Battle Mage Secrets: Keep Your Distance - Plan Where It Lands

Prelude
Hi all, hope all is well for you and it is time for another Battle Mage Secrets. Last week, we looked at a ruleset that gives a protective shell to all cards that reduces the damage of the first attack to 0. Today, we look at a ruleset that has been there for the longest of time where there we are restricted from using melee cards.

Ruleset Spotlight

Keep Your Distance

Description:

• Units with melee attacks may not be used.
• Use Phase, Void, Void Armor, and Magic Reflect to counter magic attacks.
• Use Headwinds and Return Fire to counter ranged attacks.
• Units with 2 types of attack (which include melee) cannot be used.

What thrives with this ruleset?
To be honest, if you've been playing Splinterlands for a long time, this ruleset will not be something foreign to you because I recalled when I first played Splinterlands, this ruleset is already here.

No melee, which means that Thorns is definitely something that we should not consider putting into our lineup. So as the description suggests, there are some abilities that we should put up for fighting magic and some for fighting range.

Silence, Void, Phase, Void Armour and Magic Reflect, all the defensive abilities and return damage one. All will reduce magic attack and help you to survive through any form of magic barrage. Otherwise, you would be easily wiped out by the barrage in a matter of turns.

Headwinds, Return Fire, Shield and Protect will work well against range attacks. Something further to consider for Range will be to see if you are able to include a Close Range ability otherwise when your card move to the first position, that card will become a sitting duck to be taken out by your opponent with ease as this is one big weakness that all range cards without Close Range have.

Another thing that one can consider could be Martyr which boost stats to your cards. Of course, there is one crazy thing that you can get to make things crazier will be Weapons Training for cards with magic and range to make adjacent non attack cards gain magic/range and create a sudden army of magic/range attack of your own.

Lastly will be on stats, the higher any stats will do you good as it either gives you more survivability or give you more damage.

With these in mind, let's start to talk about the battle proper.

The Battle
Link: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_88b57d2d0409b066dfa4dd503503bb60&ref=vaynard86

Ruleset
Keep Your Distance, Odd One Out, Tis But Scratches
Mana Limit: 37

Splinter	Mana Cost	Position	Reason
General Sloan	4	Summoner	Life Splinter with additional boost to range attack
Scavo Hireling	3	1st	Frontline padding and low mana to enable Iziar
Chaos Agent	1	2nd	Another 2nd layer padding and low mana to enable Iziar
Djinn Renova	7	3rd	Boost the whole lineup with additional health
Iziar	11	4th	Cards of lowered cost were being places to ensure enough mana for this card, also this card has Taunt and also Void to reduce magic damage onto it.
Gargoya Devil	7	5th	The main damage hitter with close range which is boosted by the summoner.
Spirit Hoarder	3	6th	This is a card to keep Iziar alive with the triage.
Total Mana:	36

Opponent Lineup

• Summoner - Pembrook Nymph
• Position 1 - Venari Marksrat
• Position 2 - Noa The Just
• Position 3 - Swamp Spitter
• Position 4 - Gobson Bomber
• Position 5 - Venari Wavesmith
• Position 6 - Creeping Ooze

Prediction before pressing rumble
My opponent's lineup look rather complete with loads of damage doing cards and also with additional utility to keep their armour regenerated. For mine, there is a reason why I played Iziar today and even give a few padding cards to enable her in the lineup.

Let's battle!

Battle Synopsis

Round 1, Most of the attacks went on to Iziar but some nifty attacks took out opponent's Marksrat and triggered Martyr. However, attack continues onto Noa The Just.

Round 2, A massive hit from Gobson onto Iziar but Iziar survive and got healed by Spirit Hoarder, while hits from everyone managed to take out Noa The Just totally. Swamp Spitter in sitting duck position.

Round 3, The magic and range from my side continue as we took out Swamp Spitter and Iziar continue to hold up strong with healing from Spirit Hoarder. Now Gobson Bomber in the compromising first position.

Round 4, Another routine round where we manage to take out Gobson Bomber, now we are left with 2 more cards to settle before completing the round up.

Round 5, a wrap up to the whole match where Wavesmith and Creeping Ooze both were taken out and we manage to secure a beautiful victory without any casualty.

Post Battle Summary
Way to go! What a match we had. While I expected Iziar to do a big impact on the match. I did not expect a fully non-casualty matchup where Iziar just soaked up everything and tower through the whole match.

Did my strategy work? Yes, it totally worked based on what I planned for. While I had to settle for 2 cards as padding to enable the high mana Iziar, it was totally worth it. Then coupled with the synergy between Iziar and Spirit Hoarder. It is also important that Djinn Renova able to boost the health of the whole lineup to ensure better survivability, while Gargoya Devil just smashes hard with that 3 range attack.

What's the Battle Mage Secret?

The Battle Mage Secret today is how the careful use of a Taunt card in the form of Iziar and keeping it alive through the means of Triage. And the choice of the Taunt card is also important because Iziar had Void which makes a real beast against magic attackers. So because of this planning, I had to sacrifice a little in my lineup to place some padding cards in the front while enabling Iziar to do her magic with Spirit Hoarder supporting her. Was this sacrifice worth it? I was pretty sure it was because it had the Void and made sure every attack come her way so that other cards are being kept safe which we tear down opponent lineup bit by bit.

Plan ahead and know where you want the attacks to land, so that you can support it with healing and other support cards to make sure you get a victory! Hope this little secret can help you in your future battles.

Wrap Up
I hope you guys enjoyed reading my sharing on the rule set Keep Your Distance. I would really appreciate it if you liked and/or commented to let me know what are you thoughts.

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Till my next battle sharing, take care, stay safe and happy battling!

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