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Ahoy and welcome to my latest Battle Mage Secrets post.

For this week the featured ruleset is Counterspell. With this ruleset active all Monsters gain the Magic Reflect ability. So it's best to lower your amount of Magic attack Monsters during a battle like this. If you have Magic attack Monsters with the Void Ability though or Void Armor those can be quite good though as they'll take less damage from the Magic Reflect and could stay alive for longer. In some battles I just love to bring Queen Mycelia too because she provides Armor to the whole team and at Silver level has Amplify to let the opponent take more damage from Magic Reflect, in that case I do usually try to pair it with Thorns as well though.

You can recognise the ruleset with this icon.

The battle I'm sharing with you this week is from the Poseidar Wild Silver Invitational Tournament recently. Where I played against the player sharker.

Here is a picture of our initial lineup.

Battle Rules

This was a battle with only a 12 Mana Cap. Almost all Elements were available to play, the only one we couldn't play was the Fire Element. The battle had 2 rulesets which were:

• Ferocity: All Monsters have the Fury ability.
• Counterspell: All Monsters have the Magic Reflect ability.

Here is a link to the battle if you want to check it out: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sm_ffOVK5YnqLCXtLhhyB8a&ref=athunderstruck

Battle Lineup

Well this is a really low Mana battle and with Counterspell as a ruleset we are most likely better off not really using Magic attack Monsters. Since it's a Wild format Tournament the best thing here seems to go with Mylor Crowling to give Thorns to the whole team. As there most likely won't be much of Ranged attacks here.

So yeah I lock in Mylor Crowling as my Summoner and then the main card for the fight will be Flesh Golem up front as he has a lot of Health and the Heal ability so he can stay alive for a while.

Behind Flesh Golem I bring Screeching Vulture as I have 3 Mana left. This card has Opportunity to help me attack the Low Health opponents. It also has the Flying ability so if my opponent has Sneak attacks it has a chance to dodge those.

Then I bring Fungus Fiend and Furious Chicken to fill out my team as they're 0 Mana costs and they can help protect the team for Sneak attacks.

Battle Analysis

My opponent is using Kelya Frendul as their Summoner. That's a solid pick with the Armor for all of their units, as it allows them to take hit from my Thorns that will first break that Armor without touching their Health. They did bring one Ranged Monster here, Igor Darkspear, good pick to protect his team from Sneak while providing frontline damage.

Round 1

First round starts with my opponents Pelacor Bandit attacking and killing my Furious Chicken, losing its own Armor to the Thorns. Followed by Uraeus killing my Fungus Fiend and also losing its Armor to the Thorns.
Igor Darkspear went between Pelacor Bandit and Uraeus to attack my Flesh Golem for 2 damage.
Their Torrent Fiend hits my Flesh Golem for 1 and loses its Armor to the Thorns.
Screeching Vulture now has its turn and kills the Torrent Fiend.
Flesh Golem heals himself for 3 Health, then attacks the Furious Chicken and breaks its Armor.
Furious Chicken now attacks Flesh Golem for 1 damage, taking the Thorns damage and dying to it.

That's the end of the round, so here is a picture of our lineups now.

Round 2

Pelacor Bandit attacks Screeching Vulture for 2 damage, and takes 2 damage back from the Thorns.
Igor Darkspear hits Flesh Golem for 2 damage.
Uraeus also hits Flesh Golem for 2 damage, taking 2 damage back from Thorns.
Screeching Vulture attacks the Uraeus and kills it.
Flesh Golem Heals himself for 3 Health and tries to attack Pelacor Bandit, which he succeeds in and so he kills the Pelacor Bandit as it was down to 2 Health already from the Thorns damage it took earlier.

That's the end of the round. Here is a picture of our current lineups.

As you can see my opponent only has Igor Darkspear left now and Ranged attackers can't attack from the first position unless they have the Close Range ability. So at this point the victory is already secured for me. I'll just have to hit the Igor Darkspear so either after 2 turns I'll win if I hit all the time. It's a 90% chance to hit and I succeeded in hitting him all the time so won in round 4.

Was My Strategy Successful?

Yeah it was a good strategy. In such a low Mana battle the Mylor Crowling + Flesh Golem combo is quite strong because my opponent most likely plays Melee attackers. So yeah that frontline was a strong pick. Bringing the Screeching Vulture worked kinda well to help get through my opponents 0 Mana Monsters quickly. But even then the Flesh Golem likely would've been able to win. I did consider maybe bringing Halfling Alchemist to try and halve the opponents Tank. But good thing I stuck to Screeching Vulture as the Halving wasn't needed.

Conclusion

My opponent did make a decent pick for their Summoner too with Kelya Frendul providing Armor which helps to block a Thorns hit. I've had matchups where I used Mylor Crowling against Kelya Frendul that I ended up losing. Usually when that happened it was a higher Mana Battle though. Unfortunately for my opponent they didn't have enough damage output though to deal with the Flesh Golem.

That's it for my Battle Mage Secrets challenge this week. Thank you for reading!

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