In the spirit of the new weekly Battle Mage Secrets challenges, I would like to take a look at a Splinterlands battle with a particular focus on a ruleset. Our ruleset today is one that is one that you may enjoy if you like to TURN IT UP. Turn it up, that is, on the counter damage. Today, we'll be looking at a battle with the Up to Eleven ruleset!
Up to Eleven is a little bit of a funny ruleset - it gives every monster the Amplify ability. This is funny because Amplify on its own doesn't actually do anything. Instead, it amplifies a specific type of damage - counter damage from Magic Reflect, Thorns, and Return Fire. As you may guess, the winners in Up to Eleven battles are fairly obvious - the summoners and monsters with Magic Reflect, Thorns, or Return Fire. This does have some interesting effects on the battle, as you must gauge which abilities you have in your deck and what your opponent is likely to select.
If you wanted to jump right to the action, the Battle Link is right here. Want to hear some more about the lineup? Read on further!
First up: the ruleset. Of course, we have Up to Eleven, which will Amplify skills that deal counter damage (though strangely enough, not Retaliate). To go along with it we also have Healed Out and Even Stevens. This removes any healing abilities from the battle, and also means that only monsters with even mana costs are eligible to be chosen for the fight. In addition, we have a fairly low mana cap of just 13, and only two splinters to work with - fire and dragon.
Looking at the low mana cap and limited splinter selection, it seemed to me that it would be most likely for my opponent to use some melee damage. This meant that I wanted to bring a monster with Thorns in order to take advantage of Up to Eleven. Looking through my deck, the only monsters I had available with Thorns were in the dragon splinter. Quix was a good choice in this situation because he allows me to use my dragon cards, and also has a summoner ability that would allow me to hedge against the possibility that my opponent would have ranged attackers on their team.
As I just mentioned, I wanted a monster with Thorns. Djinn Chwala is expensive enough that it would be the only monster on my team. But take a look at those stats! Djinn Chwala is a hard hitter with 3 melee attack, and also is incredibly bulky with a whooping 5 armor and 9 health. And let us not forget that Djinn Chwala also packs the Thorns ability. With Up to Eleven, this means 3 counter damage instead of 2 whenever an opposing melee monster lands a hit.
With the lineup set, it's off into battle! When I see the selected teams I feel a little silly - I was expecting to see a lot of melee attackers. And while there is, in fact, a melee attacker, it is just a 0 mana cost Scorch Fiend. Instead my opponent has spent the bulk of their mana on Tinderlock, a ranged attacker. That is not exactly what I wanted to see, but at least this means that Quix's ranged debuff can help me out a bit.
The battle goes fairly predictably - the Scorch Fiend dies to Thorns and Djinn Chwala goes to work on the enemy Tinderlock. Unfortunately, when the Scorch Fiend dies this also means that Tinderlock's Last Stand ability triggers.
It was a bit of a back and forth battle, but by the start of round 4 the battle was just about over. With Quix's ranged and speed debuffs helping out, my Djinn Chwala was able to avoid any unlucky misses and outrace Tinderlock, even with its Last Stand ability. And again, if you wanted to see the whole battle for yourself, you can see it right here.
My strategy for this battle actually did not end up working as well as I was hoping - I was expecting to see a melee heavy team, and my opponent threw me a curveball by going heavy on ranged damage. Luckily, high amounts of monster stats can solve many problems. My Djinn Chwala was beefy enough to power through and pull of the win anyway!
In this battle, I was able to win because my team had enough generalists - Quix the Devious and Djinn Chwala both have solid abilities and stats that are able to do well in a wide range of situations. Quix's ranged and speed debuffs were both helpful in mitigating the enemy team's attacks, and Djinn Chwala's high damage output and robust health were enough for the victory.
Thank you so much for reading all the way to the end. Interested in seeing some more of my writing in the future? Be sure to give me a follow! In the meantime, if you'd like to see some of my recent posts:
Stand Back - Battling with Keep Your Distance! - A Splinterlands battle analysis, featuring Keep Your Distance!
Splinterlands Economics: Causation - A look at causation, and how we can apply it to Splinterlands!
Splinterlands Economics: Ceteris Paribus - An introduction to the concept of Ceteris Paribus, and how we can apply it to Splinterlands!
Thinking about giving Splinterlands a try but haven't signed up yet? Feel free to use my referral link: https://splinterlands.com?ref=bteim, and be sure to reach out to me if you have any questions!
All images used in this article are open source and obtained from Pixabay or Unsplash. Thumbnails borrowed with permission from the Splinterlands team or made in Canva.