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Ahoy fellow Splinterlands players. Welcome to another of my weekly Battle Mage Secrets posts.

This week the featured ruleset is Fire & Regret. When this ruleset is active all Monsters get the Return Fire ability which can be quite painful for Ranged attackers as each time they attack they will take damage back.

You can recognise this ruleset with the following icon.

With this ruleset active it's not so great to bring a lot of Ranged attackers. You can still bring a few though, especially if they have some good Armor and/or Health as that'll allow them to survive several rounds of the Return Fire while dealing damage. Apart from that with this ruleset it's often great to have two Melee's up front with one having Reach and also have some Magic attacks in the team. Running a Melee attackers team with Opportunity could also be a nice way to avoid bringing Ranged attackers.

The battle I will be sharing today is from a tournament this weekend. I played this battle in the "Summun Infuria Modern Silver GF Invitational" tournament. My opponent for this battle was angstgegner. I joined this tournament because I'd also be renting a bunch of Gold cards for the Brawl this weekend, all the GF Legendaries I used in the battle are rented cards.

Here is a picture of our initial lineup.

Battle Rules

This was a battle with a Mana Cap of 43. Only the Life and Dragon Elements were available. It had 3 rulesets:

• Ferocity: All Monsters have the Fury ability.
• Explosive Weaponry: All Monsters have the Blast ability.
• Fire & Regret: All Monsters have the Return Fire ability.

Here is a link to the battle if you want to check it out: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sm_PEXSATCWlRuZaFVTxNX9&ref=athunderstruck

Battle Lineup

As I mentioned earlier in a battle with this ruleset it's probably better to have 2 Melee attackers one big tank and one in second position with Reach so they can both attack the frontline. Then either have some Magic attackers too or focus on a team with Opportunity. It is slightly different here because there is also the Blast ability. Leaning more towards an Opportunity team could be good.

For my lineup I wanted to focus mostly on those 2 frontline Melee attackers though and have a bit of Magic attackers that provide some support as well.

I'm using Byzantine Kitty as my Summoner for the extra Speed, the True Strike ability and the Tank Heal.

As my frontline I'm using Uriel the Purifier with his solid Armor and high Health. The drawback is he has to recharge each turn before doing triple damage the turn after. Then as my second Melee attacker I have the Carnage Titan with also nice Armor and decent Health, he has the Reach ability like I mentioned and on top of that the Double Strike ability to attack twice!

You may have noticed I mentioned him as second even though he's 3rd. That's because I threw Vruz in there with the Martyr ability. The plan is that he dies to Blast from damage against my frontline to then buff up the stats of Uriel the Purifier and Carnage Titan.

Up next I have Doctor Blight to hopefully apply Affliction to my opponent's tank in case they have Heal on it or if they're also playing Byzatine Kitty. Then I have Adelade Brightwing with Repair to repair some Armor on Uriel the Purifier. She also has Resurrect so I'm hoping my Vruz dies fast and gets resurrected so it can die again to apply a 2nd Martyr buff.

In the last position I placed Chaos Agent to maybe be able to evade some possible Sneak attack hits.

Battle Analysis

It looks like my opponent played Lily Shieldpaw as their Summoner. Good thing that I didn't go with an Opportunity team because of Lily's Camouflage they'd still all be attacking the frontline. My opponent is also playing a Martyr card but they have it up front so it'll only buff Arkemis the Bear. That Oshuur Constantia is definitely going to prevent the Blast damage though once I'm hitting Arkemis the Bear, because she has Reflection Shield. My opponent did run a team with some Opportunity and a Scattershot in it.

My Vruz has the Sneak ability so it starts the battle hitting the Venari Marksrat in the front because of the Camouflage ability on my opponents team. Their Gem Meteor tries to attack my Chaos Agent but misses! Right after that their Dragon Jumper kills my Chaos Agent though causing it to get resurrected by Adelade Brightwing. After being resurrected it dodges the attack from Whelp Herder.

Meanwhile my Doctor Blight and Adelade Brightwing damage the Venari Marksrat but not yet killing it. Also my Vruz is still standing strong so my Carnage Titan is unable to attack in round 1.

In Round 2 the Gem Meteor kills my Chaos Agent. Which causes Dragon Jumper to now attack my Vruz and kill it so it can apply its Martyr buff! Now my Carnage Titan kills the Venari Marksrat which gives the Martyr buff to my opponents Arkemis. It gets resurrected by Oshuur and my Carnage Titan now breaks its armor. Then Uriel the Purifier deals a whopping 12 damage to the 1 health on Venari Marksrat 🤦‍♂️ At least the Blast also dealt 6 damage to Arkemis the Bear. Who gets another Martyr buff now to gain 1 Armor back. It hits my Uriel and applies Halving so my Uriel is now from 4 Attack to 2 Attack.

At the end of the round my Adelade dies to Whelp Herder. At least she and Doctor Blight did lower Arkemis the Bear down to 4 Health.

This allows my Carnage Titan to break the Armor with its first attack and kill Arkemis the Bear with its second attack. Now that Arkemis the Bear is dead my opponent loses all their Armor and with Oshuur Constantia up front their backline is no longer protected against the Blast. However this 3rd round I won't attack them, because Carnage Titan just has its turn and Uriel is Recharging during this round. My Doctor Blight ends up dying to the attacks of my opponents Gem Meteor and Dragon Jumper.

With all of that the start of Round 4 looks like this.

Round 4 starting off with Carnage Titan hitting Oshuur Constantia twice and killing her, bringing Whelp Herder down to 2 Health already too. Although dropping Whelp Herders Health from 6 to 2 didn't matter because Uriel the Purifier now hits Whelp Herder for 6 damage, dealing 3 Blast damage to Dragon Jumper.

At this point it doesn't really matter how my opponents Gem Meteor will attack me because the combined damage of Dragon Jumper and Gem Meteor against Uriel the Purifier can only deal 6 damage dropping it to 4 Health. Which at the start of the next round will be healed back up more! As he has 12 Health thanks to the Martyr he gets healed for 4 Health by Kitty and then he's faster than my opponent so his own Heal will also heal him for 4 Health.

So that healing is what happens in Round 5. Uriel has to recharge though so he's only healing himself and not attacking. It is up to my Carnage Titan to then attack and kill both Dragon Jumper and Gem Meteor to secure that victory!

GG 😄

Was My Strategy Successful?

Yeah it was quite successful, but some improvements could have been made for sure. The play of having Vruz between Uriel the Purifier and Carnage Titan to buff them both was great. And relying on Uriel the Purifier and Carnage Titan to be the key elements to victory worked out really well. One problem was that my Resurrect from Adelade Brightwing was kind of wasted. Sure after Chaos Agent was resurrected he did still dodge an attack so that was great. But it would've been better if Vruz was resurrected.

My Gold Foil Chaos Agent is currently level 4 and it can be played at level 5 in Silver. At level 5 it gets an extra health. So if I had it at level 5 where it also has 3 Health then the Dragon Jumper with Opportunity would've targeted and killed my Vruz instead so that it would get resurrected.

HOWEVER we did see Gem Meteor with Scattershot try to hit my Chaos Agent, it missed though. If my Chaos Agent was level 5 and got hit my Gem Meteor in round 1 instead of dodging well then it would've been at 1 Health and still have been the target of Dragon Jumper. So for all we know even at level 5 it's possible that the Resurrect would've still brought Chaos Agent back instead of Vruz.
Gem Meteor could've also hit Adelade Brightwing and then the blast would've weakened Chaos Agent.

Conclusion

A great choice of lineup for sure focusing on a strong Melee hit every 2 turns from Uriel the Purifier combined with 2 strong Melee attacks from Carnage Titan every turn. As I described above it may have been better if my Chaos Agent was level 5 so Vruz could be the one killed first and Resurrected to apply the Martyr twice. That really depends on the RNG though of what Monsters got hit by Gem Meteor and its Blast ability.

I suppose in any case it could be a great idea to focus on getting my Gold Foil Chaos Agent to level 5.

I made it through the first round of that tournament. The second round didn't really go that well for me, so I didn't manage to get into top 32 or better. I still finished in the top 64 place at least.

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