HELLO to all Splinterlands readers of my humble blog.👋🏻👋🏻👋🏻 Welcome to yet another week of the "new" iteration of the Splinterlands Weekly Challenges 😜.

For any old Hivers/Splinterland players who've just come back and are confused, fret not! Even with the name and format tweaks, right at it's core, battles are still the foundation of these posts.

In this week's edition of Battle Mage Secrets, take heed if you like to throw taunts at others. It could come back to bite you twice as hard! 😜

No matter! I present to you the ruleset — FEROCITY 😡😡😡

The game's description of FEROCITY is as follows: "All units have the Fury ability."

This is a ruleset which effectively removes added protection that a so called "Taunt" Tank offers you. Taunt, as we know, forces all units to target that particular unit until it is killed. Normally, this would be a much valued ability on the main tank for the team as is able to take damage better than other units and thus protects and allows everyone to survive longer on the battlefield.

The Ferocity ability however turns the table on those "Tanky Tankers"! 🤣 The FURY ability basically gives any unit double damage against a unit with TAUNT. So as we can see, the FEROCITY ruleset makes Taunt units crumble so quickly that you'd be hard pressed to believe they were once an unkillable tank. 😱

I will take advantage of this ruleset in my battle showcase today to show how 1 of my units in particular becomes a lot stronger than one would expect with FEROCITY. Introducing the Summoner, Thaddius Brood.

Messing with the dark arts should not be taken lightly. But that was the risk that Thaddius Brood took. A curious young man fascinated by the occult, he took to casting rituals and holding dark ceremonies. And it wasn't long before he got in touch with a dark entity that drove him into madness.
His family sent him to an asylum, but it only worsened his condition. And the entity within him festered and grew more powerful. Soon there was no boundary between Thaddius and it. Using his newfound dark magic, Thaddius broke from his prison and now wreaks havoc everywhere he goes. Through his rituals he got into contact with Doctor Blight. And the Doctor was fascinated with his power.
Thaddius has now joined the ranks of the Chaos Legion as an agent in the Splinterlands, sowing death wherever he can.

From Splinterlands Lore on Thaddius Brood

---

Thaddius Brood is a Rare card released during the Chaos Legion expansion. It has definitely found it's place in many Death decks given its availability and usefulness. It's effects on the battlefield are -1 🪄MAGIC ATTACK🪄 and -1 ❤️HEALTH❤️ to all enemy units. It's summoning cost is, like all other Chaos Legion Rare Summoners, 4 🧪MANA🧪.

The stat buffs it gives are nothing out of the ordinary, so at first glance, he might look pretty bland. It would seem that in terms of firepower, this summoner does almost nothing to boost your team. However, under the correct battlefield conditions, he could end up being really strong!

As it is obvious from his ability to reduce your opponent's magic damage by 1 across the board, Thaddius is clearly an anti-magic based summoner. As an added bonus, he also reduces the health of all enemy units by 1 too! This is an all round ability that further increases his advantage if the opponent decides to field a magic heavy team.

This could make all the difference if the battle comes down to the wire where the slightest advantage is the fine line between victory or defeat! 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻 This is definitely what I'd consider game changing! 😱😱😱

⚔️🛡️My Battle Showcase🛡️⚔️

Let me present a battle I fought recently in which the ruleset FEROCITY was in effect. My opponent used the Promo edition Summoner Delwyn Dragonscale from the DRAGON splinter as his main pick, while I used the Chaos Legion edition Summoner Thaddius Brood from the DEATH splinter. 🐉 VS 💀

At first glance, it would seem like I was at a distinct disadvantage.

• My opponent was using a level 5 Common Summoner VS my level 3 Rare.

• Effectively, that puts him at roughly 2 levels ahead of me.

• His units were likewise significantly higher levelled than mine. He used 2 legendary units, both of which were maxed out for the Silver League at level 2. 😱

• This gave his entire team a huge increase in raw damage output.

• To exacerbate matters, there was an extra "ARMORED UP" ruleset in play too. This meant it would require dealing even more damage than before to take his team down!

I was honestly expecting this to be a really bad matchup for me 😜🤣. This was a team who had an innate advantage in this ruleset. His team had one purpose only and that was to output the maximum amount of damage possible. Would I be able to turn the tide of battle against such an opponent then? Victory or defeat would lie in the small details.

I would say that the ruleset FEROCITY was DEFINITELY the MVP of this match, having played it's role in turning the tide of battle. The advantage it gave my team resulted in me outlasting my opponent in this battle. It definitely provided the edge that I needed to overcome my opponent.

This ensured that the other units could eventually wear down the opponent until victory was achieved! 🏆🏆🏆

---

LINK TO MY FIGHT

👯‍♀️👯👯‍♂️LINEUP CHOICES👯‍♀️👯👯‍♂️

1st CARD SLOT

Djinn Muirat is chosen for this slot. He plays the role of the Main tank perfectly with his great stats. His high health stats and the VOID ARMOR ability will also allow him to have much longer staying power on the battlefield. This allows all other units to be kept safe until he is taken down.

---

2nd CARD SLOT

The Revealer occupies this slot. It's main role here is to stun the enemy unit with it's STUN ability. It is also able to deal some DPS and play the role of a backup tank.

---

3rd CARD SLOT

The Spirit Hoarder fills this slot and it's main role is to be the Healer against any damage dealt to units other than the main tank thanks to it's TRIAGE ability.

---

4th CARD SLOT

The Scavo Hireling fills this slot. It's role is to be Support unit thanks to the REPAIR ability. The Tank's armour should be constantly refilled.

---

5th CARD SLOT

The Spirit Miner occupies this slot. He is yet another DPS unit for the team but his DODGE and SWIFTNESS abilities make him a hard unit to kill and also boosts the speed of the entire team!

---

6th CARD SLOT

The Carrion Shade occupies the last slot. It's main role is to be a cheap sacrificial unit against any possible SNEAK/OPPORTUNITY units in the opponent's lineup.

I hope you're starting to see the pattern here in my team setup. 😉

⚔️🛡️Battle Action Report🛡️⚔️

As you can see, both of us fielded very similar units in our matchup. Even though we both used the different splinters, our unit selection mainly consisted of Magic units. 😱

🐉DRAGON🐉 VS 💀DEATH💀

---

My opponent used Agor Longtail as his tank in the 1st slot which was a VERY good choice. With his great defensive stats, and the triple defensive abilities of FLYING, TAUNT and VOID ARMOR, this is a unit which will protect it's entire team until it falls.

High Priest Darius occupied his 2nd slot. This is an amazing support and DPS unit. Capable of dishing out damage and also having the RESURRECT and WEAKEN abilities, this was probably one of the strongest units in the game!

Having chosen such powerhouse units, the opponent filled up all his mana requirements with their hefty cost and that was the extent of his army. It was still nothing to sniff at as they were both among the strongest in their fields.

All in all, I would say that the opponent picked a really strong team.

---

The battle started out with all our units just duking it out pound for pound. It was a mid mana game with 30 mana as the limit. The rulesets were FEROCITY & ARMORED UP.

• The first round saw both our sides launch a flurry of attacks. Both tanks took a lot of damage trading blows. 🤣

• Normally, the Agor would have shaken off all the attacks easily with it's massive defensive abilities and stats. However, thanks to the FEROCITY ruleset, he ended up being as battered as my Djinn Muirat.

• My choice of Thaddius Brood paid off handsomely too as I was able to negate a slight bit of magic damage from my opponent's "All Magic" team. I was still taking loads of damage just from the sheer firepower they had though.

• Round 2 saw me taking down his Agor, only for Darius to resurrect him again. My Djinn Muirat was unfortunately taken down. This was troubling. My main tank had fallen. 😭

• Round 2 was even worse for the opponent as my units destroyed his Flying Squid, Disintegrator, and Deeplurker.

• Thankfully, I was able to take down his Agor AGAIN in the next round, even if he then took my Revealer down too!

• I now commanded a numerical advantage on the field as it was 4 units VS just his wounded Darius.

• It was all over for the opponent now as I eventually mopped up his entire army. 💀💀💀

Talk about doing WAY MORE than it was supposed to!!! 😱🤯🥳 All I expected was for the FEROCITY ruleset to give me a slight advantage. Individually, on their own, my units would face a huge disadvantage against an enemy which has higher levelled than me. However, thanks to being able to deal double the damage to his strongest unit, I was able to turn the tides of battle! The opponent simply could not handle all that at all.

Well as you can see here in this GIF of my battle, the results were pretty good! 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

This was truly an eye opener! 😁🏆

Slowly, but surely, I wore down the opponent's team and the match ended up with me inflicting a crushing defeat. My team selection proved to be the edge I needed to eventually overpower my opponent. 💪🏻

🔮🔮🔮Hindsight is 20/20🔮🔮🔮

Would I have done anything differently? 🤔 This might have seemed like a disadvantage at the start but I ended up winning handily. IF I had to use the same cards again, there would be no better lineup than what I had already used for the match. Any other combination MIGHT have resulted in a loss for me. I'm really satisfied with the results against such a worthy opponent. 🏆🥇

💭🧐💭Ending Thoughts💭🧐💭

---

I definitely can appreciate the ruleset FEROCITY and how it changes the dynamics of usual gameplay. This is one of those rulesets which can be turned into a huge advantage if surrounded with the proper team. The role it brings to the battlefield will give a player the edge in squeezing out every tiny advantage to get the win. 👍🏻

I hope this article has given you some insight into its potential. 😉

---

To any new players who wish to explore the world of Splinterlands, do feel free to sign up with my REFERRAL LINK 😊.

---

I am also a member of the SPLINTERLANDS PIZZA guild and the PIZZA community.

PIZZA is an active gaming and creative arts crypto community on the HIVE blockchain. Popular games on HIVE like SPLINTERLANDS, RISING STAR, EXODE, HASHKINGS, WOO, BANG!DEFENSE have their own PIZZA communities here.

Don't miss out more events that are always being organised. Join the PIZZA DISCORD. Even if you aren't interested in the 💰🍕🎁GIVEAWAYS & AIRDROPS💰🍕🎁, there is a vibrant and friendly community there awaiting you.

CLICK THIS LINK TO JOIN PIZZA DISCORD!!!