For our battle mage secrets this week, we have the amplify ruleset. Something that can be quite a tricky ruleset to get around depending on the other rulesets present as well as summoner abilities available. As usual, we will breakdown some strategies for this ruleset and then look at a battle with the ruleset being present. For the full battle, please use the following link: https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_7e687db908e0b91f2a5797626143c70e
Strategies:
1. Void or Shield: Naturally a way to diminish the amplified damage of a magic reflect or thorns ability is to have some shield or void on your monsters. Immortalis can be great for this diminishing some of the returned damage to you allowing your monsters to live longer. This strategy is especially important when there is an amplify and magic reflect or other similar ruleset present in the same battle.
2. Triage and Heal: Again if you are expecting your opponent to counter with several return damage abilities than it is good if you can heal them up which is what this strategy provides.
3. Include return damage abilities: Pretty self explanatory here as with the amplify ruleset you have built in extra damage from your magic reflect, thorns, and return fire abilities and summoners. The Dice summoners like Owster and mylor can really feast in this type of strategy.
Battle Breakdown Round 1:
One of the best tank and summoner combo for this ruleset is the silvershield paladin and rathe. The paladin has magic reflect and a whopping 14 health when rathe includes the void armor. The shiled it has also protects from a thorns play. In Round 1, everything goes as planned as the paladin holds up strong and my fiend is taking some initial damage. His strategy was reliant on the blast magic attacker it seems so we will see how that plays out.
Round 2:
In round 2, my fiend goes down but his blast attacker is closer to hitting the front line as his muskrat hits the tank position. There is still plenty of protect available as well on the backline with the defender of truth buff.
Round 3:
In Round 3, the plan is coming together as the paladin magic reflect takes his main damage dealer to 2 health and is the primary opportunity target. The muskrat will not take much damage at this point so the martyr cannot prock.
Round 4:
During round 4, all his monsters go down except for his sneak monster meanwhile my paladin is at full health and the defender of truth is ready to hit for two magic damage every turn and cannot miss. Everything wraps up after round 8 as the pelacor was unhittable from my paladain but could not avoid the damage of the defender.
Anytime return damage and amplify can be included your are giving yourself a good chance to win. This is why the ruleset can be tricky to get around as well as why rathe is such a good summoner. Please upvote or comment if you enjoyed this breakdown or have any other strategies you enjoy using.