HELLO to all Splinterlands readers of my humble blog.👋🏻👋🏻👋🏻 Welcome to week 40 of the new iteration of the Splinterlands Weekly Challenges (at least, if I haven't miscounted so far, yet. 😜).

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, we explore a ruleset that is all about turning defence into attack. The icon looks exactly like the ability it confers on everyone. This is to say, THORNS, nature's rendition of barbed wire.

I present to you the ruleset — BRIAR PATCH 🛡️🌹🌵

The game's description of BRIAR PATCH is as follows: "All Monsters have the THORNS ability."

What is THORNS then? Simply put, whenever ANYONE is hit with a melee attack, the attacker takes damage in return. This makes it such that melee units are at a huge disadvantage. Every melee hit landed could backfire spectacularly instead. The most common approach of handling this is to simply field Ranged or Magic units.

I will take advantage of this ruleset in my battle showcase today to show how one of my units in particular becomes a lot stronger than one would expect with BRIAR PATCH. Introducing the Antoid Platoon.

An Antoid Platoon typically consists of five to seven Fire Ants, each approximately the size of a man's fist. They are well armored and wield shields and spears that, while tiny, provide a formidable defense and offense against the antoid's foes. Operating through a shared hive mind, the Antoid Platoon is employed to defend Ant Miners, other workers, the colony, and its queen. They are also known to become aggressive when invaders encroach upon their homes and surrounding territory.

🐜🛡️From Splinterlands Lore on ANTOID PLATOON🐜🛡️

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The Antoid Platoon is a Common card released during the Chaos Legion expansion. At LEVEL 1, it has 1 ⚔️ATTACK⚔️ and 1 🏃🏻SPEED🏃🏻, with 2 🛡️ARMOR🛡️ and 3 ❤️HEALTH❤️. It has the SHIELD ability. It's summoning cost is 4 🧪MANA🧪.

It might seem counter intuitive to be using a melee card, especially when I previously mentioned that when facing the BRIAR PATCH ruleset which grants THORNS to everyone, it is best to avoid melee altogether.

At first glance, the Antoid Platoon might seem like a terrible choice, with such low stats too! Coupled with it's melee disadvantage, one would be forgiven for thinking I had completely botched the entire game.

However, what is often overlooked is the Antoid Platoon's SHIELD ability. It reduces damage from ALL physical attacks, and that means the reflected damage from THORNS too!

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 BRIAR PATCH was in effect. My opponent used the Chaos Legion Summoner Obsidian from the EARTH splinter as his main pick, while I used the FIRE splinter with the Summoner Tarsa instead. 🌱 VS 🔥

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

• His level was straight up higher than mine significantly.

• With a level 4 Rare Summoner and the units at similar levels, he easily had a significant level advantage as compared to my level 3 Summoner.

• ALL his units were maxed out for their Summoner's level, while mine wasn't even at the maximum potential for my lower levelled summoner.

• He even fielded a magic unit which would be highly advantageous in a THORNS environment. 😭

• A setup like this would naturally disadvantage me as I picked almost a full physical dps team. 😭

I was honestly expecting this to be a really bad matchup for me 😜🤣. This was a stronger team whose levels gave him a huge advantage. Not only that, he also had a Magic unit in the mix in a ruleset that favoured it. 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 BRIAR PATCH 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! 🏆🏆🏆

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LINK TO MY FIGHT

👯‍♀️👯👯‍♂️LINEUP CHOICES👯‍♀️👯👯‍♂️

1st CARD SLOT

The Antoid Platoon is chosen for this slot. He plays the role of the Main tank perfectly with his SHIELD ability. This allows all other units to be kept safe until he is taken down.

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2nd CARD SLOT

The Serpentine Spy takes up the second slot. With his OPPORTUNITY ability, he is able to land his melee attacks even from this position. He will also take the place of the main tank as a backup tank too.

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3rd CARD SLOT

Orella Abadon occupies this slot. It's main role here be as an assassin DPS unit taking out the backline units with it's SNEAK ability. Not only that, with his BLOODLUST, every unit killed makes him stronger!

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4th CARD SLOT

The Scorch Fiend occupies the 4th slot here. It's role is to protect the backline. It's 0 casting cost also means it is basically a free unit that I can fit into the team.

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5th CARD SLOT

NIL

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6th CARD SLOT

NIL

⚔️🛡️Battle Action Report🛡️⚔️

As you can see, we picked opposing splinters and the both of us fielded very different units in our matchup. I went for an all physical DPS team (with an armoured main tank) as my focus in my summoner choice. My opponent went the opposite way with a magic unit being the main DPS of his team with his accompanying summoner choice reinforcing that too. 😱

🌱EARTH🌱 VS 🔥FIRE🔥

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My opponent used the Fungus Fiend as his tank in the 1st and slot which was a VERY good choice. With 0 casting cost, it is an ideal unit to draw more damage while protecting the team

The Ureas occupied his 2nd slot. With it's SNEAK ability and it's ARMOUR giving it more hits to withstand THORNS, this is another good choice.

In his 3rd slot was the Venari Scout. With it's OPPORTUNITY ability, it can easily take out any weak units.

This was followed by the Djinn Biljka in his last slot. It deals Magic damage which is absolutely devastating in this ruleset conditions. Not only that, it cannot be targeted thanks to the CAMOUFLAGE ability.

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

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The battle started out with all our units just duking it out pound for pound. It was a very low mana game with 13 mana as the limit. The rulesets were BRIAR PATCH.

• The first round saw both our sides launch a flurry of attacks. With such a low mana ruleset and the THORNS ability, there were lots of casualties as expected.

• Both sides had our very low cost melee units slam into each other with THORNS making quick work of everyone.

• My Serpentine Spy fell in this round while the opponent lost his Fungus Fiend and Venari Scout.

• Djinn Biljka was worryingly untouched and able to deal damage past all my armour and SHIELD abilities though.

• Round 2 was the gamechanger. Thanks to BRAIR PATCH's THORNS, my Antoid Platoon was able to take the hit from his Ureas as it more or less killed itself.

• The game was wildly in my favour by now as the opponent had taken far too much battle losses to be able to launch any response against me. 😈

• This left his Djinn Biljka completely unprotected as my Antoid Platoon fittingly went in for the killing blow in 1 hit! 🎉

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

Talk about doing WAY MORE than it was supposed to!!! 😱🤯🥳 All I expected was for the BRIAR PATCH ruleset to possibly give my team a slight advantage. However it ended up being the entire reason for my win! The opponent was simply unable to cope with the SHIELD ability that my Antoid Platoon had which resulted in it taking far less damage than expected against THORNS. 🤣

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💭🧐💭

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I definitely can appreciate the ruleset BRIAR PATCH 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. 😉

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