HELLO to all Splinterlands readers of my humble blog.👋🏻👋🏻👋🏻 Welcome to yet another week of the "new" iteration of the Splinterlands Weekly Challenges 😜.

For any old Hivers/Splinterland players who've just come back and are confused, fret not! Even with the name and format tweaks, right at it's core, battles are still the foundation of these posts.

In this week's edition of Battle Mage Secrets, one can be forgiven for mistaking this as a popular Disney song. But we aren't talking about Hercules or Michael Bolton this week, as much as I would love to, seeing as that was one of my favourite cartoons growing up. 😍 But other than it's namesake, this ruleset and song bears little in resemblance to each other.

No matter! I present to you the ruleset — GOING THE DISTANCE 🏹💪🏻

The game's description of GOING THE DISTANCE is as follows: "Only units with ranged attacks may be used."

This is a ruleset which effectively removes all units which doesn't have a ranged attack from the game. Players who don't have a well rounded deck of cards with an equal distribution of ranged units together with their other unit types will definitely find it hard pressed to field an entire team if they encounter this ruleset. I must also say when I first ran into such "type restriction" rules when I just started out playing the game, I was completely stumped. All my usual plans and strategies are thrown out the window! 🤣 As such, this is also a good reminder that we need a good balance and variety of cards if we want to succeed in Splinterlands.

I will take advantage of this ruleset in my battle showcase today to show how one of my units in particular becomes a lot stronger than one would expect with GOING THE DISTANCE. Introducing the Summoner, Quix the Devious.

Quix had wandered the chaos realm for so long, he’d almost forgotten where his life had begun. Most of the memories only came to him in dreams now, flashes of images that were hard to connect and make any sense of. It was only when he came upon the Ravaged Void and rested by its black well that something stirred within him. It prompted a deep hunger for mana and he became obsessed with magic. Not only that, but the images he saw in his dreams became clearer and he witnessed great dragons. Some of them were native to the realm of chaos and some looked completely alien. Their nature appealed to him and demanded his attention, and so he remained by the void where over time his power grew, the vast emptiness filling him with potent energy.

From Splinterlands Lore on Quix The Devious

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Quix The Devious is a Legendary card released during the Chaos Legion expansion. It has definitely found it's place in many Dragon decks given its availability and usefulness. It's effects on the battlefield are -1 🏹RANGED ATTACK🏹 and -1 🏃🏻SPEED🏃🏻 to all enemy units. It's summoning cost is, like all other Chaos Legion Legendary Summoners, 4 🧪MANA🧪.

The stat buffs it gives are nothing out of the ordinary, so at first glance, he might look pretty bland. It would seem that in terms of firepower, this summoner does almost nothing to boost your team. However, under the correct battlefield conditions, he could end up being really strong!

As it is obvious from his ability to reduce your opponent's ranged damage by 1 across the board, Quix The Devious is clearly an anti-ranged based summoner. As an added bonus, he also reduces the speed of all enemy units by 1 too! This is an all round ability that further increases his advantage and gives your team the advantage of possibly attacking first AND also dodging the opponent's attacks!

This could make all the difference if the battle comes down to the wire where the slightest advantage is the fine line between victory or defeat! 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻 This is definitely what I'd consider game changing! 😱😱😱

⚔️🛡️My Battle Showcase🛡️⚔️

Let me present a battle I fought recently in which the ruleset UP TO ELEVEN was in effect. My opponent used the Chaos Legion edition Summoner General Sloan from the LIFE splinter as his main pick, while I used the Chaos Legion edition Summoner Quix The Devious from the DRAGON splinter. 👼🏻 VS 🐉

At first glance, it would seem like I was at a distinct disadvantage.

• My opponent was using a level 4 Rare Summoner VS my level 1 Legendary.

• Effectively, that puts him at roughly 2 levels ahead of me.

• His units were likewise significantly higher levelled than mine. His entire lineup were basically maxed out for the Silver League bracket in which I usually played. 😱

• This gave his entire team a huge increase in raw damage output.

• To exacerbate matters, this was a ruleset which favoured his "all ranged" setup! Sloan gave all his ranged units +1 to their ranged damage and the ruleset played perfectly into his hands.

I was honestly expecting this to be a really bad matchup for me 😜🤣. This was a team who had an innate advantage in this ruleset. His team had one purpose only and that was to output the maximum amount of damage possible. Would I be able to turn the tide of battle against such an opponent then? Victory or defeat would lie in the small details.

I would say that the ruleset GOING THE DISTANCE was DEFINITELY the MVP of this match, having played it's role in turning the tide of battle. The advantage it gave my team resulted in me outlasting my opponent in this battle. It definitely provided the edge that I needed to overcome my opponent.

This ensured that the other units could eventually wear down the opponent until victory was achieved! 🏆🏆🏆

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LINK TO MY FIGHT

👯‍♀️👯👯‍♂️LINEUP CHOICES👯‍♀️👯👯‍♂️

1st CARD SLOT

The Wave Brood is chosen for this slot. He plays the role of the Main tank perfectly with his great stats. His high health stats and the TAUNT ability will also allow him to have much longer staying power on the battlefield. This allows all other units to be kept safe until he is taken down. As an added advantage, his CLOSE RANGE ability will allow him to attack from the front position even though he is a ranged unit.

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2nd CARD SLOT

The Drybone Raider occupies this slot. It's main role here is to to be the main DPS of the team. Should the main tank fall, it will take it's place as the backup tank and bring it's fearsome attack into the fray.

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3rd CARD SLOT

The Runic Skyclaw fills this slot and it's main role is to be "assassin" of the team. Thanks to it's SNIPE ability, it will sidestep the main tank and go for the next ranged unit in the lineup.

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4th CARD SLOT

The Coastal Nymph fills this slot also as another DPS unit of the team. Thanks to it's SCATTERSHOT ability, it is also able to sidestep the main tank to attack other units, although who it targets is completely random.

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5th CARD SLOT

The Naga Windmaster occupies this slot. He brings a potent debuff to the team lineup in the form of the ability HEADWINDS. This reduces all enemy ranged damage by 1.

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6th CARD SLOT

The Crustacean King occupies the last slot. It's main role is to be the healing support unit for the team. Thanks to it's TANK HEAL ability, it will ensure that the main tank will always be kept healthy!

I hope you're starting to see the pattern here in my team setup. 😉

⚔️🛡️Battle Action Report🛡️⚔️

As you can see, both of us fielded very similar units in our matchup. Even though we both used the different splinters, our unit selection mainly consisted of Ranged units. 😱

🐉DRAGON🐉 VS 👼🏻LIFE👼🏻

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My opponent used the Venari Crystalsmith as his tank in the 1st slot which was an unconventional choice to say the least. However, thanks to it's TANK HEAL ability, this is a unit which will have the much needed staying power to protect it's entire team until it falls.

The Gargoya Devil occupied his 2nd slot. This is a great DPS unit who also has the CLOSE RANGE ability, thus ensuring that it can play the role of backup tank and not lose out on firepower.

The Portal Spinner and Pelacor Arbalest in his 3rd and 4th slots were fearsome ranged DPS-ers. Both were capable of dishing out heavy damage and their abilities, SCATTERSHOT and DOUBLESTRIKE respectively made them even more dangerous!

The Supply Runner in his 5th slot was another decent DPS unit with the added bonus of a speed buff for his team thanks to it's SWIFTNESS ability.

The opponent then filled up his last slot with a Xenith Archer. This is a low cost unit that is great value for mana.

All in all, I would say that the opponent picked a really strong team.

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The battle started out with all our units just duking it out pound for pound. It was a high mana game with 99 mana as the limit. The rulesets were UP TO ELEVEN & GOING THE DISTANCE.

• The first round saw both our sides launch a flurry of attacks.

• The results were way beyond what I had expected. As the dust cleared, 2 of his units had fallen. His main tank and backup tank had been completely erased off the face of the battlefield.

• My choice of my "assassin units" paid off handsomely as the SNIPE and SCATTERSHOT abilities took out the opponent's key tanks before they could even react.

• Round 2 saw much of the same playing out again as his dangerous Pelacor Arbalest was similarly taken down.

• I now commanded a numerical advantage on the field as it was 4 units VS just his wounded Darius.

• Round 3 was where I dealt the coup de grâce as his remaining unprotected frail units said their prayers. 😈

• It was all over for the opponent now as I eventually mopped up his entire army. 💀💀💀

Talk about doing WAY MORE than it was supposed to!!! 😱🤯🥳 All I expected was for the GOING THE DISTANCE ruleset to give me a slight advantage. Individually, on their own, my units would face a huge disadvantage against an enemy which has higher levelled than me. However, thanks to my choice of units, I was able to turn the tides of battle! The opponent simply could not handle all that at all.

Well as you can see here in this video recording of my battle, the results were pretty good! 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

This was truly an eye opener! 😁🏆

Slowly, but surely, I wore down the opponent's team and the match ended up with me inflicting a crushing defeat. My team selection proved to be the edge I needed to eventually overpower my opponent. 💪🏻

🔮🔮🔮Hindsight is 20/20🔮🔮🔮

Would I have done anything differently? 🤔 This might have seemed like a disadvantage at the start but I ended up winning handily. IF I had to use the same cards again, there would be no better lineup than what I had already used for the match. Any other combination MIGHT have resulted in a loss for me. I'm really satisfied with the results against such a worthy opponent. 🏆🥇

💭🧐💭Ending Thoughts💭🧐💭

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I definitely can appreciate the ruleset GOING THE DISTANCE and how it changes the dynamics of usual gameplay. This is one of those rulesets which can be turned into a huge advantage if surrounded with the proper team. The role it brings to the battlefield will give a player the edge in squeezing out every tiny advantage to get the win. 👍🏻

I hope this article has given you some insight into its potential. 😉

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