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

Ahoy my fellow Battle Mages, welcome to my latest Battle Mage Secrets post.

The featured ruleset for this week is Maneuvers. This ruleset gives all Melee attackers the Reach ability, allowing them to attack from the 2nd position. Monsters with Opportunity and Sneak still use those Abilities so Reach won't affect them.

You can recognise the ruleset with this icon.

The battle I want to share with you for the post this week is from the Ferexian Modern Silver Invitational Tournament a few days ago. It was against the player duchanio.

Here is a picture of our initial lineup.

Battle Rules

This was a battle with a 51 Mana Cap. Only the Fire and Water Elements were available. The battle had 3 rulesets which were:

• Maneuvers: All units gain reach.
• Are You Not Entertained?: One additional Gladiator card may be used in battles.
• 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_WeK7QQZyfq8pu6JMqyJo&ref=athunderstruck

Battle Lineup

Not a lot of available Elements here. I feel like having some good Opportunity attackers in my Team might be nice to target Low Health Monsters in my opponent's Team. With the addition of the Earthquake ruleset that combo could help take some of them out faster. It's a Modern Tournament so less available Summoners. Possibilus the Wise doesn't seem that great as he already gives Reach to the team, which is given through one of the Rulesets for this battle anyway. So I decide I'll go with Kelya Frendull for the extra Speed and Armor. That could protect my Monsters from an initial hit and also from the first Earthquake damage.

I'm bringing Diemonshark up front because of its high Armour and it has the Enrage ability so once it takes damage to its Health it'll become stronger and faster. Making it possibly harder to hit him.

In second position I'm using Noa the Just. That Rust ability reducing the Armour on my opponent's team by 2 can help for my Monsters to take out theirs faster. He also has the Dodge ability which could help him survive when he gets to the first position. He doesn't have any attack though and wouldn't benefit from Reach. BUT there is Weapon's Training so I'm giving him Melee attack with Kulu Mastermind and that way Noa the Just will be able to attack from here.

So up next is Kulu Mastermind for the Weapon's Training to Noa the Just. And it has Opportunity to attack low Health Monsters on my opponent's Team. It also has the Shield ability to take less Physical damage, meaning it'll also only take 1 damage from Earthquake.

Then I brought Runi for another Opportunity attacker. I could've brought Deeplurker, for the same Mana. But Runi is better here as it has the Resurrect ability to come back to life the first time it dies. Also Runi has the same Health as Isgald Vorst so Runi would be the first target of Opportunity and protect my Isgald Vorst.

Since there is a ruleset that allows us to bring a Gladiator I am bringing Isgald Vorst to bring my team up to 3 Monsters with Opportunity. When Isgald Vorst loses her Armour but then gets a kill the Bloodlust will give her 1 new Armour. Which could help her with surviving the Earthquake ruleset.

Lastly I brought Runemancer Kye, she is the only Monster in my Team with the Flying ability and so she's the only one that won't take any damage from that Earthquake ruleset. Her Life Leech ability would make her a better fit for an earlier position in the team. But I wanted to place her in the back to protect my Isgald Vorst from possible Sneak attackers.

Battle Analysis

My opponent decided to go with the other one of the 2 available Elements, being Fire. They chose Conqueror Jacek as the Summoner. A smart choice for the extra Speed AND the Piercing ability to cut right through my Armour. They brought a Supply Runner for even more Speed! The Gladiator they chose already has the Reach ability on its own, so doesn't gain any favour from the ruleset, but it's still a great pick because their Gladiator has the Repair ability to repair some Armour!

Round 1

My opponent brought Arkemis the Bear to give +2 Armour to all their Monsters, but that got cancelled out by my Noa the Just having the Rust ability to reduce all opponent's Armour by 2.
Supply Runner with Scattershot hits my Noa the Just for 2 against its Armour.
Noa the Just hits Arkemis the Bear for 3 damage to its Health.
Lava Launcher with Scattershot tries to hit Runemancer Kye but misses.
Uraeus hits Runemancer Kye for 2 against her Armour.
Tenyii Striker hits Runemancer Kye for 3 against her Armour.
Arkemis the Bear hits Diemonshark for 3 against its Armour. Also applying the Halving ability making Diemonshark's Melee damage go from 3 to 1.
Kulu Mastermind hits and destroys Uraeus' Armour.
Diemonshark hits Arkemis the Bear for 1 damage to its Health.
Isgald Vorst kills Uraeus. This triggers her Bloodlust and she gets +1 to all stats.
Chimney Wallstop hits my Diemonshark for 6 damage against the Armour to destroy it, but due to the Piercing ability also deals damage to its Health dropping Diemonshark to 6 Health.
Runemancer Kye hits Arkemis the Bear for 2 damage to its Health and Life Leeches to gain +1 Health.
Runi hits Supply Runner for 3 damage to its Health.

That's the end of the first round. Our teams look like this now.

Round 2

Earthquake happens first. Almost all our Monsters take 2 Physical damage from Earthquake, with the only exclusion being Runemancer Kye. Since Supply Runner was at 2 Health before the Earthquake it means it dies to that Earthquake.

Here is a screenshot of the teams after that Earthquake.

A shift in Speed because Supply Runner died, meaning some of my Monsters will be able to attack earlier than last round.
Diemonshark being Enraged now has the highest Speed, so starts off the round by attacking Arkemis the Bear for 2 damage to its Health.
Noa the Just then attacks and kills Arkemis the Bear.
Isgald Vorst now gets her turn before Kulu Mastermind because she has 1 Speed more from the extra stats through Bloodlust. She attacks and kills Tenyii Striker. This triggers her Bloodlust again for another +1 to all stats.
Lava Launcher with Scattershot hits my Kulu Mastermind for 2 damage to its Health.
Kulu Mastermind attacks Lava Launcher destroying its Armour.
Runemancer Kye hits Chimney Wallstop for 2 damage to its Health and gains +1 Health from Life Leech.
Chimney Wallstop Repairs 2 Armour on Lava Launcher. Then attacks and kills my Diemonshark. Triggers its Bloodlust to gain +1 to all stats.
Runi attacks and breaks the Armour on Lava Launcher.

That's the end of the round. Here is how our teams look now.

Round 3

Earthquake happens again to deal 2 damage to all of our Monsters except for Runemancer Kye. So let's start of this round with a screenshot from after the Earthquake damage.

Noa the Just starts the Monster's actions this round by hitting Chimney Wallstop for 3 damage to its Health.
Isgald Vorst attacks and kills Chimney Wallstop. Triggering her Bloodlust ability to gain +1 to all stats for the 3rd time this fight.
Lava Launcher now the last one alive does have the Close Range ability so tries to attack my Noa the Just but misses due to the 2 Speed difference and the Dodge ability on Noa the Just.
Kulu Mastermind attacks and kills Lava Launcher to finish the battle! GG!

Was My Strategy Successful?

Yeah it was a really good strategy for these rulesets and with these available Elements. My opponent didn't protect its backline at all with like a Taunt or something so my 3 Opportunity Monsters could deal some really good damage and get early kills really quickly. Which rapidly turned the battle into my favour.
Placing Runemancer Kye in the back also really helped to protect against my opponent's Sneak attackers. Due to the Speed they had from Conqueror Jacek and Supply Runner they went first, and neither of them missed against the Flying either! The Lava Launcher did though otherwise my Runemancer Kye would've taken some damage to her Health in that first round.
Bringing Noa the Just with the Rust ability also worked extremely well for my Team. Without it my Kulu Mastermind and Isgald Vorst would've still killed Uraeus during the first round of course, but for some of their Units that extra Armour may have worked well. So yeah excellent choice to bring Noa the Just, and allow him to attack as well thanks to the Reach ability.

Conclusion

Being able to bring a Gladiator into this fight was really sweet to make a super strong team with Opportunity attackers. Which was really awesome. Runi for sure provided some benefits over Deeplurker. It didn't have to use its Resurrect ability, but it was still great to have just in case my opponent had Opportunity attackers too. That True Strike also meant it was able to attack the Supply Runner in round 1, otherwise that would've been a 50% chance to hit it due to the Speed difference.

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