HELLO to all Splinterlands readers of my humble blog.👋🏻👋🏻👋🏻 Welcome to week 47 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, things are getting a little explosive in here! Beware of what you hit as everything will splash over to everyone else around you. 😉

No matter! I present to you the ruleset — EXPLOSIVE WEAPONRY 💥💣

The game's description of EXPLOSIVE WEAPONRY is as follows: "All units gain the Blast ability."

This is an interesting ruleset which effectively actually makes all attacks become far deadlier than it already is. Basically, all damage done to a target is also "splashed" over to other adjacent units. The additional damage will be half the main damage, rounded up. Under the right circumstances, that could mean more than DOUBLE the original unit's damage! 😱

I feel that this ruleset puts the advantage firmly on the attacking team. My best solution for preparing for such a ruleset would be to take the initiative and go for fast and hard hitting units as far as possible.

I will take advantage of this ruleset in my battle showcase today to show how 2 of my units in particular becomes a lot stronger than one would expect with EXPLOSIVE WEAPONRY. Introducing the Summoner, POSSIBILUS THE WISE.

Possibilus the Wise is a leviathan from the future that has adapted to rule on both land and sea. His mission is to find and secure the lost sacred rune tablets of his race that were shattered into pieces and strewn across time and space by the entity known only as Desolation. In his present time, a war rages on his home world of Nyuuldus, but Possibilus was tasked with traveling into the past and the future to find these runestone fragments and return with them to defeat Desolation.

From Splinterlands Lore on POSSIBILUS THE WISE

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Possibilus The Wise is a Legendary card released during the Chaos Legion expansion. It has definitely found it's place in many Water decks given its availability and usefulness. It's effects on the battlefield are ❤️+2 HEALTH❤️ and it grants the TRAMPLE & REACH ability to all your units. It's summoning cost is, like all other Chaos Legion Legendary Summoners, 6 🧪MANA🧪.

The stat buffs it gives are nothing out of the ordinary, so at first glance, he might look pretty bland. However, all of it combined makes this Summoner one of the strongest in the game!

Reach allows any melee unit on the 2nd spot of your lineup to also attack. While Trample allows your units to launch another attack if it manages to land the killing blow. You can see then how Possibilus has the ability to multiply your army's damage 😱. The battle will very quickly turn against the opponent with a few well placed attacks.

I would venture to say that with the EXPLOSIVE WEAPONRY ruleset in play, we are heavily incentivized to pick DPS units. Add one and one together and I hope it's glaringly obvious by now that Possibilus is a match made in heaven for this situation. Possibilus is gives that bit more health for your units to take some Blast damage, and his Reach and Trample abilities have the potential to multiply that even more! There is no stopping the monstrous Possibilus from devastating the entire battlefield! 🔥

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 EXPLOSIVE WEAPONRY was in effect. My opponent used the Chaos Legion edition Summoner General Sloan from the LIFE splinter as his main pick, while I used the Chaos Legion edition Summoner Possibilus the Wise from the WATER splinter. 👼🏻 VS 💧

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

• This was a ruleset which favoured speed and damage.

• My opponent was using one of the most offensive summoners in the game!

• This gave his entire team a huge increase in raw damage output.

• To exacerbate matters, there was an extra "No Armour" ruleset in play too. This meant every single hit from my opponent would hurt even more!

I was honestly expecting this to be a really bad matchup for me 😜🤣. This was a team who had an innate advantage in this ruleset. His team had one purpose only and that was to output the maximum amount of damage possible. 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 EXPLOSIVE WEAPONRY 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 Sea Monster is chosen for this slot. He plays the role of the Main tank perfectly with his great stats. His high health stats and the HEAL ability will also allow him to have much longer staying power on the battlefield. This allows all other units to be kept safe until he is taken down.

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2nd CARD SLOT

The Coastal Sentry occupies this slot. It's main role here to be the main DPS for the team. It will also fulfil the role of the backup tank should the main tank fall.

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3rd CARD SLOT

The Demented Shark fills this slot and it's main role is to buff all the melee units in the team with it's INSPIRE ability.

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4th CARD SLOT

The Deeplurker fills this slot. It is another DPS unit in the team whose main purpose is to take out the weakest units in the opponent's team with it's OPPORTUNITY ability.

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5th CARD SLOT

The Djinn Oshannus occupies this slot. With his hard hitting magic attacks and high health stats, he will be able to take quite a few hits while dishing out lots of DPS too.

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6th CARD SLOT

The Wave Brood occupies the last slot. It's main role is to draw all attacks to it via it's TAUNT ability. This will give all other units more time to deal their damage and keep them protected.

I hope you're starting to see the pattern here in my team setup. 😉

⚔️🛡️Battle Action Report🛡️⚔️

As you can see, both of us fielded very similar units in our matchup. Even though we both used the different splinters, our unit selection was a similar mix of magic, ranged and melee units. 😱

💧WATER💧 VS 👼🏻LIFE👼🏻

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My opponent used the Shieldbearer as his tank in the 1st slot which was a VERY good choice. With his great defensive stats and the TAUNT ability to draw attacks to himself, this is a unit which will protect it's entire team until it falls.

The Chaos Knight occupied his 2nd slot. This is another tough unit with it's SHIELD ability and it also packs a punch with the amount of damage it can dish out. It would likely also be the backup tank after his main tank falls.

His other slots were filled with Magic and Ranged DPS units. They would be well placed to unload all their damage on any opponent while being protected by the tanks.

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 high mana game with 99 mana as the limit. The rulesets were EXPLOSIVE WEAPONRY & UNPROTECTED.

• The first round saw both our sides launch a flurry of attacks. Both teams took a lot of damage trading blows, especially with the ruleset conferring BLAST on everyone. 🤣

• The opponent started off strong as his faster units attacked first against my team. However, the damage was safely deflected to my "Taunt Tank" Wavebrood and the Blast damage absorbed by the tough Djinn Oshannus in the backline.

• When it was finally my turn to attack, the Coastal Sentry took out both my opponent's main tank and backup tank immediately thanks to the massive damage from DOUBLESTRIKE, BLAST and an additional TRAMPLE attack again thanks to landing a killing blow.

• That sole attack alone devastated his entire army and left it in tatters.

• My Deeplurker then took out his weakest unit in the backline.

• The coup de grâce came when my Sea Monster eventually landed it's massive attack, killing 1 unit and then trampling again to kill the remaining 2 units.

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

Talk about doing WAY MORE than it was supposed to!!! 😱🤯🥳 All I expected was for the EXPLOSIVE WEAPONRY ruleset to give me a slight advantage. Individually, on their own, my units would never be able to output such ridiculous amounts of damage. However it ended up being the entire reason for my win! By capitalizing on the ruleset, my units were able to go on a killing spree, chaining their attacks to kill off multiple units at a go! The opponent simply could not handle all that at all.

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 EXPLOSIVE WEAPONRY 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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