_{Thumbnail for the weekly challenge provided by @splinterlands}

Ahoy my fellow Splinterlands players and welcome to another of my weekly Battle Mage Secrets posts.

The featured ruleset for this week is Fog of War. When this ruleset is active all Monsters lose the Sneak, Snipe and Opportunity abilities.

You can recognise this ruleset with the following icon.

With this ruleset you have to avoid picking any Monsters that have the Sneak or Opportunity ability because the majority of the time Monsters with this ability are Melee attackers. They won't be able to attack with this ruleset active since they lose that ability. Unless there is also the rule that Melee Monsters can attack from any position. For Snipe it's not much of a problem since those Ranged or Magic attackers can still attack, you just have to pay attention that they'll attack the frontline now.

The battle I'm sharing for this post is from a Tournament earlier this week. It was in the Gauntlet Wild Bronze Invitational Tournament. I was up against the player Flowless.

Here is a picture of our initial lineup.

Battle Rules

This was a battle with a Mana Cap of 16. The Fire, Water, Earth, Death and Dragon Elements were available. So all of them except for Life. It had 3 rulesets:

• Healed Out: All healing abilities are removed from Monsters and Summoners.
• Fog of War: Monsters lose the Sneak, Snipe and Opportunity abilities.
• Earthquake: Non-flying Monsters take 2 Melee damage at the end of each round.

Here is a link to the battle if you want to check it out: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sm_OmEnPfMCfT5HlgCMr2th&ref=athunderstruck

Battle Lineup

So this battle has Fog of War where we can't use Sneak, Snipe or Opportunity, although it is a low mana battle so I likely wouldn't have picked those. There is also no Healing so have to pay attention to that. Then there's Earthquake as well so it's quite important to have some Monsters with the Flying-ability especially because there is no Healing.

An ideal time to play Brighton Bloom then as he provides the Flying-ability to all Monsters on the team. I often forget about him! Because mine is only level 2 I rarely use him in Ranked or in Silver Tournaments. But since this is a Bronze Tournament it is actually an ideal place to use him as level 2 is the max for this Tournament.

I would quite prefer Brighton Bloom combined with Sea Monster here since it'll heal itself but that's not possible because of the Healed Out ruleset.

As first united I placed the Furious Chicken, that way it could get picked off by an attack to save my team from a hit. Up next I have the Torrent Fiend, also 0 Mana like the Furious Chicken and placed there for the same purpose.

Then I brought Djinn Oshannus, high health and Magic attacker with the Void ability. So he can tank for a bit and since he has the Void ability he will also take less damage from Magic attackers that my opponent could bring.

Up next I have the Pirate Archer, nice little Ranged Monster with the Blast ability so whenever he hits he'll also deal 1 damage to the next Monster which could potentially help me take out my opponent faster.

Lastly I brought the Halfling Alchemist. For a bit of extra damage and also the Halving ability. If my opponent would play a Djinn Oshannus too then the Halfling Alchemist would reduce its attack to 1 and then that means their Djinn Oshannus wouldn't be able to damage mine because of the Void ability.

Battle Analysis

Alright so my opponent also used Brighton Bloom, understandable as he's great in this situation with the Earthquake ruleset. He didn't bring a Djinn Oshannus like me though so my Halfling Alchemist won't be able to render that one ineffective. It looks like my opponent brought a Deeplurker with the Opportunity ability which it loses. But they did place it in 2nd position so it seem they want to sacrifice their Furious Chicken too and then have the Deeplurker attack my frontline with that strong 3 Melee attack.

Round 1 starts with my Djinn Oshannus taking out their Furious Chicken. Right after that their Ice Pixie takes out my Furious Chicken and their Igor Darkspear take out my Torrent Fiend. Now Deeplurker deals that 3 Melee damage to my Djinn Oshannus, ouch! Followed by an attack of their Two Gun Pete. Now my Pirate Archer and Halfling Alchemist damage the Deeplurker. With the Halfling Alchemist now reducing the Deeplurker's attack to 1.

Round 2 starts with my Djinn Oshannus damaging Deeplurker. Then it gets attacked by everything on my opponents team for just 3 damage this turn because Deeplurker is at 1 Melee attack now. The Ice Pixie deals no damage since it has 1 Magic attack and my Djinn Oshannus has the Void ability.

My Halfling Alchemist damages Deeplurker. Then Pirate Archer attacks and with its Blast ability it takes out the Two Gun Pete. Which will reduce my opponents potential damage per round.

Round 3 starts with my Djinn Oshannus now taking out the Deeplurker as you can see in this screenshot.

Which means Igor Darkspear will go into first position now where it's unable to attack from as it's a Ranged Monster and there is nothing in this battle that allows him to attack from first position. Ice Pixie is still there in the backline to attack, but with its 1 Magic attack it won't deal any damage to my Djinn Oshannus thanks to his Void Ability.

That means at this point the battle is won for me as my opponent has no more damage against me.

In Round 5 Djinn Oshannus is the one who deals the final blow to the enemy team by killing the Ice Pixie. Which it does to flex extra hard on it being unable to damage him. Here is a screenshot of the action with the final hit.

Victory! 😄

Was My Strategy Successful?

Yeah it was a good strategy. I was kinda expecting a Djinn Oshannus on my opponents team too since he's a solid tank with that Void ability and having Magic attack. But they didn't bring that. They went with a Deeplurker for a strong Melee hit against me and some Ranged attackers + the Ice Pixie.

Which Djinn Oshannus did still survive thanks to its high health and especially because the Ice Pixie couldn't damage him.

One thing that didn't go as planned is using the Furious Chicken and/or Torrent Fiend to soak up damage. Because they both got killed by attacks that dealt only 1 damage! Meaning that 3 attack from Deeplurker went straight into my Djinn Oshannus. Ouch!

Conclusion

Overall a great lineup choice. My opponent didn't really bring what I expected but it still worked out fine. Even if my Halfling Alchemist didn't lower Deeplurker's attack in the first round my Djinn Oshanus could have just survived another hit from it and it would've had 1 hp left then as you can see it had 3 health left in the last screenshot. Which would have then been really close but it worked out just fine!! I love close battles like this they're the best!

That's it for my Battle Mage Secrets challenge this week. Thank you for reading!

If you haven't signed up for Splinterlands yet and want to check it out, you can do so with my referral link at: https://splinterlands.com?ref=athunderstruck