_{Thumbnail for the weekly challenge provided by @splinterlands}

Ahoy fellow Splinterlands players, welcome to my new Battle Mage Secrets post.

This week the featured ruleset is Briar Patch. When this ruleset is active all Monsters gain the Thorns ability. So with that ruleset active you usually have to be cautious on your use of Monsters with Melee attacks as they will take 2 damage back due to Thorns whenever they hit an opponent.
If your Melee Monster has the Shield ability that Thorns damage will be reduced to 1 as they take half of Physical damage.
There is also the Reflection Shield ability and that one completely negates damage from Thorns (also from Blast, Return Fire and Magic Reflect) so playing Melee attack Monsters with that ability wouldn't harm at all.

You can recognise the ruleset with this icon.

The battle I'm sharing with you this week is from this past brawl that is still going on at the time of writing. Two of my brawl battles had this ruleset so I decided I'll share one of those instead of the other battle link that I had already saved. Which was an interesting one where my opponent used one of the new Rebellion Summoner, but because the other battle went into fatigue it's a long one so I figured maybe I won't share it. I'll add that one's link as a bonus, maybe I'll write it in a separate post sometime too.
Anyway back to the Brawl battle that I'm sharing with you in this post. It was against the player zenlead from the guild Ygg Knights.

Here is a picture of our initial lineup.

Battle Rules

This was a battle with a 27 Mana Cap. Almost all the Elements were available, the only one that wasn't available to play was the Death Element. The battle had 2 rulesets which were:

• Equalizer: The initial Health of all Monsters is equal to that of the Monster on either team with the highest base Health.
• Briar Patch: All Monsters have the Thorns ability.

Here is a link to the battle if you want to check it out: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sm_keixiY1JIqixRvao2nGq&ref=athunderstruck

Battle Lineup

With this battle all our Monsters gain the same Health and all Monsters gain the Thorns ability. It's best not to play too many Monsters with Melee attack, but at the same time with the equal Health it is less of an impact if they all have high Health. Then you do kinda need to make sure that your Melee units can attack the same target though. For example a few Sneak attack Monsters that have a high combined damage output so they could try to quickly take out a target while only losing 2 health per unit.
I decided that playing Melee attack monsters wasn't that great of an idea and decided to go with a Magic and Ranged lineup that also lowers the Magic and Ranged damage from my opponent to just do so much Melee damage to kill me quick enough not to have to worry about Thorns too much.

Up front I have Djinn Oshannus, he is the one providing the Max Health for my team. Since we already saw the lineup of the battle we now also know he's the one setting the max Health of all Monsters as he had the highest base Health. He has high speed too and the Void and Phase abilities. Which makes him take half the damage from Magic and with Phase he also has a chance to dodge Magic attacks.

Then I have the Ice Pixie up next, it has the Flying ability so I wanted to place it here in case Djinn Oshannus dies then this one could at least maybe dodge a few Melee / Ranged hits thanks to that. Also I want to protect my next Monster a bit longer.

The Elven Mystic is the next one in my lineup for the Silence ability to reduce my opponents Magic attackers damage, which will pair well with Djinn Oshannus having the Void ability.

Then I have Naga Windmaster as my first Ranged attacker. It has the Headwinds ability so it reduces the Ranged attack from my opponents by 1.

Up next I have Crustacean King, very slow and just 1 Ranged attack but it has the Tank Heal ability so near the end of the round it can heal my tank for a bit to keep it alive longer.

Last but not least I have Doctor Blight in the back. He has camouflage so can't be targeted directly. Since he has Magic attack I could place him in front of the Crustacean King so they could both still attack should they get into the first position, but by placing him behind the Crustacean King he could live longer in that case to have more chances of landing Poison.

The Gold Foil Djinn Oshannus, Elven Mystic and Doctor Blight are cards that I rented for the Brawl.

Battle Analysis

Oooohh my opponent has a Gold Foil Tatiana Blayde 😮 That's a pretty solid lead with the Close Range and Dodge abilities. Especially if she can get some Bloodlust going. As you can see from the lineup picture earlier he Ranged attack is in red because it got reduced by my Naga Windmaster. My opponent has Tide Biter up next which has the Reflection Shield ability that I mentioned, very good to have Melee damage without worrying about Thorns.
Then they have Pelacor Bandit, a Melee Sneak attacker and the only one in their team so that isn't really the best due to Equal Health.
Then they brought 2 Magic attackers. The first is Musa Saline with the Scavenge ability and Shatter, that Shatter can be really annoying when it destroys your Armor completely. Also River Hellondale with the Resurrect ability to revive the first fallen Ally once and the Inspire ability to actually provide more Melee damage.
The Armor that they get from Kelya Frendul is useful to block that first damage from Thorns.

Round 1

Tatiana Blayde starts the battle by attacking my Djinn Oshannus for a total of 5 damage straight away (1 Ranged and 4 Melee), the Thorns damage she takes destroys her Armour.
Musa Saline goes next but does no damage because she has only 1 Magic attack which deals 0 damage on the Void ability.
Djinn Oshannus now attacks Tatiana Blayde for 3 damage.
Tide Biter attacks my Djinn Oshannus for 3 damage and doesn't take Thorns damage because of the Reflection Shield. My Djinn Oshannus is now down to 3 Health so almost dead already.
Pelacor Bandit destroys the Armor on my Crustacean King and also gets his own Armor destroyed from the Thorns.
River Hellondale tries to attack my Djinn Oshannus but also can't deal damage due to the 1 Magic attack vs Void ability.
Elven Mystic and Ice Pixie deal a combined 4 damage to Tatiana Blayde.
Naga Windmaster tries to attack Tatiana Blayde but the 3 Speed difference and Dodge ability on her made her avoid that hit.
Doctor Blight attacks her now and lands Affliction, which doesn't matter as my opponent doesn't have a healer.
Crustacean King heals Djinn Oshannus from 3 Health up to 6 Health and managed to hit Tatiana Blayde for 1 damage.

If Naga Windmaster didn't miss I could've taken Tatiana Blayde out in the first round. Of course she would still get resurrected. But yeah because of that miss she lived.

Here are our lineups after the first round.

Round 2

Tatiana Blayde goes first again, she still has 5 damage per turn so she brings my Djinn Oshannus down to 1 Health same as her own Health. She really is trying to keep the Health Equal it seems 😉 But then she takes the 2 Thorns damage! And she dies.
Of course the Resurrect ability still works for the 1st death of a unit on my opponents team so she does immediately come back to life. With 1 Health and all her Armour which in this case is only 1 Armour.
Musa Saline tries to kill Djinn Oshannus but can't hurt him.
Djinn Oshannus now kills Tatiana Blayde for good.
Immediately after that the Tide Biter is there to avenge Tatiana Blayde by killing my Djinn Oshannus.
Pelacor Bandit hits my Crustacean King for 3 damage and takes 2 damage from Thorns.
Now that I don't have a unit with Void anymore the River Hellondale is able to deal 1 damage to my Ice Pixie.
Elven Mystic and Ice Pixie deal 4 damage to Tide Biter's Health.
Naga Windmaster destroys the Tide Biter's Armour.
Doctor Blight hits Tide Biter's Health for 2 damage and lands the Poison ability.
Crustacean King heals Ice Pixie back to full Health. Tries to attack Tide Biter too but misses.

Here are our lineups after the 2nd round is over.

Round 3

This round starts with Tide Biter losing 2 Health from the Poison.
Musa Saline hits my Ice Pixie for 1 damage.
Tide Biter now hits Ice Pixie for 3 damage.
Pelacor Bandit hits my Crustacean King again for 3 damage while taking 2 Thorns damage.
River Hellondale hits Ice Pixie for 1 damage.
Now Elven Mystic hits Tide Biter for 2 damage.
Ice Pixie has really had it with all the damage she took this round and hits and kills the Tide Biter!!
Naga Windmaster misses against Pelacor Bandit.
Doctor Blight hits Pelacor Bandit for 2 magic damage, doesn't apply any abilities this round.
Crustacean King heals Ice Pixie back up to 9 Health. Tries to attack Pelacor Bandit too but misses.

Now that round 3 is over our teams look like this.

Round 4

Musa Saline is the one starting off the round now dealing 1 damage to my Ice Pixie.
Pelacor Bandit then deals 3 damage to my Ice Pixie and takes 2 Thorns damage.
River Hellondale now hits my Ice Pixie for 1 damage.
Elven Mystic hits Pelacor Bandit for 2 damage.
Ice Pixie is once again the one able to get the kill as she deals 2 damage and kills Pelacor Bandit.
Musa Saline is now in the first position for my opponent's team and has 16 Health. Which is 5 Health more than what all other units had because she has Scavenged 5 Health from the units that died.
Naga Windmaster misses Musa Saline.
Doctor Blight hits Musa Saline for 2 damage and lands Affliction.
Crustacean King heals Ice Pixie back up to 7 Health. Tries to attack Musa Saline but once again misses its attack.

With round 4 now over here is a picture of our teams.

Victory Secured

As you can see my opponent has 2 units left with 1 Magic attack each so that is 2 damage per turn. My Crustacean King heals for 3 health per turn. So at this point my opponent doesn't have enough damage to take out my team. As they have no ability to prevent my healing.

That means I will win the battle after a few more rounds. Not this round because I don't have enough damage per round. I will still need at least 2 rounds to take out the Musa Saline and then another 2 rounds for River Hellondale.
GG!

Was My Strategy Successful?

Sometimes you might wanna focus on lower health Monsters and hope your opponent brings a high Health Monster for the Equalizer ruleset. However it was great idea for me to set the Health for all Monsters by bringing Djinn Oshannus. It helped him to survive and making sure that Tatiana Blayde didn't get Bloodlust. Djinn Oshannus was also really useful to take no damage from my opponents 2 Magic attack Monsters.
Bringing the Elven Mystic for Silence to reduce my opponent's Magic damage and Naga Windmaster for Headwinds to reduce my opponent's Ranged damage was a solid choice too. Both of them only ended up affecting 1 Monster each, but that did help me to take a bit less damage.
Crustacean King was really solid as well for that Heal as it helped me survive long enough and eventually I was healing for more Health than my opponent could deal damage to me.

Conclusion

I didn't expect my opponent to have a Gold Foil Tatiana Blayde to bring into this battle! :O I also wasn't really expecting this kind of Melee damage with the ruleset. But that was a pretty awesome team for sure with the Tatiana Blayde and Tide Biter, boosting their damage with River Hellondale's Inspire ability. If I didn't set our Health so high with Djinn Oshannus then my frontline probably would've died pretty quickly and I might have had a lot of trouble to deal with that Tatiana Blayde if she got early Bloodlust.
Definitely a cool lineup from my opponent!
The Pelacor Bandit they brought didn't do too much though as it couldn't kill my Crustacean King. My opponent would've needed a 2nd Sneak Monster for that to work better. Then they could've taken out my Crustacean King for sure and that might have shifted the battle quite a bit if I ended up losing that Tank Heal.
Then again the Pelacor Bandit might have worked if I didn't set the Equal Health that high.

Overall a very good battle I'd say!

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

If you haven't signed up for Splinterlands yet and want to check it out, you can do so with my referral link at: https://splinterlands.com?ref=athunderstruck

ALSO like I mentioned early in the post, here is a bonus battle from a Bronze tournament a little while ago and in this battle Runemaner Kye 😍 goes to 34 Health! It's a long battle so you'd have to skip it to fatigue: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sm_fwhW0t966OLywxPJwKod&ref=athunderstruck