In this battle we have a three rulesets active: Close Range, Lost Magic and Armored Up
Close Range!
RULESET: Close Range
Description: Monsters with ranged attacks are allowed to attack in the first position.
Normally in a Close Range ruleset you want to use a summoner that boosts ranged attack of your monsters or reduces ranged attack of the opposing team. So General Sloan and Quicks are very popular in this case. If you are using Quicks you are probably playing a counter strategy so you want to use monsters that nerf ranged attack in addition to the range attack reducing summoner. One of such monsters is a water team fiend.
The Strategy
Here we have a low mana battle with lost magic attack monsters and all monsters having two armor. This calls for a team that is low mana but at the same time has enough damage to defeat the opponent.
I decided to go with my favorite water team for this battle. Water team has two great ranged monsters Merdhampir that has life leach and Cripple abilities with a relatively high health of six for only four mana and Igor Darkspear that also has a high health of five for only two mana. Igor also has an important stun ability. Since magic monsters are not allowed my opponent is likely to expect melee attack so they my go with a tank that has thorns ability. In anticipation of that play I have placed Tide Biter with his Reflection Shield ability in the second place. My tank is a Chaos Agent that has high speed Dodge and Backfire abilities. This is a very important mini-tank that helped me win a lot of battles. I round up my team with a Torrent Fiend that has a Headwinds ability that helps reduce opponent's ranged attack and Uraeus that has Sneak and Poison abilities.
Kelya gives us one more shield and all important speed boost.
The Summoner
Kelya is my favorite water summoner and being one of the most expensive Rare Chaos summoners it is clearly recognized as a formidable Water summoner.
1st Slot - Tank
Chaos Agent is a one mana mini-tank. For just one mana it has four speed and four health and three important abilities: Dodge, Phase and Backfire. With Kelya giving it plus one speed boost I hope it gets quite a few backfires before it goes down.
2nd Slot - Reflection Shield Melee Monster
Tide Biter is a great rewards monster that with only three mana has three melee attack, six health points, four speed and three important abilities: Reach, Reflection Shield and True Strike. This combination makes it one of my favorite monsters to play on the water team.
3rd Slot - Ranged Life Leach Monster
Merdhampir is a four mana rewards card that has six health three ranged attack and four speed. It is also equipped with an all important Life Leach ability that helps make it a very strong meat shield and with a Close Range Ruleset it can also attack from the first position. It also has Cripple and Snare abilities that may come in handy.
4th Slot - Ranged Stun Monster
Igor Darkspear is an epic two mana water monster from the Chaos Legion. For only two mana it has three ranged damage, five health and three speed. It also has an important Stun ability that is very helpful against self-healing monsters.
5th Slot - Sneak Poison Monster
Uraeus is a great sneak monster with poison ability. It has three damage and four speed at level six. It also comes with one armor and four health points. I like using this monster to poison opponent's backline monsters.
6th Slot - Range Attack Nerf Monster
Torrent Fiend is an important addition to my team for the Close Range ruleset because it helps to reduce ranged attack of all of the ranged monsters on the opposing team. With magic not allowed and close range ruleset it is very probable that opponent will use lots of ranged monsters.
## THE BATTLE
Our opponent chose to go with a Death team driven by one of the most expensive promo summoners in the game. They chose a high health self-healing thorns tank which would present a challenge in a low mana battles without magic monsters.
Round Two is not starting so well for us as the opponent was able to land most of their hits on Chaos Agent:
In round Two we lost Chaos Agent but we were also able to take out their self healing tank which is very important to the outcome of this battle. They were unfortunately able to land poison on our Tide Biter.
In round Three we were able to take out a few more of their monsters and the battle is clearly starting to turn our way:
And round Five was the last and final round:
Poison finished out Chaos Agent and our Tide Biter but we still have four more monsters and take the win home:
