As you probably already know the Battle Mage Secrets Weekly Challenge involves showcasing a battle involving a particular ruleset which is different every week. The ruleset we are to talk about this week is Keep Your Distance.
Let us see what this ruleset does before we get into the nitty-gritty of the line-up and the battle itself.
The Keep Your Distance ruleset is pretty straight-forward - Monsters with Melee attack may not be used in battles.
Now that we've got a good idea of what the Keep Your Distance ruleset practically does, let's see now how it can be effectively utilized.
I normally describe a couple of options here if it ruleset allows for some variation but this one in particular is pretty clear, so here's in short:
In the first 2 rows I have listed the Ranged Monsters I most often resort to when one of the active rulesets is Keep Your Distance. Of course the usual disclaimer is that the Element you choose and the abilities of the Monsters you incorporate into your team are highly dependent on the rest of the rulesets. Rows 3 and 4 consist of the Magic Damage Monsters I most often use while playing in the Modern league. The disclaimer is the same as the one for the first two rows. The 5th Row consists of the Monsters with the Weapons Training ability. They are utilized really often when this ruleset is active in conjunction with the Monsters I have listed in the last 2 rows. The Monsters there have no attack and that makes them suitable to be "trained" to adopt the Ranged and/or Magic attacks of their neighboring Monsters with Weapons Training.
Now that we know what the card does (or doesn't do) at the different levels of play, let us have a look at the battle I have chosen to showcase.
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- The line-up of the Battle and the Ruleset:
The rulesets for this battle are Keep Your Distance (Monsters with Melee attack may not be used in battles), Holy Protection (All Monsters have the Divine Shield (The first time the Monster takes damage it is ignored) ability) and Taking Sides (Neutral Monsters may not be used in battles) ability. The mana budget is 57 which is a fairly good amount so I will be able to splurge on chunkier Monsters. All Elements are available but Death. I'll of course go with the Dragon Element.
The 1st spot is for Baakjira. This is a usual spot for this behemoth of a card. Other than the 3 Magic attack it will gain it also has a great package of abilities - Void (Reduced damage from Magic attacks), Slow (Reduces the Speed of all enemy Monsters), Strengthen (All friendly Monsters have increased Health) and Heal (Restores a portion of the Monster's health each round). Since the ruleset is Noxious Fumes, Bakjeera is more than adequately equipped to tackle it despite not having Immunity as an ability.
The 2nd spot is for Rage. Rage is a Legendary Monster. At level 1 he has 4 Magic Attack, 4 Speed, 5 Armor and 12 Health and he starts off with Flying (Has an increased chance of evading Melee or Ranged attacks from Monsters who do not have the Flying ability) ability and Void (Reduced damage from Magic attacks). It is, of course, really, really useful if you want to put a Melee Monster without Reach in the off-tank spot. At level 2 he gains his 3rd ability which is actually his signature one - Weapons Training (Adjacent units with no attack gain this unit's attack, up to a maximum of 3). At level 3 he gains his 4th ability and 2nd in terms of importance - Life Leech (Monster's health increases each time it damages an enemy Monster's health in proportion to the damage dealt). It is a pretty useful ability in the long battles of attrition which the Rebellion meta has brought upon us. Finally, maxed out at level 4 he has 5 Magic Attack, 4 Speed, 5 Armor and 11 Health. He also gains his final ability - Affliction (When a Monster with Affliction hits a target, it has a chance of applying Affliction on the target causing it to be unable to be healed).
The 3rd spot is reserved for the Merdaali Guardian. It's a great support Monster in various rulesets with its frankly Meta abilities - Tank Heal (restores a portion of the Monster in the first position's health each round), Repair (restores some armor to the friendly Monster whose armor has taken the most damage) and Strengthen (all friendly Monsters have increased Health). It can be very useful for sure but is often taken out early by enemy Monsters with Overpower so that's one of the drawbacks it has for sure. Thankfully she is in no danger of getting hit by Overpower thanks to the Summoner I am planning to run this battle.
The 4th place in the line-up goes to the Chaos Dragon. I have in this spot since it is a Flying Monster (a true dragon) with a decent health pool and armor so it can evade a few hits or take a few hits if it has to. It also has the Blind (All enemy Melee & Ranged attacks have an increased chance of missing their target) ability in its arsenal. We know that every miss is important. It also has Blast (Does additional damage to Monsters adjacent to the target Monster). But actually its most importantly ability right now is Scattershot (This Monsters attacks hit a random enemy target) due to the current meta almost everybody is taking advantage of.
The 5th spot goes to the River Nymph. It is another Magic Attack Monster with great support abilities - Cleanse (removes all negative effects on the Monster in the first position on the friendly team), Amplify (increases Magic Reflect, Return Fire, and Thorns damage to all enemy units by 1) and Swiftness (all friendly Monsters have increased Speed). My goal with including the River Nymph in the line-up is to potentially remove Affliction/Poison cast on Bakjeera and also boost its Speed.
Last but not least is Oshuur Constantia. I've got her here to support my front line Monster through her Tank Heal (Restores a portion of the unit in the first position's health each round) ability as long as possible. She can also take a hit or two if it gets to that, while healing herself in the meantime. What's important is that she has the Reflection Shield (This Monster doesn't take damage from Blast, Magic Reflect, Thorns, or Return Fire) ability so she does not suffer any damage when her Magic Attacks are reflected back to her. She also has Resurrect (When a friendly unit dies it is brought back to life with 1 Health. This ability can only trigger once per battle) which is definitely one of the other top tier abilities.
It is time for a quick round by round analysis:
- The Summoner I am going with for the battle is, as you have probably already guessed - Lily. That's the go-to Summoner for the current state of the Rebellion meta and if you don't go with Lily when available you usually have to go with Jacek if you want to try to play the somewhat hard-counter option. Of course Jacek sometimes basically counters himself through extremely poor RNG so that's not really an option which always has the best outcome. However, my opponent has decided to go with Obsidian in an somewhat peculiar line-up. Let's see how this goes.
- After 1 round of exchanging blows I there are no casualties on either side.
- Round 3 begins and my Monsters are still working on the enemy Slipspawn while their Monsters are busy attacking my Bakjeera.
- Round 4 - I have finally managed to take down one of the enemy monsters and it actually was not the Slipspawn but the enemy front-line Monster - Ava.
- Round 5 - the Slipspawn is finally down while my Bakjeera is still standing strong. I have a serious advantage at this point of the battle.
- Round 6 - all that's left to do for my team is to kill off the last remaining enemy Monsters.
Well this was definitely a fast but fun battle, and an entertaining way to showcase the Keep Your Distance ruleset. See you next week with another exciting post related to the brand new Battle Mage Secrets Weekly Challenge!
Over and Out,
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Thanks for sharing! - @mango-juice