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Ahoy fellow Splinterlands players! Last week I couldn't join the challenge as I was a bit busy over the weekend. I didn't have a battle with the featured ruleset saved to maybe make a post about it on Monday like this post. For this post I did already save a battle with this week's featured ruleset.

During this week's Battle Mage Secrets the featured ruleset is Close Range, which allows all Ranged Monsters to attack from the first position.

You can recognise that ruleset with the following icon.

When you have this ruleset available in your game you don't have to worry as much about the placement for your Ranged Monsters because now they can also attack once they're in the first position. Of course you still have to make good decisions about their placement, but you don't have to worry about losing damage output when they reach the first position.

The battle that I'm sharing with you this week is one from my battles in the Modern Ranked format. It was against the player sonu1410.

Here is a picture of our initial lineup at the start of the battle.

Battle Rules

This was a battle with a 23 Mana Cap where Fire, Water, Life and Death were the available elements. The battle had 3 Rulesets.

• Briar Patch: All Monsters have the Thorns ability.
• Equalizer: The initial Health of all Monsters is equal to that of the Monster on either team with the highest base Health.
• Close Range: Ranged attacks may be used in the first position in battles.

Here is the link to the battle if you want to check it out https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_d6ac343e7673ce345894e12af59c1a15&ref=athunderstruck

Battle Lineup

With these rulesets it's not a great idea to bring a lot of Melee attacking Monsters because with Briar Patch all Monsters get the Thorns ability. That doesn't stop my opponent or me from bringing 1 Monster with a Melee attack though. In combination with the Equalizer for same health the Thorns damage could be less of a problem. My Melee attacking Monster has Reflection Shield though, so it will never be taking any damage from the Thorns. Which is a great pick then.

Due to Monsters with Melee Attack not being favourable to play in this battle I wanted to build a team to try and get dodge Ranged attacks while also lowering the potential Magic damage that my opponent could bring if they choose not to go with many Ranged attackers.

Some of the Monsters that I wanted to play in this battle are only available in Water so Kelya Frendul was my choice for Summoner. Of course she also provides +1 Speed and +1 Armour which also helps with stopping some potential damage.

In my front line I'm using Chaos Agent. The combination of its Dodge ability and the +1 Speed from Kelya would hopefully allow it to dodge some Ranged attacks and if it gets hit it'll survive longer thanks to the equal health. The extra Armour from Kelya also allows it to take one hit.

Right behind the Chaos Agent is Tide Biter, the only Melee attack Monster that I brought. It has Reach so it can attack from the 2nd position and thanks to its Reflection Shield it won't be damaged by the Thorns so it's a great card to use here for the 3 Mana cost.

Up next I placed Doctor Blight, maybe a bit of a weird position but with the equal health I just need him to tank a bit longer before my Merdhampir would reach the first position. I'm wanted to bring Doctor Blight for potential Affliction to prevent healing and hopefully landing Poison for some extra damage.

Then I have Merdhampir in my lineup. With Life Leech it will start gaining more Health every time it attacks the opponents Health to make it tankier with every successful hit. Thanks to the equal health it already has some good base health.

I've placed Merdaali Guardian behind the Merdhampir so that she can heal Merdhampir when it reaches the first position. Thanks to Merdhampir's Life Leech that heal could increase over time too as it gains more max health.

Last but not least I brought the Elven Mystic for the Silence ability to lower my opponents Magic damage should they choose to bring some of those too.

Battle Analysis

My opponent decided to use General Sloan which provides +1 damage to all Ranged attackers. That's pretty solid in the Close Range ruleset. However then I noticed that they didn't bring ANY Ranged attackers in their lineup at all. I guess they went with Sloan because the majority of Monsters they wanted to play are from the Life element.

They placed Pelacor Conjurer up front, also pretty good at dodging attacks with its high speed and Flying ability. It also has Magic Reflect, luckily I only brought two Magic attackers and thanks to equal health that 1 reflect damage per turn won't be so bad for me.

They brought Celestial Harpy, which will of course take Thorns damage every time it attacks me. But they are mitigating that damage by having Djinn Renova in the backline with the Triage ability to heal Celestial Harpy.

The battle starts with my Tide Biter missing the Pelacor Conjurer. My Elven Mystic then attacks it to take away the Reflection Shield and luckily my Merdhampir then hits it and already gaining +1 Health thanks to Life Leech. It also Cripples the Pelacor Conjurer, but that doesn't really matter because my opponent doesn't have any Tank heals.

My opponent lands all their attacks on my Chaos Agent, well only the Celestial Harpy's attack can be dodged so that's that.

In Round 2 my Tide Biter hits the Pelacor Conjurer but then my Merdhampir is the one missing its attack. With Doctor Blight not landing Poison it then survives round 2 just like my Chaos Agent.

In Round 3 my Tide Biter kills the Pelacor Conjurer. It is brought back to life thanks to Adelade Brightwing. Which causes it to regain its Divine Shield. My Elven Mystic once again takes away the Divine Shield and then my Merdhampir lands its attack killing the Pelacor Conjurer again.

Now the Celestial Harpy is in front and can no longer be healed by Djinn Renova's Triage. It takes out my Chaos Agent while suffering some Thorns damage.

In the next round my Tide Biter and my Merdhampir both miss their attacks against the Celestial Harpy! But the combination of my Magic attacks lowered her health that much that when she attacks my Tide Biter that round the Thorns takes her out.

Now my opponent is down to 3 damage per turn and my Tide Biter is being healed for 2 Health per turn. At which point my opponent can't really do much. They could slooowly take out my Tide Biter, but I have more than enough damage output to get rid of the Djinn Renova before they're able to take out my Tide Biter.

At this point the victory has been secured already.

Did My Strategy Work?

Yeah my strategy worked really well! Chaos Agent was perhaps not dodging many attacks because only the Celestial Harpy's attacks could potentially be dodged. This is because my opponent didn't bring any Ranged attackers so I couldn't try to dodge those attacks. The Elven Mystic with Silence was a great idea to bring in case of Magic attackers as my opponent did indeed bring 2 of those.

Conclusion

I've made great decisions for my lineup in this battle. I was hoping to see some Ranged attackers on my opponents team though so that maybe the Chaos Agent could have dodged some of their attacks. At this level it doesn't have Phase yet so it couldn't dodge the Magic attacks. I need to get my Kelya Frendul to level 5 and then my Chaos Agent to level 6 in order for that to be possible. Since my opponent is using level 6 Sloan their Chaos Agent did have that Phase ability.

Nevertheless I still had a great lineup thanks to bringing Elven Mystic to lower that potential Magic damage. During the battle I only lost my Chaos Agent, none of my other Monsters died. So yeah that was definitely a great lineup!

One thing I would've kinda liked to see different was that my Merdhampir could reach the 1st position. I would've wanted to see some high Health on it that keeps increasing from Life Leech and then being healed by the Merdaali Guardian. But I've seen something like that already so yeah the most important thing was just that I had a great lineup and a smooth win!

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