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Ahoy, welcome to my latest weekly Battle Mage Secrets post.

This week the featured ruleset is Weak Magic. When this ruleset is active all Magic attacks will hit Monster's Armour first before it can hit their Health. Usually this is only the case for a few Monsters that have the Void Armour ability. So when you see this ruleset it's better not to focus too heavily on Magic attacks unless you have ways to remove Armour from your opponents' team.

You can recognise the ruleset with the following icon.

The battle I'm sharing with you this week is from a recent Tournament, the Summun Infuria Modern Silver Invitational Tournament. This Tournament took place just before the Rebellion launch so it was still possible to use Untamed & Dice cards in there. Which is exactly what I did. The battle I'm sharing was against megakyodaibanrai.

Here is a picture of our initial lineup.

Battle Rules

This was a battle with a 41 Mana Cap. Half the Elements were available which were the Water, Earth and Dragon Elements. The battle had 3 rulesets:

• Super Sneak: All Melee attack Monsters have the Sneak ability.
• Back to Basics: Monsters lose all abilities.
• Weak Magic: Magic attacks hit Armor before reducing Health.

Here is a link to the battle if you want to check it out: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sm_C1znxo9voTcys3dF129s&ref=athunderstruck

Battle Lineup

So with Weak Magic my opponent is probably less likely to play Monsters with Magic attack, or at least not put a heavy focus on them. There is also the Super Sneak ruleset where all Melee attack Monsters get the Sneak ability. So there might also not really be a high amount of Ranged attackers in their backline because they'll get killed if I bring a lot of Melee attackers. Monsters also lose all their abilities. But if a Summoner like Mylor Crowling provides an ability like Thorns then they do get those as they gained it from the Summoner. So my Summoner choice here will be Mylor Crowling to add Thorns to my team.

I put Mycelic Infantry up front, it is slow with that 1 Speed so might be more likely to miss attacks, which is why it can serve well as the front line. It also decent Armour to potentially take 1-2 Magic attack hits.

Then I have Pelacor Mercenary, protecting him a bit so he can help deal damage to the backline and he can be a great additional tank so I put him in the 2nd position.

Up next are Gargoya Lion and Disintegrator with the exact same stats now that they lost their abilities. Some extra damage for my team because of Super Sneak.

Then I have Dumacke Orc, this one has slightly higher Melee attack than the previous 2 but I still prefer to place her here because of the higher Armour stat.

My last pick is the Clockwork Aide. This is the only card in my team that won't be able to attack. But thanks to its 7 Armour it should be able to take a few hits from my opponent's Melee attack Monsters while still dealing damage back to them because of Thorns.

Battle Analysis

My opponent chose to go with Kelya Frendul. An excellent choice because she gives +1 Speed and +1 Armour to all Monsters on her team. So even Monsters that didn't have any Armour will now have some Armour to protect them.

Round 1

Round 1 starts with their Kulu Mastermind hitting my Clockwork Aide, which really is a lot of damage to its Armour right away. It does deal 2 Thorns damage back so that gets rid of the Armour on Kulu Mastermind.
Diemonshark hits my Mycelic Infantry completely destroying its Armour and taking 2 Thorns to its own Armour.
Pelacor Bandit hits my Clockwork Aide for 2 damage, luckily still leaving 1 of its Armour.
Flying Squid now breaks the Armour on my Clockwork Aide.
Lemell Refugee then goes for the kill on my Clockwork Aide.
Cruel Sethropod attacks my Dumacke Orc to take away some of her Armour.
Now it is finally time for my team to start hitting back. None of my mine had a chance to attack yet because of their lower Speed
Pelacor Mercenary attacks Cruel Sethropod to destroy the rest of its Armour.
Dumacke Orc attacks Cruel Sethropod on the Health.
Disintegrator deals the final blow to Cruel Sethropod for exactly 2 damage.
This allows Gargoya Lion to hit Lemell Refugee and destroy the last Armour that she had.
Mycelic Infantry hits the Diemonshark and deals 4 damage to its Armour, leaving it with 1 Armour still.

That's the end of round 1.

Our lineups now look like this.

Round 2

In this round my opponent will of course go first again with all of their Monsters as there was no possible change in the Speed.
Their Kulu Mastermind goes for my Dumacke Orc and completely destroys her Armour. He didn't have any Armour himself anymore though so the Thorns damage hurts his Health.
Diemonshark hits my Mycelic Infantry and loses its last piece of Armour to the Thorns.
Pelacor Bandit moves in the for the final kill against my Dumacke Orc.
Flying Squid hits and completely destroys the Armour on my Disintegrator.
Which is followed by Lemell Refugee doing 3 damage to my Disintegrator's Health.
Now my Pelacor Mercenary hits Lemell Refugee for 3 damage.
Then Disintegrator hits the Lemell Refugee for 2 damage, unfortunately leaving it at 1 Health still.
So my Gargoya Lion is still required to attack too and he does kill the Lemell Refugee.
Mycelic Infantry deals 4 damage to the Diemonshark.

This round we both lost 1 of our Monsters, so exactly the same that happened during the first round.

An update to our lineups in this image.

Round 3

Kulu Mastermind attacks and kills my Disintegrator.
Diemonshark hits my Mycelic Infantry, leaving it at 2 Health and the Diemonshark itself is also at 2 Health left now because of that Thorns.
This time my opponent's Flying Squid goes before the Pelacor Bandit, which is quite unfortunate for me because its 3 attack is exactly enough to destroy the Armour from my Gargoya Lion. Exposing its Health.
If Pelacor Bandit had gone first then there would still be 1 Armour left.
So now Pelacor Bandit attacks and gets to attack my Gargoya Lion's Health directly. The Pelacor Bandit does die from that hit because of the 2 Thorns damage it takes.
Pelacor Mercenary tries to hit the Kulu Mastermind but has an unlucky miss!! (he had 80% chance to hit so only 20% chance to miss)
Gargoya Lion now tries to attack the Kulu Mastermind and also misses!!! 😐 (he was slightly more likely to miss as he had 70% chance to hit and thus 30% chance to miss)
At least Mycelic Infantry doesn't miss and is able to take out the Diemonshark.

That wraps up this round where I still have 3 Monsters alive and my opponent has 2 Monsters left as you can see in this screenshot.

Round 4

Kulu Mastermind proves itself superior by attacking and killing my Gargoya Lion.
Flying Squid now attacks and kills my Mycelic Infantry.
Which is slightly unfortunate as my Pelacor Mercenary can't attack the Kulu Mastermind now, but at least if he hits the Flying Squid it'll be a 1v1.
Pelacor Mercenary successfully hits and kills the Flying Squid!

Leaving both of us left with 1 Monster.

Round 5

At this point I shouldn't really say much as it's easy to see how this will go. Kulu Mastermind will hit my Pelacor Mercenary to destroy the Armour and take 2 Thorns damage. Then there are 2 possibilities. Either my Pelacor Mercenary hits the Kulu Mastermind and kills him, or he misses and then Kulu Mastermind will hit Pelacor Mercenary on his Health dropping him from 9 Health to 5 but instantly dying to that Thorns damage then.
And my Pelacor Mercenary lands the hit so he secures the win in round 5. GG! Close game that one!

Was My Strategy Successful?

Yeah it was a good prediction that my opponent probably wouldn't play many, if any at all, Magic and/or Ranged attack Monsters.
So having a bunch of Melee attack Monsters with Armour helped a lot to keep them alive a bit longer for their Thorns damage to do some good work.
My opponent did make a great choice of using Kelya Frendul because that extra Armour made sure to block the first Thorns damage that any of their Monsters would take.

Conclusion

It was a pretty close battle, we were both down to 1 Monster left there at the end in round 5. It might have been over by then already and a win for me in round 4 if I didn't have those misses though. At least as you can see I had a bit of a buffer as my Pelacor Mercenary still had full Health and its Armour when it became that 1v1 whereas Kulu Mastermind was already down to 3 Health at that point.

This fight could've been different though if Monsters did still have their abilities. In that case I might've switched Dumacke Orc and Clockworde Aide's positions because Dumacke Orc would have the Shield ability then and take less Melee damage.

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