In the spirit of the weekly Battle Mage Secrets challenges, I would like to take a look at a Splinterlands battle with a particular focus on a ruleset. If you enjoy fisticuffs then this might be a good ruleset for you - in these battles, monsters with melee attacks can attack from any position. As it happens, our battle for today is a high stakes Brawl battle - shiny gold foil cards, and some valuable points in the standings at stake. Today, we will be looking at a battle with the Melee Mayhem ruleset!
Before we get into the battle, a few words about our spotlighted ruleset for this battle. As mentioned earlier, Melee Mayhem allows melee monsters to attack regardless of their position in the lineup. As you may expect, this is a huge boon for melee monsters - their biggest drawback is that under normal conditions they can only attack from the front position. In these fights, you can even place them all the way at the back of your team and still benefit from their attacks. Couple that with the fact that melee monsters tend to have more stats for their cost relative to ranged or magic attackers, and you have the perfect recipe for a lineup heavy on melee monsters.
If you wanted to jump right to the action, the Battle Link is right here. Want to hear some more about the lineup? Read on further!
First up: the ruleset. This is a relatively simple ruleset: of course, we have Melee Mayhem, which means that monsters with melee attacks can attack from any position. And that's it, just a single ruleset. To go along with it, we have 15 mana to work with and 4 different splinters to choose from.
Whenever I see Melee Mayhem in the rules, I tend to think that melee monsters are much more likely to be used on both sides. Mylor Crowling is a perfect anti-melee summoner. He grants all of your monsters the Thorns ability, which ensures that enemy monsters will be receiving some counter damage any time they land a hit. To top that off, Mylor is a 3 cost summoner, which gives us an extra point of mana to spend on our monsters relative to the Chaos Legion rare summoners.
I came into monster selection with a general strategy already in mind - I wanted a healer in the back, and a tanky monster in the front. With my available card selection, this meant that after factoring in my summoner and healer (which we'll get to in a second!) I had 7 mana to spend on the beefiest tank I could find. I decided to go with Pelacor Mercenary as my main tank. Pelacor Mercanary costs exactly 7, hits hard, has plenty of health, and even has a bit of evasion with the Flying ability. My strategy for the battle was to back up Pelacor Mercenary with some healing, and hope that the combination of Thorns damage and my monster attacks would be enough to overpower the opposing team.
As I just mentioned, I wanted to use a healer in the back in order to support Pelacor Mercenary. Goblin Psychic is a great choice in this position, combining Tank Heal with a very respectable 2 magic damage. The magic damage is particularly valuable in this battle, since my opponent could potentially be caught off guard by a magic attacker in a Melee Mayhem battle.
With the lineup set, it's off into battle! When I see the selected teams I am hopeful - my opponent has selected a lineup with a heavy hitter in Living Lava as well as a solid ranged attacker with Fire Elemental, but Mylor Crowling's Thorns plus Goblin Psychic's magic attacks should do some heavy damage even through Living Lava's Shield. It might be a close one, but I feel pretty good about my chances.
In the first round of battle the enemy Scorch Fiend instantly kills itself thanks to Thorns damage, and my Pelacor Mercenary gets lucky and makes Living Lava miss. Fire Elemental's Blast damage hurting my Goblin Psychic is slightly concerning, but it is looking as though I might be able to outrace it.
One more round and the battle is nearly won - at this point Living Lava is down to a single point of health. Once it falls, the opposing Fire Elemental should be unable to attack since it will be stuck in the first position.
By the start of round 4 the battle was all but over. With Living Lava out of the way, that Fire Elemental was a sitting duck for my Pelacor Mercenary. And again, if you wanted to see the whole battle for yourself, you can see it right here.
My strategy for this battle worked out perfectly. Mylor Crowling's powerful anti-melee ability was more than the opposing monsters could handle. Pelacor Mercenary, backed up by Goblin Psychic and Tank Heal, was able to hold up to the enemy damage output and sweep through their lineup for a relatively simple victory. This fight showed off just how powerful Mylor Crowling is in battles where mana is low and when melee attackers play a prominent role - Mylor is one of the few cards that I am sure to always have a rental copy of, and this battle shows why!
Thank you so much for reading all the way to the end. Interested in seeing some more of my writing in the future? Be sure to give me a follow! In the meantime, if you'd like to see some of my recent posts:
Pushing it to the Limit- Battling with Melee Mayhem! - A Splinterlands battle analysis, featuring Melee Mayhem!
Splinterlands Economics: Causation - A look at causation, and how we can apply it to Splinterlands!
Splinterlands Economics: Ceteris Paribus - An introduction to the concept of Ceteris Paribus, and how we can apply it to Splinterlands!
Thinking about giving Splinterlands a try but haven't signed up yet? Feel free to use my referral link: https://splinterlands.com?ref=bteim, and be sure to reach out to me if you have any questions!
All images used in this article are open source and obtained from Pixabay or Unsplash. Thumbnails borrowed with permission from the Splinterlands team or made in Canva.