My BATTLE MAGE SECRET Weekly Challenge! Fire & Regret

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Hello there, this is my entry to the latest "Battle Mage Secret Weekly Challenge!". If you want to participate or learn more about the challenge, click here. This week we have to formulate a strategy with the Fire & Regret ruleset.

RULESET: Fire & Regret

With the Return Fire ruleset, all units receive the 'Return Fire' ability at the start of the battle. Enemy units that attack with ranged attacks receive damage back. The damage dealt back is 50% rounded up.

Return Fire ability is quite easy to understand but has a few quirks. As we already saw it gives damage back to the attacker when the attack was done by a ranged attacker and that attack is the damage of the attacker divided by 2 and round up.

However, if we like, we can still protect ourselves by using the units with the 'Reflection Shield' ability which won't take damage from that returned damage.

Also, the Amplify ability increases the returned damage so it is good to use at least one unit with an 'amplify' unit.

Let's see how this ruleset affects my lineup and how I strategies for the following battle. But first, let's focus on my lineup.

My Lineup

This is my lineup for the battle

Position	Summoner/Monsters
Summoner	Owster Rotwell
Position 1	Chain Golem
Position 2	Sand Worm
Position 3	Magi Necrosi
Position 4	Djinn Muirat
Position 5	Battering Ram
Position 6	Corpse Fiend

It was a 37-mana cap battle and had two rulesets:

• Return Fire - All monsters have the Return Fire ability.

• Aimless - All monsters have the Scattershot ability.

Fire, Earth and Death elements were active during this battle. I wanted to use a lot of mages so I went with Death elements. I could have gone with Earth too but I preferred Death because of the units that I had.

I chose the Owster Rotwell as it gave the 'Magic Reflect' ability to all the friendly monsters.

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Chain Golem was my tank for this battle. It justifies this cost with its impressive stats. Its 'void' and 'shield' abilities are quite helpful and make it last much longer. It helps him to stay alive longer even against mages which I was expecting during this battle. It had impressive attacking strength as well.

Sand Worm came in the next position. A very powerful attacker who deals whooping 6 melee attack damage with good speed. It also had the 'sneak' ability which surprises the opponent's lineup and sometimes gets weaker units from the enemy back line.

In the third position was a very powerful mage, Magi of Necrose. It dealt 3 magic damage and came with decent speed and other stats. It only costs 6 mana and comes with two useful abilities called 'snipe' and 'camouflage'.

Djinn Muirat came in the next position. Although it would have been a great fit as a primary or secondary tank in a normal flow of battle. But since one of the rulesets was scattershot it didn't matter if I placed it in the second or fourth position. It has impressive stats and abilities—one of the most powerful units in my lineup.

The next one was a low-cost unit called Battering Ram. It only costs 2 mana but came with great speed and an 'Opportunity' ability, which helps add the surprise factor to my attack. However, it just had 2 health only.

Last but not least was Corpse Fiend. It is a zero mana cost unit so you can't expect much from this one. It still came with 3 speeds and 1 health. I placed it in the last position as the battle had scattershot and someone might hit it instead of my more valuable units, making it a good sacrificial unit.

Now that my lineup is set let's talk about my strategy for this game.

I will share my battle here, which I have uploaded to YouTube.

My Strategy

This was a 37 mana cap battle and I had to utilise every drop of it very effectively. Because of the 'Fire & Regret' ruleset, there was a great chance that my opponent would not be using the ranged attackers. And I used the Owster Rotwell which gave the 'magic reflect' ablitty so now their magic attackers will get punished too. This only left their melee attackers without any penalty.

Now that both magic and ranged attackers should punish my opponent I made my lineup by using a strong tank at the front in the form of Chain Golem. I used a couple of heavy magic attackers as well. My focus wasn't much on the placements of my units but the first unit was placed for the reason that it would be a good tank.

Well, I kind of left the back line a bit weak but you can't do everything with 37 mana I guess. My trust was mostly in the attacking power of my lineup.

My opponent went with a heavy magic attack strategy which I had prepared well against so I was quite happy to see that lineup from them. However, I had relatively low average health in my units.

The first round was busy and I saw the demise of a couple of units. My units had little success and eliminated only the Goblin Psychic from the enemy camp. But the damage from the magic reflect lowered the health of a couple of units.

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My first unit played a crucial role and tanked the backline well. One of the MVPs of my lineup was Djinn Muirat who performed very well in this lineup. It looked close at one point in time but my return damage on both ranged and magic attackers closed the deal for me. In the end, it wasn't as bad as I thought and it was a comfortable win at the end.

Conclusion

Fire & Regret restricts players to not using ranged attackers and if we can restrict at least one more type of attack and make it disadvantageous for us, then we would have good chances to win. You can see in the above battle, that it is not recommended to use ranged attackers but if the attacker gives a huge buff to all the friendly units then it could be useful. But it will be always risky if you don't have the 'protective shield' ability to protect your ranged attacker from the return damage.

Going back to the fundamentals is always preferred. I try to go back to the simpler strategy of using a strong tank at the front, supporting it with extra armour or heal and maybe giving extra buffs to the entire team. Having a sturdy front and back line is vital too, especially against melee and ranged attackers. Sometimes getting back to the basics is better. And this ruleset is one of those. Let me know how you deal with the Fire & Regret Ruleset.

Thanks for reading...

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