Battlemage Secrets: Explosive Weaponry

Greetings, Battlemages!

This week, it's the turn of one of the more brutal and fun ruleset: Explosive Weaponry!

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The ruleset

Under the Explosive Weaponry ruleset, all units gain the Blast ability.
That means that units adjacent to the one being attacked will take additional damage, equal to half the main damage dealt.

You can guess that the battles will finish fast!
Fast is a key word here: as a general rule, a good strategy is to try to outspeed the opponent, in order to get the first kill and so the advantage.
Spreading the damage with Sneak, Snipe, Opportunity is also something to aim for. Why? Because Reflection Shield allows to negate the explosive damage, so it is likely the opponent will play such a unit in second position.

That's the general rules I try to follow, but as usual, I end up playing the contrary because of the tricks of Splinterlands rulesets!

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The battle

https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_64041f4ab750d1dcda59a9230559d5c2

The battle is played in Modern Silver. It is opened to Fire, Water and Earth. Its mana cap is 17 and the rulesets are Explosive Weaponry and Back to Basic (all abilities are cancelled).

The lineup

In these conditions, I gave prominence to the Back to Basic rule, and the low mana cap. I like Magic then, to maximize the amount of effective damage dealt. It's quite naturally then that I went with:

Summoner: Obsisian, for the magic boost

First position: Hill Giant, a good little tank who doesn't have abilities anyway
Second position: Venari Spellsmith
Third position: Spirit Hoarder
Last position: Djinn Biljka
I picked the more magic units I could for the lowest mana cost. So that's three magic units with low Health and Speed, but high damage output! They will deal on one turn 6 damage plus 3 more from the explosions.

My opponent chose a different way: Health and Speed instead of Damage.
With Kelya Frendul as summoner, the lineup was:
First position: Angelic Mandarin, an unusual tank
Second position: Igor Darkspear, very good stats for the mana cost
Last position: Djinn Oshannus as finisher
That's a total of 22 Health points for 5 damages a turn. Against my 15 Health points and 12 damages a turn.

Round 1

Not often there's such an obvious disparity in the strategy used. Despite the armor given by Kelya, the Angelic Mandarin died after the salve of 3 magic attacks from my monsters. Which also mean that there's now only one attacker with Djinn Oshannus, lowering again the damage output.

Round 2

The Venari Spellsmith is taken by an explosion, and Igor Dakspear leaves the battlefield too. It is now the question of reducing the Djinn's Health before my low-Health monsters die one after the other.

Round 3

It looks good for me to outdamage Oshannus. (actually you can calculate easily the result from here)

Round 4

So that's a victory, by the tiniest margin!
Oshannus kills the Spirit Hoarder, 1 explosion damage on Biljka, and it's Biljka's turn to attack. Victory with 1 Health point left!

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Takeaway

So yes, as a general rule, in Explosive Weaponry, Speed is key!
But damage matters too and it matters even more with restrictions such as low mana and Back to Basic. Same mana cap without Back to Basic, I would have certainly played Djinn Oshannus myself. We all know general rules are to be broken!

See you on the battlefield!