BATTLE MAGE SECRETS Weekly Challenge! - Keep Your Distance Ruleset (Max Level Match)

Hi Guys! In this post we are exploring on another Splinterlands ruleset. The ruleset we are focusing on is Keep Your Distance.

In a Keep Your Distance ruleset, units with melee attacks may not be used. Units that has dual type of attacks will also not be able to be deploy as long as melee is one of the type.

Since only Magic or Ranged attacks will be expected in this ruleset, abilities such as Headwinds, Return Fire, Silence, Magic, Reflect, Void and Void Armor would be useful.

There was recently a tournament to celebrate Splinterlands 6th year anniversary and I entered the tournament for fun. The tournament allowed everyone to use every units that is available in the game at their highest level. It was tough for me because I mainly played in the silver/gold league where the units are usually around mid level. I thus had little idea of what most max level units can do.

In one of matches I encountered a match with Keep Your Distance as one of the ruleset. The battle restrictions are:
Fire & Regret, Keep Your Distance and Close Range with a max mana of only 22. Only Earth and Dragon are allowed in this battle. The Video for the Full Battle can be seen here:
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sm_pjcw0Slbb6rll8ADuh96&ref=genming

Splinter	Mana Cost	Position	Reason
Immortalis	6	Summoner	Being only given 2 splinters actually helped me a lot in this battle. It gave me ample time to look at the available units and think of how to deploy them. Right off the bat I knew I would probably faced mainly Magic attacking unit. This was because there was also a Fire & Regret ruleset. So with Keep Your Distance ruleset eliminating Melee attack and Fire & Regret limiting Ranged attack, there was only Magic attack I was left concerned with. To counter Magic, the best summoner I could think of was Immortalis. This was because Immortalis will give Void, an ability that will reduce all magic damage suffered by half, to every of my units. Issue with using Immortalis was it used up 6 mana alone and that left me with not much mana left to use for the rest of my units.
Failed Summoner	2	1st	My main tank was Failed Summoner. As a small 2 mana unit, it has a very high health of 9 at max level. Not only that it also had Magic Reflect which made it extremely good against magic attack. It also has Strengthen which gave +1 health to all my units. Made me wish I really had a max level Failed Summoner in my inventory...
Moxian Rebel	4	2nd	Moxian Rebel was a great unit to put beside my Failed Summoner. This was because Moxian Rebel has Weapon Training and at max level would gave +2 magic attack to my Failed Summoner. Now my Failed Summoner not only can defend but can also attack.
Lurking Puffer	2	3rd	I had Lurking Puffer at the 3rd position beside Moxian Rebel because I wanted it to also gain +2 attack from Moxian Rebel's Weapon Training. Lurking Puffer also has 2 very important abilities at max level, one of which confuse me initially. The first was Silence. Silence would reduced enemy magic attack by 1. This coupled with my units all having Void made it extremely hard for enemy magic attacks to damage me. An enemy unit with 2 magic attack would drop to 1 and 1 magic attack cannot cause any damage to units with Void ability. The second ability was Poison which was very strange since Lurking Puffer doesn't has any attack in the first place. I was stunned for a few seconds but very quickly understood that if I gave Lurking Puffer a magic attack via Weapon Training, it can now Poison my opponent units.
Goblin Psychic	6	4th	I added Goblin Psychic because 3 of its abilities were very helpful in my lineup. Tank Heal will heal my tank, Affliction would caused my opponent unit to be unable to heal and Silence would further reduce my opponent magic attack damage. I didn't think much about Dispel as I doubt my opponent would be using any unit with Bloodlust.
Khmer Princess	2	5th	Khmer Princess was another good unit for just 2 mana. It had Tank Heal and Triage meaning it can heal my tank and heal itself or anyone behind the tank.
Total Mana:	22

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Opponent Lineup:

My opponent surprisingly went with Scarred Llama Mage as the summoner. While Scarred Llama Mage is a very powerful summoner due to its Last Stand ability, I couldn't see how it would work well in the rulesets for this matchup.

End of Round 1:

My opponent put Ancient Redwood as the tank which looked kinda weird. It was a Ranged unit and although it can hit from the front in this match due to Close Range, it was still not a crazy move because you want your strongest unit to be the last one standing with Scarred Llama Mage as the summoner. Putting Ancient Redwood right as the tank while the rest of your units were glass cannons aren't going to work with Scarred Llama Mage.

By the end of Round 1, the enemy tank was dying and poisoned. In fact my 2 mana Failed Summoner looked much more healthy at this point. Spending 11 mana on Ancient Redwood wasn't a good move imho.

End of Round 2:

Although my opponent Ancient Redwood was cleansed by Scarred Llama Mage and then healed by the opponent Khmer Princess, it wasn't enough to keep it alive. With the enemy strongest unit gone, my Failed Summoner was able to take a breather and was soon almost back to full health.

End of Round 3:

My Failed Summoner was soon healed to full health. This was quickly followed by killing off my opponent remaining 2 weak health units with the last unit, Halfling Alchemist's Redemption ability putting a small dent to my units' health. This match was easily won in 3 rounds.

KEY STRATEGY
My strategy was to use a combination of Silence and Void to make my opponent's magic attack ineffective. My opponent surprisingly went with Ranged more than Magic attack though and got slaughter due to the Fire & Regret ruleset.

To any new players who wish to explore the world of Splinterlands, do feel free to sign up with my REFERRAL LINK 😊.

My guild, The Guild of Kingshaven, is also actively looking for new members. The guild is currently battling in tier 3 and is able to get very decent SPS and Merits from brawl competition. If you are able to fight at least in Silver and above league and is committed to do your brawl battles, do feel free to apply or contact me direct.
Our guild link is https://splinterlands.com/?p=guild&id=07ab9325eea386c3570db41f53fd991e78806485&tab=