Strategy Corner #50- Briar Patch Ruleset - Melee or not to melee.

Wow, we have a small anniversary today :) It is the 50th Strategy Corner article. I joined the Hive Blogsphere quite late, you can check my first Strategy Corner article here :). It was published 22nd of January 2023. So it was around one year ago, another thing to celebrate :).

At that time we had a different format, where the article was focused on one unit. I think it was an interesting approach. Now we have to focus on a specific ruleset, but as I mentioned several times I think it's high time for some change. Some refreshments are advisable after quite a long time.
Do you have any idea what could be the next theme related to the Battle Mage Secret series?

Ruleset definition:

All monsters receive the Thorns ability at the start of the battle. Enemy monsters that use melee attacks receive damage back.

Damage returned is equal to damage of the attacker divided by 2, rounded up.
Melee attack monsters with the Reflection Shield ability do not take damage from thorns.
The Amplify ability increases damage.

Firstly, the description of the ruleset in the game is not perfect, sometimes you got just general information which not give you all information you need. Best way to read the full description as above from the game documentation at least once. You can check all here.

Taking into account only the thorn damage ruleset (yes I will still call it that way :D) I think the most simple and easy strategy is just to avoid any melee monsters. But of course, nothing is just simple, sometimes you have no other options, and sometimes you deliberately choose this type of attack as the primary one to surprise the opponent (of course usually with some kind of protection). It's not so unusual tactic, because if you try to avoid melee damage at all costs, the opponent will try to counter any other types of damage, which could be a great counter to his counter. :) Yep, this game requires a lot of small tricky mind games with the opponent :). Let's jump to the battle.

Today's battle is a Modern Set silver-level tournament. Nothing fancy here, but of course, Immortalis is just too good so we have a mirror :).

As I mentioned above, one of the decent strategies is to avoid melee. To get some protection against other forms of attack Immortalis the King seems like the best choice. And, of course, both players come to the same idea.

Both players have a quite similar setup, Goblin Psychic - healer is usually the must-play card in this setup, same with Queen Mycelia. Mycelic Splipspawn is always a good taunter with his Force Field. The biggest difference is the tank unit, let's see which will prove to be a better choice.

Round 2, no casualties in this round, we have some speed advantage, I hope it will be enough to win that fight.

Round 3, the speed difference was enough to kill opponent Taunter, unfortunately, we got poison status, so our ... are numbered :). Both tanks with heal support were still standing.

Round 4, now all our team is focused on first position, so the opponent's tank was killed quite fast. The opponent magic team's damage is limited, because of the Immortalis void, so most problem could be the poison.

Round 5, we managed to kill that nasty flier, fortunately with a speed boost even our range unit had a chance to hit it. The bad news is that our tank was infected with poison. will our healer be able to keep him alive?

Round 6, that thorn damaged too much, our tank just died from poison at the beginning of that round. But still, we have much bigger firepower so even the void ability probably is not enough.

Final Blow - Round 7 - I think the poison status was applied in this battle with 100% effectiveness. But still it was not enough :).

Tank with the Shield ability seemed a better choice here, that protection against thorn damage was significant. another advantage that allowed us to win was the speed. Supply Runner is just a great card, we will talk more in the Core Section. The rest of the team was quite similar, standard setup for Immortalis. The opponent chose the poison damage as a tie-breaker, and he/she got a lot of luck with applying it. Still, it was not enough versus our faster team.

Let's check our team:

QUEEN MYCELIA, real Queen of the Splinterlands. Of course, we talked about that card many times already, and still in my opinion it's one of the best cards in the game. It's very flexible, and has great support abilities and Protect, you know, we have heavy armor meta, even among Immortalis flying everywhere :). And with Biar Patch ruleset the Amplify ability could be so important, depending on opponent will ignore it and use a melee monster. That was the case in today's battle.

SUPPLY RUNNER is just solid. Maybe its damage is not the highest among 6 mana units, but that utility with the speed boost is so important. I like to use that card with many setups, but Immortalis team is definitely one of my favorites for that card. Usually, when there is a clear opportunity to use that summoner, both players come to the same idea, because it's not easy to counter. In that case, that speed boost and non-magic damage usually is enough to win the mirror.

MYCELIC INFANTRY, it could be a surprise to see that unit here in a non-reverse speed environment. But actually, that low speed could be even the advantage here. The main goal of our tank here is to survive as long as it can, giving more time to our non-melee damage dealer to deal with the enemy. And with the support of the healer, it really could work. That Shield ability and Void from Immortalis guarantees high survivability. The poison killed it here, but you cannot be prepared for everything :).

Briar Patch is a very interesting ruleset. It changes a lot with a way of thinking. One method is to avoid the melee completely, but as we see in today's battle it could be quite easily countered, because for the opponent has so much easier time to predict and be ready for less damage type and targeting options. There aren't many no-melee monsters with opportunity, sneak usually is out of the question. So it's much easier to be prepared for snipe and frontal attacks.

I hope you like this kind of report, battle, and strategy presentation. More strategy analysis, discussion, and prediction games you can find on my Wednesday Twitch Channel stream. There will be schedule soon :)

If you have any comments, please do not hesitate. Do you think I could improve anything just tell me :)

If you wish to try out Splinterlands you can use my reference link.

Thumbnails and other pictures borrowed with permission from the Splinterlands team or made in Cooltext

We continue our game from the previous week, today new battle, a new card to win :).

I come up with some ideas, I hope you will like them and participate. Every week I will publish one battle, and your goal is to point out the first victim of the battle and who will be the winner. This game is exactly the same as my prediction game which I run on my Wednesday Splinterlands.tv stream. I know that not everyone can attend the stream, so I hope you will still have fun in that way. More about the rules can be read here.

Among all participants who get the correct answer, I will randomly (probably on my Wednesday stream) choose one winner.

The prize of the blog prediction game for the lucky winner will be the epic card:

Here we got the battle:

Game instruction:
Try to point out which monster will die first on the battlefield and who wins the battle

• t - top player
• b - bottom player
• number - order counting from the first position

Examples:
t2b = monster on the second position of top player dies first, the bottom player wins
b6t = monster on the sixth position of bottom player dies first, the top player wins
t3t = monster on the third position of top player dies first, the top player wins

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