Splinterlands Battle Mage Challenge: Briar Patch (Thorns!)

This week's Battle Mage rule set challenge was Briar Patch in which every monster gains the THORNS ability. This means that any melee monsters landing an attack take two damage back at themselves!

THORNS general strategy....

In my experience the best strategy is to simply avoid using melee monsters as far as possible, thus neutralising the automatic buff.

This means you can expect similar behaviour from your opponent, so anticipate magic or ranged attacks, so anything that can debuff these or reflect or return fire would make sense. Amplify would also work well!

Obviously no point using Mylor!

THORNS carnage battle exemplar

In the battle below we both anticipate the other playing magic, and both get it right!

Mana and rulesets:

• 30 Mana
• THORNS only!

Summoner - Mimosa for the TWO debufs and affliction...

• Almo Cambio - a decent tank!
• Corpse Fiend - 0 mana sink
• Darkest Mage - low mana magic attack
• Death Elemental - snipe one
• Magi Necrosi - snipe two
• Tortisan Chief - another magic attack!

The battle...

• round 1 - I take out my opponent's tank.
• round 2 - I lose my Darkest Mage.
• round 3 - I snipe out whatever that is in P2
• round 4 - I lose my Death Elemental, damn!
• round 5 - I take out the life sapper
• round 6 - no losses
• round 7 - I take out the archer
• round 8 - Almo finally goes down, but he's done his bit, and the Scorch Fiend takes out the Djin but goes down thanks to the only THORNS damage in the game!
• round 9 - It's now 2-1 but no loss
• round 10 - it's all over, VICTORY!

Final battle analysis

One that went to the wire and dominated by the mostly low health theme, meaning cards were taken out throughout!

Ultimately what won it was three things...

Firstly the VOID meaning a full 6 damage points from those two 1 damage monsters were nullified, as was the stun on the no attack monster.

Secondly the speed of Almo elicited TWO misses from the archer, so that's 8 damage difference right there!

Thirdly my DOUBLE snipe taking out the back range while my opponent's force mainly landed on Almo, and got halved!

This just about made up for the lucky fact that my opponent was better buffed/ debuffed than me, the only buff that made a difference from Mimo was the VOID, but that won it!

All monsters have THORNS final thoughts...

If I have one piece of advice - don't use Melee attacks!