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Ahoy fellow Splinterlands players. Welcome to my next edition of the weekly Battle Mage Secrets posts.

The featured ruleset this week is Ferocity. When this ruleset is active all Monsters gain the Fury ability, this ability causes Monsters to deal double damage when they hit a Monster with the Taunt ability.

You can recognise that ruleset with this icon.

When this ruleset is active it is advised to NOT bring any Monsters with the Taunt ability. You can try of course and still take some damage to your other units away, but be aware it'll die twice as fast! Of course when Magic Monsters can't be used or hit Armor first then a Taunt Monster with high Armor could still be a good play.

The battle I'm sharing in this post is from a tournament in the past week. It was the Summun Infuria Modern Silver Invitational Tournament. In this battle I played against thekillingqueen.

Here is a picture of our initial lineup.

Battle Rules

This was a battle with a Mana Cap of 60. The Fire, Earth, Death and Dragon Elements were available. There were 3 active rulesets:

• Explosive Weaponry: All Monsters have the Blast ability.
• Silenced Summoners: Summoners do not give any stat buffs or debuffs or grant/use any abilities.
• Ferocity: All Monsters have the Fury ability.

Here is a link to the battle if you want to check it out: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sm_Hvlrv6yjDbyFCHyPyzr6&ref=athunderstruck

Battle Lineup

Alright so there is the Silenced Summoners ruleset where they don't provide their bonus. I want to use as low Mana on my Summoner as possible then. I have Camila Sungazer at level 2 so I decide I'll use her because she requires only 3 Mana to play. Which will also allow me to use Dragon Monsters in the battle.

All Monsters with have Blast so I need to pay some attention to that. All Monsters get Fury so I can't really try to take the damage away to the backline or front with a Reflection Shield ability next to it to prevent the Blast. As that Taunt would die quickly.

I decide to use Arkemis the Bear as my frontline as a high health tank and to provide Armor to my whole team which can help a little bit with the Blast damage. Right behind Arkemis the Bear I place Carnage Titan as it has the Reach ability and Double Strike so it can attack from the 2nd position and attacks twice a turn. Solid damage against the enemy frontline and their 2nd Monster thanks to Blast.

Up next I use the Diamond Dragon, it has low health but really high Armor and has the Slow ability so it'll help my team to attack first as the enemy will lose 1 Speed.

Then I placed Supply Runner for Ranged attack and also providing Swiftness to give my team +1 Speed. I placed this one here so that if my opponent uses Opportunity it will attack this one and the blast will hit the Armor on my Diamond Dragon and it will hit my Dragon Jumper while protecting my Countess Sinash from early blast damage.

Up next I bring Dragon Jumper for Opportunity which is great because it'll hit the lowest health enemy while also dealing damage to up to two adjacent Monsters thanks to blast.

Last but no least I bring Countess Sinash who also provides Swiftness for a second +1 Speed buff and she also has Opportunity like Dragon Jumper. So now I'll have two Opportunity units to hopefully wreak some havoc on the enemy team. She has lower health than Supply Runner but she has the Camouflage ability so won't be targetable by Opportunity.

Battle Anaylsis

It seems my opponent also used Camila Sungazer to spend as little Mana on the Summoner as possible and use Dragon Monsters. They went with a Robo-Dragon Knight up front with Void to reduce Magic attacks from my team and it's also an excellent tank with that high Armor and the Divine Shield ability. Up next they decide to bring Carnage Titan like me.

Then they have Runic Skyclaw, an excellent Monster with high speed and Flying making it harder to hit her. Especially because she also has some Armor. She will be the target of my Opportunity monsters due to her placement and being same health as Dragon Jumper.
This card is definitely great to play here, but mine is only level 1 right now so I decided I want more Speed and a Slow.

Then my opponent also brought Dragon Jumper and Countess Sinash for same reasons as me. Their Dragon Jumper is level 2 though while mine is level 1. Which gives them the Snare ability! Kinda wish mine was level 2 as well for this ability.

They finished their lineup with Tinderlock, he becomes quite strong when his Last Stand ability goes off!

My Monsters have the highest Speed because I have +2 Speed from double Swiftness and the Slow on my Diamond Dragon cancels my opponents 1 Swiftness.

This allows my Dragon Jumper to go first, it breaks Runic Skyclaws Armor and the blast lowers their Dragon Jumper's health causing it to be the next opportunity target. So my Countess Sinash attempts to attack their Dragon Jumper, but she misses!

My opponents Runic Skyclaw with Sniper attacks my Diamond Dragon and breaks my Suppler Runner armor. Then their Dragon Jumper attacks and almost kills my Supply Runner and breaks armor on my Dragon Jumper. They also take away the Flying ability from both my Diamond Dragon and my Dragon Jumper because of their Snare ability!
It is actually really crazy how Snare still affects Flying Monsters when they take damage through Blast instead of through direct damage? Cause Life Leech doesn't work on the units hit my the blast damage anymore yet this does!

Anyway now their Countess Sinash tries to attack my Suppler Runner and she misses! Quite hilarious that BOTH of our Countess Sinash missed their attack in round 1 😂 They weren't feeling it I guess.

My Arkemis the Bear, Carnage Titan, Diamond Dragon and Supply Runner attack their front line. Their Robo-Dragon Knight, Carnage Titan and Tinderlock attack my frontline.

At the end of round 1 and start of round 2 our Monsters and their Health and Armor look like this.

Still with the highest speed my Dragon Jumper now attacks my opponents Dragon Jumper leaving it at 1 Health and dealing 2 blast damage to Runic Skyclaw and Countess Sinash. If my Dragon Jumper was level 2 it would've had 4 damage and killed theirs but that's not the case.
Now my Countess Sinash attacks their Dragon Jumper, this time hitting it and with that hit she kills the Dragon Jumper and with the Blast from her hit she takes out my opponents Countess Sinash!

This causes my opponent to lose their Swiftness buff and so all their Monsters lose 1 Speed now. My Supply Runner and Diamond Dragon hit their frontline before their Runic Skyclaw hits my Diamond Dragon and with the Blast from its attack it kills my Supply Runner. Which causes me to lose 1 Speed on all my Monsters now too as I lose 1 of the Swiftness buffs.

Still faster than my opponent because of my 2nd Swiftness buff and the Slow ability, my Carnage Titan now attacks my opponents frontline and with the blast it takes out of my opponents Carnage Titan before it gets a chance to attack this turn.
Arkemis the Bear now kills the Robo-Dragon Knight and with the Blast it also takes out the Runic Skyclaw.
Leaving only Tinderlock alive.

Tinderlock still has to attack this turn so it goes into Last Stand and kills my Arkemis the Bear. Still leaving my Carnage Titan alive though. That's the end of round 2.

In this above picture you see how it looks at the start of round 3. All of my units are still faster than my opponents Tinderlock. So they will all attack the Tinderlock before it can do anything. My damage combined is 13 so the Tinderlock actually survives with 1 Health here 😅 Which allows it to attack and kill my Carnage Titan but just destroying the armor on my Diamond Dragon.

The final round consists of just my Dragon Jumper finishing off the Tinderlock.

Was My Strategy Successful?

Yeah it was a great strategy. That double Swiftness compared with the Slow really made my team a lot faster giving them quite the edge on attacking first and getting that damage out there!

It was kinda sad to see my Countess Sinash miss in the first round but then it was funny to see my opponent's Countess Sinash miss me as well so both of them missed! If theirs didn't miss I would've lost one of my Swiftness buffs sooner, but I suppose that wouldn't have made a difference cause I would still be able to attack first. Except perhaps for my Countess Sinash it may have given her a slightly higher chance to miss.

Conclusion

All in all a great strategy. It seems my opponent and I thought quite alike with these rules as 3 of our Monsters were the same. With their Dragon Jumper being higher level though.

Their Dragon Jumper with the Snare ability being triggered to Flying Monsters that take damage from Blast is a bit annoying. Of course there have been battles where I saw that use myself. I just find it a bit strange why that works but Life Leech no longer steals life from the Monster that takes Blast damage??

Nevertheless I would also love a Dragon Jumper at level 2 because that Snare ability is really great to hit Flying Monsters with a guaranteed hit and also to take Flying away in Earthquake rulesets. That extra Melee damage is great too. Right now I have only 2 copies of Dragon Jumper though so I am missing 1 bcx to be able to get mine to level 2.

That's it for my Battle Mage Secrets challenge this week. Thank you for reading!

If you haven't signed up for Splinterlands yet and want to check it out, you can do so with my referral link at: https://splinterlands.com?ref=athunderstruck