Battle Mage Secrets Weekly Challenge! Going the Distance!

[Source]

Hi everyone! It's time for the weekly Battle Mage Secrets challenge and the challenge this week is the Going the Distance Ruleset.

About the Ruleset

Going the Distance

The Going the Distance ruleset states that "Only Monsters with Ranged attack may be used in battles". This means that ranged monsters with the Close Range ability is very important as they are the only ones that can attack in the first position.

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Battle Ruleset(s)

Details of my battle with this ruleset is as follows.

What Doesn’t Kill You: All Monsters have the Enrage ability
Going the Distance: Only Monsters with Ranged attack may be used in battles
Mana Cap: 17
Available Splinters: Fire, Death and Dragon
Format: Modern

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Cards & Line Up

The Summoner vs

Summoner: Quix the Devious - It decreases the Ranged attack and Speed of the opponent's entire deck by 1.

The Line Up

Position 1	Position 2

vs

Position 1	Position 2	Position 3

[Card image source]

Position	Name	Description
1	Venari Marksrat	It has the Martyr ability, and is here to boost the stats of Tinderlock when it gets killed off.
2	Tinderlock	It has the Last Stand and Close Range ability and Enrage from the What Doesn’t Kill You ruleset. I think this is a pretty good monster for this ruleset.

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Strategy

The ruleset here meant that (1) only ranged monsters can be used, (2) ranged monsters will get a speed boost after taking damage.

With the Going the Distance ruleset, I tend to favour Quix the Devious as the summoner, as it reduces the damage output of the opponent entirely. I opted for Venari Marksrat to boost my main monster's stats, which was Tinderlock. The combination of Martyr, Enrage and Last Stand gave Tinderlock a really big boost in the damage, speed and health

The opponent opted to use Waka Spiritblade as his summoner, and that is a really wicked summoner with the Poison ability. His Queen of Crows also had the Headwinds ability which reduced my attacks too and he employed Venari Marksrat as well to boost the stats of Queen of Crows.

As I mentioned, the Poison from Waka Spiritblade was really wicked. Luckily for me, the speed boost from Enrage and Last Stand caused some of his attacks to miss, and I managed to prevail by out-damaging him despite taking the poison damage every round.

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Thoughts on the Going the Distance Ruleset

The Going the Distance ruleset isn't a particularly fun ruleset, as only ranged monsters can be used, and there are only so many monsters with the Close Range ability to use as tanks. Using monsters with abilities like Close Range, Headwinds and Return Fire will give you an advantage. Monsters with dual attack abilities (e.g. ranged and melee) are great for this ruleset too.

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Battle

Watch the battle here