Hey fellow Splinterlands warriors, it's time to make another Splinterlands post to take part in the weekly challenges to hopefully earn some extra funds we as players can use to build our decks, for this weeks Splinterlands Community Engagement Challenge the topic is: Ruleset Riddles!

📜 This Week’s Challenge:

Pick one ruleset that gives you trouble (or one you’ve mastered).

Share your best strategy for tackling it.

Post a battle replay showing your tactics in action.

Offer advice for newer players who might struggle with that ruleset.

⚔️ Every ruleset has its quirks—and your strategies could be the key to helping another player succeed.

💡 Community Question: Which ruleset do you find the hardest to play—and how do you adapt your lineup when it shows up?

To find out how you can participate in this challenge yourself, check out the official Splinterlands post here.

Melee Mayhem!

So the rule set I picked for this post and to share a battle with is the Melee Mayhem ruleset, in which melee units can attack from any position.

Knowing this, you can expect heavy incoming melee damage so it can be a good idea to play a unit with the Shield ability in the first position, however what I see a lot is in this ruleset, especially combined with higher mana players like to catch their opponents off guard by going heavy magic.

Sharing a battle

The battle I want to share for this post is one I just fought, grinding my modern ranked play. It's a 55 mana Melee Mayhem / Ferocity battle with the Fire and Life splinters locked out. With Melee Mayhem I like to play Elias because I can safely tuck Commander Slade away without using a unit with the *Flank* ability, and because the Water splinter has a nice tank with the *Shield* ability, so it will halve all incoming melee and ranged damage but it's also fast and has the *Phase* ability to dodge incoming magic damage.

First look at the battlefield:

Lorkus is a obvious play here, boosting both melee and magic damage, I wish I owned Lorkus but I slept on the opportunity when it was still cheap and I made other choices, in hindsight I would've rather owned Lorkus than Cryptic but choices were made, and Cryptic is helpful in other situations too.
Since my opponent has a level advantage as well, Gold vs. my Silver level, I'm not entirely sure what the outcome of this battle will be, so let's see!

My Line-Up:

• Archon: Elias Max Pruitt - reason: Armored Strike / Piercing tactic is awesome.
• First position: Giant Alpine Skink - reason: A solid tank against both melee and magic damage.
• Second position: Ulundin Overseer - reason: Meat shield, will receive weapons training to make it offensive as well.
• Third position: Daarg Deadblast - reason: The +1 speed was my main reason to make my tank dodge more attacks, weapon train the Overseer was the secondary reason.
• Fourth position: Commander Slade - reason: Main damage dealer, combined with Elias it hits like a truck.
• Fifth position: Anasth Soothsayer - reason: To heal my tank IF it takes a hit.
• Sixth position: Tidal Tsunamist - reason: Good sneak as well a repair Slade's armor to strike with if it takes damage.

The Battle:

Round 1: WOW! Fireworks right from the start! My team is faster so able to strike first, before the other team could make a move, the first and second unit got deleted, unfortunately so did my tank later in the round but the Overseer is a nice backup with a heal behind it.

Round 2: Because of Slade's tremendous damage output, I knew I made a chance against this higher level team although Lorkus is really strong, I didn't expect it to go THIS well though!

Round 3: Slade is definitely the MVP in this battle and he also has the honor to make the final kill, it's a win!

You can watch the battle unfold for yourself here.

I finally got back in Gold 3 after I was getting wrecked by players with better cards than me, lately there are so many players using Tofu or Nidhogr teams with cards like Rage to just brute force their way up in the rankings it sometimes is hard to get higher in the leagues.

In Gold 3 the rewards are a little better, so I'm very happy with a 4.6 SPS reward and almost 400 Glint!

💡 Community Question

Which ruleset do you find the hardest to play—and how do you adapt your lineup when it shows up?

So, it's not that I have problems with certain rulesets, some combinations are nasty though like combining the Burning for everyone PLUS Poison for everyone, it's more that I have issues winning really high mana battles because then I usually see those OP cards getting played.

Thank you for reading!!!

If you haven't made an account already, please consider using my referral link to sign up, I'll happily send the amount I get for your signup back to you in DEC or SPS to help you start.

Also, when you require any help to get you started,let me know, I'm here to advice and guide new players and maybe I can help you with card delegations too!

Have a great day!