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Hello Hive & Happy 2024

It's my pleasure to continue with the spl community after a successful 2023 to a highly successful anticipated year 2024. As we embark on our new life journey, I pray we make out more time for humanity this year. Presenting my first post for the year, I present a battle well fought using the Armored Up ruleset as directed by the community. The method hasn't changed, which is why I encourage those willing to participate in the weekly battle mage secrets. The week's announcement post can be accessed by clicking here. Do well to go through it for a better understanding of the Battle Mage Secrets guidelines.

Armored up Ruleset

In splinterlands terms, the Armored Up ruleset means that all monsters have two armor in addition to their normal armor stat. Having the above pictorial identity, the ruleset offers more protection against monsters that have their attack passing through armor. To many players, an armored-up ruleset is best faced using magic weapons but to me, I say it depends on the monster's availability. Just as armored up makes it difficult for monsters that their attack passes through armor, there are also ways to make it even more difficult for magic monsters. There are few abilities that simplify or make the armored-up ruleset more difficult.

For the difficulty part, abilities like void armor, protect, and repair stand out. When these three abilities are included in an armored-up ruleset, it means that all magic weapons will have to pass through armor before getting to the target's health. While the Void armor ability is responsible for that, the protect ability offers an extra two armor to already existing ones while the repair ability repairs a portion of the team armor that has been damaged.

On the simplifying aspect, the use of abilities like shatter and piercing is very effective. With shatter, armors are taken down in just one strike irrespective of how many are there while piercing is capable of cutting through armor to affect the target's health.

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Strategic Team Selection & Positioning

The above section has discussed the method of simplifying and making the armored-up ruleset more difficult. However, the battle presented follows a very different approach to the previous discussion and this is the result of the inclusion of the Little League ruleset which limited the use of monsters. After proper consideration, the battle was deemed best fought with magic monsters in which the earth element was used. Note that most of the monsters presented here have more to offer at their higher level, they are discussed here based on the level of use.

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OBSIDIAN
It was an easy choice to make Obsidian the summoner. This is because having decided to use magic monsters and having put the Little League ruleset into consideration, Obsidian appeared best for the battle. This summoner's stat increases magic weapons which is why it's a good fit for magic battles.

XENITH MONK

The monster "Monk" made the defensive position based on having the healing ability. In addition, when it comes to Little League, it's difficult to find monsters with health up to seven. Monk is a melee monster with just one damage at the silver level. The health is intended to keep it a bit longer in the game although not too long.

HILL GIANT
Hill Giant is meant to take over the defensive position once Monk is out of the way. This monster's presence is also based on its health. It even has health more than that of the monk. It also has two melee damage

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The other remaining four teammates all fought with the magic weapon. Queen Mycelia provided extra armor to its team using her "protect ability". Madcap Magus with the scattered shot ability attacked random monsters on the opponent team. Moxian Rebel trained Clockwork Aide using the weapons training ability and while "Aide" was trained to fight, it also provided the swift ability which increased the speed of all team members giving them the speed advantage over the opponent.

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The Battle

Battle Details
Rulesets	Armored Up & Little League
Mana Cap	46
Available Elements	All
Battling Elements	Earth Vs Earth

Click to watch battle

Thank will be all for this week. Thanks for reading and do join me next week for another edition of the Battle Mage Secrets