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Ahoy fellow Splinterlands players, welcome to another one of my weekly Battle Mage Secrets posts!

This week the featured ruleset is the Earthquake ruleset. When this ruleset is active all Monsters that DON'T have the Flying ability will take 2 damage at the end of each round. This is physical damage so it hurts Armor first.

You can recognise this ruleset with the following icon.

With this ruleset active it's of course always great to have Monsters with the Flying-ability so that they don't take this damage at the end of the round. It's not necessary though, because some strong Monsters with high Health and/or Armor can survive several rounds of Earthquake damage before dying where they could output a lot of damage. The damage from Earthquake is physical so it hits Armor before hitting the Health. That's why Monsters with Armor can be solid picks in this ruleset too, or Monsters with the Protect ability that provide Armor.

One really great Summoner in this ruleset is Brighton Bloom who gives the Flying-ability to all Monsters on the team. A counter Summoner against this can be Vera Salacia who gives the Snare ability to all Monsters. This gives them guaranteed hits against Flying-Monsters and take away that Flying ability so they'd take Earthquake damage. Using Vera for that does seem situational. Some Monsters with the Snare ability in the team could work though.

The battle that I want to share in this week's post is one from Ranked battle in the Modern format.

Here is a picture of the initial lineup.

Battle Rules

This was a battle with a 54 Mana Cap where the Fire, Earth, Life, Death and Dragon elements were available. This battle had 3 rulesets:

• Even Stevens: Only Monsters with even Mana costs may be used in battles.
• Earthquake: Non-flying Monsters take 2 Melee damage at the end of each round.
• Keep Your Distance: Monsters with Melee attack may not be used in battles.

Here is a link to the battle if you want to check it out: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_bb8dbc19519eada15cf083b4da83ad6c&ref=athunderstruck

Battle Lineup

One of the additional rulesets in this battle was Even Stevens so only Monsters with even Mana costs can be used. That already limits the choices quite a lot. The Dragon element does have a lot of Monsters with the Flying-ability so with that being available I decided to go with the Dragon element and using Byzantine Kitty as my Summoner. This allows me to bring Dragon Monsters, the additional Speed can help me attack first and the Heal could help with sustain.

In the front of my lineup I used is Will-O-Wisp, a high Health Monster with the Flying-ability and also the Weaken ability to reduce my opponents Monsters health by 1. Due to the high health I placed it in the front as a tank, especially because it can't attack I wanted it as a tank.

My second Monster is the Cornealus, this one doesn't have the Flying-ability but it still has quite high health and the Healing ability. This Healing ability allows it to recover that Earthquake damage every turn. I placed it 2nd so that it could use its Ranged attack until the Will-O-Wisp dies and then when Corneaulus gets in the front position it can use its Heal ability to heal itself and also get healed by Byzantine Kitty for sustain.

Up next I have some Magic attack Monsters. First I have Usut, he has pretty high Health and some Armor, the Flying ability and Bloodlust to become stronger if he kills something. After that I have the Chaos Dragon, he has the Flying ability too and then Scattershot with Blast. So he's an RNG pick with his attacks but they could help weaken the backline. Both of them have quite high Health and some Armor so they'd both still be solid tanks if they have to be that could be sustained longer with Kitty's Tank Heal.

Then I used Ravenhood Warden, a low health Ranged attacking Monster. No Flying on this one, but it has the Protect ability to give Armor to every Monster on my Team allowing them to take some damage or use that to take the first Earthquake hit.

My last Monster I picked is the Halfling Alchemist. It already has 1 Armor so combined with the 2 Armor from Ravenhood Warden it can survive 2 rounds of Earthquake if my opponent doesn't attack it with Sneak or Opportunity. Its Halving ability might be useful too to lower the attack on my opponents frontline if they bring one with attack.

Battle Analysis

My opponent chose to play Thaddius Brood, which is one of the Summoners that I did somewhat expect especially as I also used three Death element Monsters myself. This is a bit sad for my Usut and Chaos Dragon as they're both losing 1 to their Magic damage.

Both of us have the Will-O-Wisp in our frontline. All 3 of the Death Monsters that I picked can also be seen on my opponents' team. They placed their Ravenhood Warden a bit earlier in their lineup and their Usut all the way in the back.

In Round 1 my Chaos Dragon hits my opponents Venari Spellsmith and it blasts to the Riftwing and Ravenhood Warden. The Venari Spellsmith and Ravenhood Warden are both left at 1 Health. If it I didn't lose that 1 Magic damage because of Thaddius Brood then it would've been a double kill. But now they were both still at 1 Health.

The rest of my team attacks Will-O-Wisp and my opponents team attacks my Will-O-Wisp. After the first round my Will-O-Wisp is at 5 Health and my opponents at 4 Health since theirs was lower level. Bytanzinte Kitty heals mine up to 8 Health.

In Round 2 my Chaos Dragon hits the Ravenhood Warden and so with the Blast it takes out the Ravenhood Warden and Venari Spellsmith and damaging the Venari Bonesmith. The rest of my attacks go against Will-O-Wisp and my Ravenhood Warden deals the killing blow. This causes Usut to attack the Riftwing. My Ravenhood Warden dies to Earthquake at the end of the round. Which makes the battle look like this right at the end of Round 2. The battle says Round 3 already because even though Earthquake happens at the end of the round its effects are counted for Round 3 it seems.

Round 3 is just mostly damaging the Riftwing now. The Venari Bonesmith and my Halfling Alchemist die to Earthquake which causes Riftwing to get more Health from Scaenge. My opponent only has Usut left to damage me now and it deals just 2 damage to my Will-O-Wisp that gets healed for 3 per turn by Kitty.

During Round 4 my Usut managed to attack Riftwing when it's at 1 health so Usut gets to get his Bloodlust off this battle!

As you can see the opponents Usut already took damage now thanks to the Scattershot and Blast from Chaos Dragon. Meanwhile my Will-O-Wisp is back at full health.

So yeah at this point the battle is a clear victory for me as their Usut is the only one left to damage me and it deals less damage than the heal on my Will-O-Wisp.

Was My Strategy Successful?

Yeah it was a great strategy for sure! The Byzantine Kitty providing Heal to my Will-O-Wisp really helped it survive while my opponent had many Monsters attacking it. The only Monsters on my team that died were Ravenhood Warden and Halfling Alchemist because they didn't have Earthquake.

I was kinda thinking my opponent might play Thaddius Brood and that would affect my Usut and Chaos Dragon's damage outputs. But with the sustain and high health front lines it was no problem if their damage got affected. It would just take longer to defeat my opponent.

My opponent had their Venari Bonesmith that has the Poison ability, which didn't trigger. However even if it triggered that wouldn't have made a huge difference, I would have still won.

Conclusion

I had a great team setup so my lineup choices were really solid. I didn't even lose the front line at all. So that was a strong victory. In this lineup I wouldn't have wanted to play anything differently.

I think my opponent might have been able to take out my Will-O-Wisp if RNG went differently, but then that would've just been my Will-O-Wisp and the Cornealus would still survive until the end.

If my opponents Venari Bonesmith landed Poison on Round 1 then my Will-O-Wisp would have dropped down to 3 health and be healed to 6. Then IF my Chaos Dragon with Scattershot didn't kill Ravenhood Warden and Venari Spellsmith in Round 2 my opponents total damage output + the Poison might have killed Will-O-Wisp in Round 2. But then they'd lose some of their Monsters to Earthquake afterwards and still wouldn't have enough damage output against Cornealus. So it was always a win for me.

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

I also still have a giveaway for a seasonal delegation of a level 5 Vruz with Martyr ability which you can find in my post where I opened my Season Chests.