Battle Mage Secrets: Explosive Weaponry - Double Strike With Great Vengeance

Prelude
Hi all, hope all is well for you and it is time for another Battle Mage Secrets. Last week, we looked at a ruleset that restrict our arsenal by half by stopping all the odd mana cards. This week, the ruleset we will examine something a little too hot to handle.

Ruleset Spotlight

Explosive Weaponry

Description:

• All units gain the Blast ability.
• Additional damage is equivalent to main damage divided by 2, rounded up.
• Include a unit with Reflection Shield in your lineup to absorb blast damage and protect your back line.

Blast ability:
Does additional damage to Monsters adjacent to the target Monster.
Additional damage is equivalent to main damage divided by 2, rounded up.

What thrives with this ruleset?
This ruleset is rather interesting. It essentially allows damage receive by one card to have "the love" being shared to its neighbours. So essentially, the way to handle this ruleset is speed, finding the gap, protection and having more strikes.

Speed is very much essential is this ruleset, you strike first, you get the bonus since the spilled damage can actually take out a card if it is on low health. So abilities such as Swiftness or Summoners that buff speed will be a good boost to your winning possibilities.

Finding the gap is something very good for this ruleset so as to make we hit cards that have 2 neighbours and let 2 other cards take additional damage instead of 1. So in this case, Opportunity and Snipe becomes real good here. Opportunity finds the lowest health that people typically hide in the middle of lineup and similarly the range/magic cards which usually will not be found at the front or the rear.

Protection is where we add more cushion to our defence for longer sustainability in the form of using the ability Protect and the Reflection Shield which nullify the impact of the blast.

Finally, the crazy thing that enhances the effectiveness of Blast will be Double Strike and cards with double attack. These cards possess the ability to hit opponent twice per turn which means they can initiate the Blast effect 2 times which really brings headache to your opponent and I will be doing a showcase in the match today.

Lastly, in terms of stats. It is rather standard, the more the merrier and preferably speed takes precedence to strike earlier.

With these in mind, let's start to talk about the battle proper.

The Battle
Link: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_67321866e64993709fc7c7e52b76b89c&ref=vaynard86

Ruleset
Explosive Weaponry, Up Close and Personal
Mana Limit: 60

Splinter	Mana Cost	Position	Reason
Helios Matriarch	6	Summoner	Gives +1 speed buff to the whole lineup and allows the use of Gladius cards
Grund	10	1st	Hard hitting double striker that have good health and speed to serve as tank
Carnage Titan	11	2nd	Hard hitting Reach double striker which can serve as secondary tank upon primary fall.
Katrelba Gobson	6	3rd	Double striker with Sneak and Blood Lust. When the engine start, there is no stopping this card.
Dhampir Infiltrator	4	4th	Another double striker with sneak
Sand Worm	9	5th	The only non double striking attacker but key is to land a big hit and allow the big damage to spill to the adjacent card.
Arkemis the Bear	12	6th	Big bear with higher armour and health to hold the backline and gives Protect to the lineup with 2 additional armour.
Total Mana:	58

Opponent Lineup

• Summoner - Lobb Lowland
• Position 1 - Mycelic Infantry
• Position 2 - Pelacor Mercenary
• Position 3 - Quora Towershead
• Position 4 - Drybone Raider
• Position 5 - Disintegrator
• Position 6 - Venari Scout

Prediction before pressing rumble
From how my opponent lineup his attack line, a tough tank with Shield to hold the front, Disintegrator to reduce my melee damage. Then packed with 2 double attackers in Drybone Raider and Quora. Venari Scout provides the opportunity to pick out my weaker cards to do a double blast to 2 sides.

On the other hand, how I lineup my team will be 2 double strikes to handle the front and another 2 double strikes from the rear. Sand Worm to do a big blast from the back and Arkemis to serve as a backline tank whom also provided the lineup with Protect.

Let's battle!

Battle Synopsis

Round 1, A 36 action round which is something that I see for the first time. Loads of attacking and blasting everywhere. At the end of this round, Venari Scout was the sole victim being taken out. Disintegrator is dangerously low. after taking a big hit from Sand Worm.

Round 2, Disintegrator was took out early and my whole lineup gain back 1 melee attack. Grund did its piece by hammering hard sincec round 1 to reduce Pelacor Mercenary health significantly and fell while Sand Worm deal a fatal blow to Drybone Raider.

Round 3-4, Katrelba with its growing damage took out both Quora and Pelacor Mercenary in Round 3 while Carnage Titan and Sand Worm reduce Mycelic Infantry to 1 health. And this was easily settled by Katrelba in Round 4 to secure the victory for the team.

Post Battle Summary
A fast pace match with plenty of actions in the first two rounds and subsequently wrapping up within the next 2 rounds. I like how things went when I have attackers doing damage at the front and also at the back and seeing how the sandwich my opponent together.

Did my strategy work? Totally! This lineup really allow me to do the sandwich effect and wreck my opponent lineup from both front and rear. The additional Sand Worm whom was instrumental is doing big damage from the back to land a big punishing damage with blast really helped accelerate things and Arkemis providing that additional protection completes the lineup. A lineup with heavy striking to maximize the blast coupled with decent defence to provide longer sustainability bring a great result and a beautiful win.

What's the Battle Mage Secret?

In today's match up, it is a strategy where I deploy 4 double striking cards and reap the rewards. Not only that, the 4 cards divide and conquer, 2 striking from the front and 2 striking from the back. To also note that the Summoner that I've picked also gave speed buff which allowed me to strike first which is very important in the ruleset.

So the Battle Mage Secret that I would like to share here is, if you can pick on cards that give double strike and if possible have your speed boost up a little so that they can strike first and you can also achieve the same kind of sandwich front and back effect that I've showed in today's match up. Remember, one extra attack chance, one extra blast is triggered. So 1 big hit is not necessary as important as having multiple hits due to the number of blast triggered.

Wrap Up
I hope you guys enjoyed reading my sharing on the rule set Explosive Weaponry. I would really appreciate it if you liked and/or commented to let me know what are you thoughts.

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Till my next battle sharing, take care, stay safe and happy battling!

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