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Ahoy fellow Splinterlands players. Welcome to another one of my weekly Battle Mage Secrets posts.

The featured ruleset for this week is the Equalizer ruleset. With this ruleset active all Monsters' Health will be equal to that of the Monster with the highest Health on either team.

You can recognise this ruleset with the following icon.

When this ruleset it's active your Monsters with low Health that can be really vulnerable won't have that much to worry about and could deal lots of damage without dying quickly. Of course this depends on whether or not either team brings any Monsters with high Health though. If you both play Monsters with low Health thinking the opponent will play well then you'll both end up with low Health so they could still be squishy. You also have to be mindful about high Health and making sure that you have some damage output to deal with that. For healing it's of course great with high Health because the higher the Health the more healing Monsters receive.

The battle that I want to share with you in this post is from a recent tournament I played it. It was the "Gauntlet Wild Bronze GF Invitational" tournament where I played against tj70903.

Here's a picture of our initial lineup.

I don't own all of these cards, the legendaries are rented so I could play them in Brawls and Tournaments like this battle.

Battle Rules

This was a battle with a 24 Mana Cap where the Fire, Water, Earth and Death elements were available. The battle had 3 rulesets:

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

Here is a link to the battle if you want to check it out: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sm_ikAYf8tutAy9gUTc5iq6&ref=athunderstruck

Battle Lineup

There is the Briar Patch ruleset that doesn't really make it great to use Monsters with Melee attack. As this is a battle in a Bronze Tournament there are also almost no Melee Monsters with Reflection Shield available. Then there is also a low Mana cap. So I choose to play the Furious Chicken in the front line. At Bronze it doesn't have its Melee attack yet and with the Equalizer ruleset it can be a nice tank.

Because of the Briar Patch where all Monsters gain Thorns I want to focus on Magic and Ranged attacks. That's why I'm choosing Alric as my Summoner to provide a boost to Magic damage and also be able to bring Naga Windmaster to reduce Ranged attack.

My 2nd Monster in the lineup is Djinn Oshannus, with high Health he'll provide my whole team with higher Health thanks to the Equalizer ruleset. He will have 3 Magic attack thanks to Alric and his Void ability can also help him take less Magic damage from my opponents.

The 3rd Monster is Spirit Hoarder. I have it in the 3rd position because then with its Magic attack it can still attack if Djinn Oshannus happens to die. It has Triage so it could also still heal my backline then.

Up next I have the Naga Windmaster, a really important card for my lineup to help reduce the potential Ranged attack on my opponent's team thanks to the Headwinds ability. Because I provide lots of Health due to Djinn Oshannus' Health I also have to make sure that my opponents Ranged attackers wouldn't cause too much trouble.

Then I have the Crustacean King in my team, it has the Tank heal ability so it can help my frontline to stay alive longer, while also helping to deal a bit of damage per turn.

Last but not least I have the Grenadier. It has the Oppress ability where it deals double damage to Monsters with no attack. So if my opponent for example brings a Furious Chicken in the front as well it'll be great for my damage. It might be a bit vulnerable as the last card in my backline with no protection like Armour or anything. But because of Thorns on every unit I'm not really expecting Melee attackers with Sneak.

Battle Analysis

Well my opponent did seem to expect me to play a lot of Magic attackers here. Because they used Immortalis as their Summoner giving the Void ability to all of their Monsters causing my Magic attackers to deal less damage. The -1 Health from Immortalis and from their Swamp Thing's Weaken ability is causing some trouble for me right of the bat. As you can see in the lineup my opponent's Monsters are at 10 Health, while mine are at 8. This is a problem for my Healing ability because at 8 Health they only get healed for 2 each time compared to at 9 Health it would be 3 per heal.

On top of the Immortalis they used Failed Summoner up front with Magic Reflect. Now I did only bring 2 Magic Attackers so it's not the worst. Let's see how it goes.

In Round 1 my Djinn Oshannus takes the Divine Shield away from Failed Summoner, but also from himself due to the Magic Reflect. The rest of team damages Failed Summoner and thanks to the Oppress on my Grenadier its health really drops well. My Furios Chicken is still a full health in Round 1 because his Beatrix Ironhand took away the Divine Shield and then the Wood Nymph and Swamp Thing did 2 damage which got healed back up by my Crustacean King.

In Round 2 my Djinn Oshannus takes that Magic Reflect damage, a lot of my Monsters attack the Failed Summoner and my Grenadier deals the final blow.

During round 3 not a single Monster dies. My Furious chicken takes some damage and goes quite low but is still alive. Grenadier can once again deal double damage because my opponent's Creeping Ooze also has no attack.

Now it's round 4 and during this round it is once again my Grenadier taking out the opponents Monster as it kills the Creeping Ooze. My opponent now also kills a Monster on my team as their Swamp Thing deals the final blow to my Furious Chicken.

In Round 5 the Beatrix actually ends up missing against my Djinn Oshannus which helps a bit because now that's 2 damage I won't have to worry about getting hurt by this turn. My Djinn Oshannus can take only 3 damage per turn now, 2 from Beatrix and 1 from Swamp Thing. Wood Nymph deals no damage because it has 1 Magic attack and Djinn Oshannus has Void. Still that's 3 damage per turn against him and he only gets healed for 2.

At the start of round 6 the battlefield looks like this.

That Goblin Sorcerer keeps hitting my Grenadier for 1 damage per turn because it has the Sneak ability. But my Spirit Hoarder is always healing that health back up.

Beatrix survives this round because it gets healed in between my damage and there is no double damage from my Grenadier anymore. Also my Naga Windmaster and Crustacean King ended up missing against it 😅 Oh well that means in round 7 the Beatrix goes down, at the hands of my Naga Windmaster. Naga Windmaster has been reducing the Ranged damage from Beatrix and now also deals the final hit against her which is quite funny!

As you can see in the image above my opponent now only has 1 damage left per turn against my Djinn Oshannus as Wood Nymph can't deal any damage. They also have 1 damage left against my Grenadier. But both of those get healed thanks to Tank Heal and Triage. So at this point my team has basically become immortal against the Immortalis lineup. Guess the tables have turned!

From here on out it's a road to victory, it'll be a bit slow because Wood Nymph heals itself for 3 per turn but once she's down the fight will be over soon.

Was My Strategy Successful?

Yeah it was a great strategy! Using Furious Chicken as a tank followed by Djinn Oshannus with the Void ability and the Naga Windmaster to reduce the enemy Ranged attack was a great combo. Bringing Crustacean King for the Tank Heal and the Spirit Hoarder for backline heal with Triage were some great choices. Grenadier helped a lot early on with its double damage against the Monsters with no attack.

I was a bit worried because my health got dropped to 8 and so I would only heal for 2 damage per turn instead of 3 but it still ended up working out really well!

Conclusion

I've had a really great lineup choice with my frontline and damage reduction for Ranged. Even if the Headwinds only lowered 1 of my opponents Ranged attack Monsters that still helped a lot especially because my healing was reduced.

My opponent also made a great lineup. They predicted quite well that I was going to bring some Magic attackers so the Void Ability provided by Immortalis was a solid pick! That double health reduction from Immortalis and Swamp Thing really had me worried! So well played for sure.

In the end my choices for bringing a few Ranged attackers alongside the Magic attackers and having that Heal really ended up working great!

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. The old one is now over as the Season has ended, but a new one will be up later when I do my End of Season video.