Welcome back to my blog, @queen-silvia. In this week, The current theme for BATTLE MAGE SECRETS Weekly Challenge is Counterspell 
. It's one of the new ruleset introduced by Splinterlands team along with the Briar Patch 
& Fire and Regret 
as all of those ruleset are returning the specific damage back to the attacker. Briar Patch has the same effect as Thorn which giving -2 damage when melee monsters 👊 attack their target, Fire and Regret is returning any ranged 🎯 attack back to the attacker while Counterspell has the same concept as Fire and Regret, It's returning magic 🔮 attack back to magic monsters. The damage returned is proportional to the attack and it can even higher with the help of amplify 
. Alright, before we are talking more about Counterspell , let's discuss about the basic concept of this ability first :
Fundamental Concept of Counterspell
Counterspell : All monsters receive the Magic Reflect ability at the start of the battle. Enemy monsters that attack with magic receive damage back.
Alright, so all monsters are able to reflect the magic 🔮 damage back to the attacker. If we are thinking simple logic, all magic monsters should not be used right? since the damage will be reflected 🛡 back, so there are 2 kind of attacks left to be anticipated, the first one is melee 👊 damage and the second one is ranged 🎯 damage.
The decision to counter melee or ranged attack is depend on the ruleset a lot. Here is an example, if we have Counterspell combined with Fog of War ⚔️ where all melee monsters could not attack 🗡 unless they are in the first position then we have to anticipate ranged 🎯 attack, the same way if we have counterspell along with Broken Arrow ruleset for example, than we have to anticipate melee attack from the opponent.
Here are summoners that can be used to counter melee and ranged attack :
| Summoners to counter melee attack | Summoners to counter ranged attack |
|---|---|
| Mylor Crowling | Lir Deepswimmer |
| Zintar Mortalis | Ilthain |
| Camila Sungazer | Contessa L'ament |
| Crypt Mancer | Quix The Devious |
| Mimmosa Nightshade | |
| The Peakrider |
Based on my experience playing at ranked battle and tournament, The most used summoner to counter melee attack is Mylor Crowling because we can increase the Thorn effect using amplify ability while other summoners are just reducing the melee 👊 damage. Meanwhile the most used summoners to counter ranged attack is between Lir Deepswimmer 💦 and Ilthain 🏵. The choice is depend on the mana, If the mana is high, good players tend to use Lir Deepswimmer 💦 and if the mana is low, people like to use Ilthain 🏵 because of their mana cost.
Well, In this article we'll discuss about how to build up strong 💪 team to counter the enemy attack using Ilthain effectively in a Gold League ranked battle ⚔️. All of the battle aspects within the game 🎮 like Mana, Rulesets, Team line up and battle strategies will be explained in the next subtopics. I hope it can be useful for the community 👨👩👧👦. Let's start the discussion with Rulesets and mana first.
Rulesets
There are 3 rulesets in this battle, Here they are :
 | |  |
|---|---|---|
Well, there are 2 dominant ruleset in the battle. The first one is Fog of War 
and the second one is Counterspell . Fog of war eliminates the possibility of the opponent to use melee 👊 monsters since sneak and opportunity are disabled in this ruleset. Long time ago, when Fog of War was being introduced, opportunity 
was still active but several weeks later the Splinterlands team disable it and it completely makes the ruleset removed melee 👊 attack unless at the first position, That means we can remove melee attack at this point.
Second ruleset is Counterspell . Well As we have discussed earlier. this ruleset eliminate the possibility of the opponent to use magic 🔮 monsters because if they use magic, the attack will be reflected back and they could die with their own attack. We have removed melee 👊 and now we are removing magic 🔮 monsters, that means the most possible monsters to be used in the battle ⚔️ will be ranged attack only. This kind of logic is really useful to help us arranging the best team to counter the enemy attack 🗡.
The last ruleset is Close Range 
. It give us guidance that all of ranged 🎯 monsters could attack in the first position. the ruleset increase the possibility for ranged monsters and summoners related to ranged attack to come out into the battle. Alright as the conclusion, ranged attack 🎯 has the highest possibility to be used in the battle, that's why Ilthain is the summoner I used in this battle.
Mana and Splinters
The mana for the battle is rather high (45), good enough to build strong 💪 team with various monsters. What makes the battle interesting is that there are only 2 splinters available, it makes us easier to predict 👀 what kind of summoner that the opponent would like to use for the battle. I played Gold league at Modern format so the most possible summoner to use is either Ilthain or Immortalis. Why Immortalis? since he gives void ability to all friendly monsters to reduce the damage taken by reflected magic 🔮. Grandmaster Rathe is also protecting 🛡 the friendly monster from reflected magic but it's temporarily since only +1 void armor given.
If the opponent like total-attack ⚔️ strategy, General Sloan might be chosen since the additional damage +1 for ranged 🎯 attack is good enough to kill the enemy faster. Mylor Crowling 🍃 will not likely to be chosen since Fog of War eliminate the possibility for melee monsters 👊 to be used. Fernheart is also pointless since the ruleset is already giving ranged monsters capability to attack from the first place. As the conclusion, I think Ilthain is the best summoner to be used in this ruleset because she is the only summoner who can counter ranged 🎯 attack at modern format.
Summoner
Level 5 Ilthain
to all of friendly monsters. Based on the fact that Fog of war is eliminating melee monsters and Counterspell is bad for magic monsters then Ilthain will be the best summoner for the battle. Another advantage of using Ilthain is the additional +1 speed ⚡️ which is increasing the chance to hit the target (unless the ruleset is reverse speed). Tips 💡
Ilthain and Lir Deepswimmer are great summoner to counter ranged attack.
First Monster
Level 5 Shieldbearer
ability to reduce all of the physical attack like melee and ranged attack. Based on our analysis in previous section, ranged 🎯 monsters is the most likely monsters to be used so the best move is to use monster with shield ability. At level 5, he already has 5 armor and 10 health points so I think this is the best deal since level 6 is very costly 💸 to rent at market. Attributes
"Tips 💡 : Always use tank monster with shield ability to hold melee and ranged attack"
Second Monster
Level 6 Corsair Bosun
Attributes
"Tips 💡 : At Gold league, cleanse is very important because there are many negative effect given to the tank monster"
Third Monster
Level 5 Evangelist
to remove flying ability from the target monster and inspire ability to give additional melee 👊 damage to friendly monsters. Attributes
"Tips 💡 : In the battle where magic monsters is unlikely to be used, ranged attack monster with high HP is the best choice"
Forth Monster
Level 7 Venari Crystalsmith
ability to restore +3 Shildbearer health points in each round. I am not worried about affliction 👺 since Corsair Bosun has the cleanse ability to remove it. The second cool ability is dispel as it's removing ❌ all positive effect from the target opponent like divine shield, inspire, strengthen, etc. This ability is getting stronger 💪 after the Splinterlands team giving buffs to clear martyr and bloodlust. Attributes
"Tips 💡 : Cleanse and tank heal can keep tank monster's health point restored in each round"
Fifth Monster
Level 8 Lone Boatman
and snipe 🎯 ability. The repair ability will restore tank monster's armor in each round and it can not be negated, even after the tank monster is getting "rust" effect, the tank monster's armor 🛡 is still able to be restored. His second ability is snipe, this ability allow Lone Boatman to attack either non-attacker, magic or ranged monster at the backline, so this is an unexpected attack ⚔️ which could destroy the opponent's backline. Attributes
"Tips 💡 : Lone Boatman is a meta life monster with his repair and snipe abilities"
Sixth Monster
Level 3 Dr. Blight
, Dr. Blight will keep strong as I do believe any monsters die in the battlefield will increase his health ♥️ points by +1 due to his scavenger 🦅 ability. He always being a good choice in almost all rulesets due to his awesome abilities : affliction, camouflage, poison 💀 and scavenger at gold level. When all of the friendly monsters died in the battlefield, he could take the role as the last hope because generally his health point is very high with the help of scavenger 🦅 ability. Attributes
"Tips 💡 : Although the ruleset is counterspell, Dr. Blight will still have enough health point as any monsters died will increase his health point by +1 due to his scavenger ability"
Alright, all the line up has been explained, Now let's move to the battlefield and see how to build strong counter using Ilthain at Counterspell ruleset.
Here is the battle looks like in the first round :
The opponent used many magic 🔮 monsters and Immortalis as the summoner because the reflected magic would not give any damage when all monsters have void 
ability. Unfortunately, they are using level 2 Immortalis so the respective monsters are also at silver league. It gives me more advantage in the battle ⚔️ as gold level monsters will always stronger than silver level monsters because they are definitely having higher stats (attack, speed, armor and health points), higher level monsters are also have more abilities. As we can see in the battle 🗡, both players used monster with shield ability to deal with the physical attack.
Close range ruleset is a game changer
This is how the end of battle looks like. Both players have gotten so much damage 😵, me too as I didn't expect the oppoennt will use lots of magic 🔮 monsters. My Shieldbearer is not designed to deal with magic monsters (unless GrandmasterRathe is used as the summmoner). I have to say, Close Range ruleset really helps me a lot as all of my ranged attack monsters can still attack in the first position. I would 100% lose the battle if the ruleset was not Close Range since all of my ranged attack monsters have to fight against many magic 🔮 monsters in the first position. At the end of match, Supply Runner 🏃 attack has no impact since My Venari Crystalsmith healed herself with her tank heal ability.
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In the previous post we had a Lv.3 Gold Foil Chaos Knight card for the giveaway. In this giveaway post, there will be another Gold Foil card that you could possibly win, Here is the card :
 |
|---|
I will use Wheel of Names for the drawing and the name picked out will be given the card prize.
How to participate :
- Please put your IGN (In-Game Name) in the comment section.
- If you feel like the post is useful feel free to follow me for more battle tips and tricks and 2 weekly giveaways continuously. I'll make sure we will be good friends :)
- Upvote is not a requirement but it will be greatly appreciated to increase the quality of the next giveaway.
- Re-blogging this post will give you 2 tickets, higher tickets, higher chance to win the rewards 😉
Notes :
- The cut off time is the pay-out of this post (7 days). I will put a comment "TIME'S UP" when the time is up.
- The winner will be announced in the next giveaways.
- If you want to give feedback or critics, feel free to leave any comments. As long they are constructive and not offensive, they will be appreciated.
- Started from now, I will tag all of the participants who have joined (in the previous giveaway) in case you want to join the giveaway again, if you want me to stop tagging your IGN, feel free to comment STOP in the comment section.
- Every time I posted blogs whether Battle Challenge or Social Media Challenge, there will be 1 card be rewarded for the giveaway winner.
Notification List :
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If you haven't got any Splinterlands account, you can get it here
Alright, that's the end of this article guys, Thank you for visiting my blog. See you in the next article and giveaway. Take care~
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