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Ahoy and welcome to my next Battle Mage Secrets posts!

This one is a bit later than usual again cause I keep writing it on Monday but had a busy afternoon and then I also had my evening class so I didn't get to it yet until now.

This week the featured ruleset is What Doesn't Kill You. Which gives all Monsters the Enrage ability. With this ability when Monsters take damage their Speed is increased. Monsters that have a Melee attack will also see their Melee attack increased.

You can recognise the ruleset with the following icon.

With that ruleset Monsters that already have high Speed can be really amazing tanks because the Enrage will further increase their Speed. Especially if they have Flying and/or Dodge abilities to make it even harder for them to be hit. Unless the enemy has True Strike of course because then they won't miss.

The battle I want to share with you this time is from a recent tournament, the "Open your wings" tournament hosted by @canada804. In this battle that I'm sharing with you I was up against danderlion!

Here is a picture of our initial lineup.

Battle Rules

This was a battle with a 49 Mana Cap. The Earth, Life, Death and Dragon Elements were available. The battle had 3 rulesets:

• Back to Basics: Monsters lose all abilities.
• What Doesn’t Kill You: All Monsters have the Enrage ability.
• Are You Not Entertained?: One additional Gladiator card may be used in battles.

Here is a link to the battle if you want to check it out: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_3bdc26005e79392323597bf9abdd3848&ref=athunderstruck

Battle Lineup

Since the Speed on Monsters gets increased when they take damage it would be really good to increase the Monser's base speed. There is also the ruleset that allows you to bring a Gladiator card. BUT with the other ruleset they lose all their abilities so they won't have Bloodlust. This cancels out any teams that rely on Sneak and/or Opportunity. Which also does mean our backline won't have to be protected.

So I decide that I want to go with Byzantine Kitty to give +2 Speed to all my Monsters, making them even faster once they get Enraged. The Tank Heal might be nice to keep the frontline up longer. All my Monsters will also get the True Strike ability so now matter how much Speed my opponent has, I'll always be able to deal damage to them.

For my first Monster I go with Uriel the Purifier. In normal circumstances he uses the first turn (and every odd turn after that) to charge because of the Recharge ability, and then the next turn when he attacks he attacks for 3x the damage. He loses that because of Back to Basics, but he's still a great frontline since becoming Enraged will give him more damage and he has a good amount of Health AND Armour that takes a bit to get through.

Up next I have Kralus, I placed it second so it can always use its 1 Magic attack right away and then it can serve as a secondary tank when Uriel the Purifier goes down. In which case it'll also be able to use that Melee attack.

Then I brought Runic Skyclaw, with a lot of base speed and also some Armor. It is a Ranged unit so it won't be able to attack from the front, but I won't have a lot of Mana left so I want to place it here as the high base Speed + extra Speed from Byzantine Kitty can make it a great tank just to get some more damage from the rest of my backline in.

Since I have about 10 Mana left now I bring Time Mage and Dax Paragon to have some Magic damage on the team.

Last but not least I bring one Gladiator since we can bring one and choose to bring Ajax Lightfoot to have a really solid mix of Melee, Ranged and Magic in my team.

Battle Analysis

Ah my opponent, Danderlion, also used Byzantine Kitty as it can be really smart play here with the extra Speed. This does mean that the higher Speed on my team won't allow my Monsters to dodge any attacks as all of my opponents Monsters will also have the True Strike ability. Which means my Runic Skyclaw actually wouldn't be able to dodge anything with that high Speed if it comes into the frontline :(

He went with Almo Cambio up front, a great tank but it does lose its abilities so no Phase. And it doesn't have any attack so in this battle it's not really favourable. Then he brings 3 Magic attack Monsters with the Void Dragon, Djinn Renova and the Gladiator Captain Katie. He also brings a Runic Skyclaw, stronger than mine as it's level 4 whereas mine is just a level 1 that I bought once to just have it available. His last Monsters is War Pegasus to also have 2 Ranged attack Monsters.

Our Runic Skyclaws both get to attack first and so goes my Ajax Lightfoot. Which means his Almo Cambio takes a lot of direct damage. For my Uriel the Purifier it means just his Armour got hit. Then his Void Dragon goes next, attacks my Uriel the Purifier on his Health since it deals Magic damage and this Enrages my Uriel the Purifier, who now goes next due to the Speed increase and deals 5 damage to Almo Cambio. That brings it down to 2 Health and my Time Mage lands the final hit to kill the Almo Cambio.
War Pegasus now destroys the last Armour on my Uriel the Purifier and his Djinn Renova and Captain Katie his his Health bringing him down to 3 Health. My Kralus and Dax Paragon deal 2 damage to the Void Dragon. That's the end of round 1.

Here is our lineup after round 1 is over.

At the start of round 2 his Void Dragon is Healed for 2 Health and my Uriel the Purifier is healed for 3 Health. Which allows him to survive a hit from Runic Skyclaw and Void Dragon, leaving him at 1 Health right before he is able to land the killing blow on the Void Dragon. As the Void Dragon already took damage from my Ajax Lightfoot and Runic Skyclaw after danderlion's Runic Skyclaw attacked me.
Now he takes out my Uriel the Purifier.
My Kralus didn't get to attack yet this turn and now it's in the frontline. Not Enraged though so it just gets to attack with 1 Magic and 2 Melee. But combining that with the 2 Magic damage from Time Mage and 1 damage from Dax Paragon it is just enough for my team to take out Djinn Renova.
His War Pegasus hits my Kralus' Armour and his Captain Katie hits his Health.

Here is out lineup at the end of round 2.

Due to Kralus having 12 Health he will get healed for 4 Health and since he's at 8 Health it means Byzantine Kitty heals him for 4 at the start of round 3. Which puts him back to full Health, but that also causes him to lose the Enraged status as he's not longer damaged (except for some Armour but that doesn't count for Enrage).

His Runic Skyclaw breaks my Armour, then my Ajax Lightfoot hits hit Captain Katie which Enrages her and now she goes before my Runic Skyclaw so she hits my Kralus causing it to get Enraged. Now my Kralus is Enraged and with that extra Speed goes before my Runic Skyclaw so it uses the Magic damage and 3 Melee damage to take out Captain Katie.

My Runic Skyclaw destroys his Runic Skyclaw's Armour and then my Time Mage and Dax Paragon deal some damage.

In the above screenshot from the end of round 3 you can see that his Enraged Runic Skyclaw now has 12 Speed!! That's what I was talking about earlier with Runic Skyclaw getting that +2 Speed from Byzantine Kitty and then further increasing its Speed when it gets Enrage!! Makes it really hard to hit it! If it wasn't for both of us using Byzantine Kitty with the True Strike ability on all our Monsters of course. But I still wanted to showcase that crazy Speed here!

Well only his War Pegasus can attack now and it deals 3 damage per turn while my Kralus gets healed for 4. So at this point I have won the battle. Just need a few hits from my team. GG!

Was My Strategy Successful?

Yeah it was a solid strategy. Bringing Uriel the Purifier and Kralus was a great idea because of their Armour and high Health. Especially because Uriel the Purifier doesn't have to Recharge every 2 turns, which does mean he deals less damage but at least he can attack every turn.
My opponent did have a tank that couldn't deal damage damage so that also made a huge difference. If he also used a tank like Uriel or Kralus with a strong Melee attack and some Armour then this would've been a much closer fight.
I couldn't showcase the Runic Skyclaw being able to dodge lots of attacks with the High Speed because we both had True Strike so we would never miss anyway. At least I got to show you how crazy that Speed can get on it when it's Enraged.

Conclusion

That was a really good battle with a great lineup. It would've been tougher if my opponent also brought a tank that could attack as it would've likely caused my Uriel the Purifier to die much faster.
But after I won against danderlion in this battle he went on to beat me twice so I ended up being 1-2 against him in the Tournament I got knocked out of it. I saw him in the twitch chat and congratulated him on the victories and wished him good luck in the rest of the Tournament.

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