chaos Legion and Untamed Only. The ruleset for this battle was Briar Patches and Earthquake. It was a 35 mana cap battle with only water, life and death usable.

Discussing My Lineup

Summoner, Grandmaster Rathe - I chose Grandmaster Rathe as the summoner because it's a good summoner in briar patch + earthquake. Life has a lot of good flying monsters and magic monsters. The earth element wasn't available so I didn't need to be scared of an Immortalis counterplay as well.

First Position, Pelacor Conjurer - I chose Pelacor Conjuer to be my main tank. It's super good in this ruleset as I am expecting opponent to play magic! It has good speed against ranged monsters as well to dodge. This card also had flying for the earthquake ruleset which made it perfect.

Second Position, Uriel - I chose Uriel The Purifier as a secondary tank. Even though it's a melee monster and I advised not to use it, this is a situation where it would be ok to play it. Since it's not attacking in the second position and there's earthquake ruleset this was a good option to place as a backup tank for when Pelacor Conjurer died. It also had recharge and heal so it can actually heal back the thorn's damage so I thought it had value for me in this match espeically with the flying.

*Third Position, Gargoya Devil - The purpose of this card was to be a non melee damage but it was also great choice because it had flying for the earthquake ruleset.

Fourth Position, Adelade Brightwing - The purpose of this card was to do magic damage as well as revive and give armor repair to my team. This card is super good in earthquake battles if you end up choose life as the element. This is probably the most used card in life earthquake battles.

Fifth Position, Sola Ranjell - The main purpose for Sola Ranjell was to heal my frontline. It also provided magic damage so it won't get hurt by briar patch and it also has bloodlust so it could get buffed if it defeated any monsters on the enemy side.

Final Position, Soul Fiend - Soul Fiend is just cannon fodder. I thought it would be good as a protection against sneak. The downside of playing this at the back though was the risk of wasting the revive on it since it could be the first to die by sneak/earthquake since it had low health.

Analaysis of The Battle

My line up worked out great. Honestly, it was a close match since Splintertools gave both me and my opponent a 50% win rate chance. I think I won because of RNG. The revive came out clutch on my Pelacor Conjurer which was nicely followed up by the heal. I believe this is what allowed me to win the battle along with Uriel being my second tank which let my Gargoya Devil focus on damage.

Do I Like Briar Patch Ruleset?

To answer this, I actually do like Briar Patch ruleset. I think it's a fun new creative ruleset that they introduced in the past few releases that made some more interesting lineups. It forces you to think whether not it's worth it to play melee.

Anyways that's all for me this week. Hope to see you again for next week's Battle Mage Secrets!

Thank You

If you made it here, thank you so much for reading all the way to the end. I appreciate the support and I hope you learned something new!

If you are interested in trying Splinterlands please use this link here. If you did use my referal link, let me know in the comment section, I will do my best to help whether that be delegating you cards, sending you cards and teaching you how to play. Once again, thank you so much.

Credits

Photo Banner thumbnail made using Canva
Other photo are screenshots from Splinterland in game