HELLO to all Splinterlands readers of my humble blog.👋🏻👋🏻👋🏻 Welcome to week 38 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 strips everyone of everything! Sounds confusing? Think of it like Superman bring stripped of all his powers when he isn't able to draw the power of our Sun. All Kryptonians are basically like normal humans under the Red Sun of Krypton. Too geekish? 🤣 No matter! I present to you the ruleset — BACK TO BASICS 🚫🏳️

The game's description of BACK TO BASICS is as follows: "Monsters lose all abilities."

It is best not to overthink things when we see this ruleset. The ruleset literally means what it says. Every single unit you field in the game becomes a basic unit. The only thing that matters now will be their base stats and their attack type. All their fancy abilities are stripped clean from them. It becomes a fight that boils down to each unit's raw strength! 💪

What does this mean? You better have a strong tank up front and then load up the rest of your army with ranged and magic units. There will be no special methods of attack, just a straight up clash of melee at the front and then the ranged/magic behind. Like I said, raw power will win the day!

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 BACK TO BASICS. Introducing YODIN ZAKU.

Yodin Zaku was a War Demon of the times before the Splintering so long ago. He was a hybrid child born of two warring races, the Efreet and the Bulludae, the Demons of War. But he never perished. His being was imprisoned in an ancient artifact that preserved his life, and now, nearly a thousand years after the Splintering, Yodin has opened his eyes and risen from his bondage.

☄️💥🔥From Splinterlands Lore on YODIN ZAKU☄️💥🔥

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Yodin Zaku is a Legendary card released during the Untamed expansion. It has definitely found it's place in many Fire decks given its availability and usefulness. It's effects on the battlefield are 🏹+1 RANGED ATTACK🏹, ❤️+1 HEALTH❤️ and the 💥BLAST💥 ability to all your units. It's summoning cost is, like all other Untamed Legendary Summoners, 7 🧪MANA🧪.

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

Blast allows any unit which attacks to also deal half it's damage to adjacent units. You can see then how Yodin has the ability to multiply your unit's damage 😱. The battle will very quickly turn against the opponent after a round of attacks wears down his backline.

Now, I hope my description of Yodin's abilities have made it glaringly obvious how the supposed crippling disadvantages of the ruleset BACK TO BASICS can be somewhat negated and even taken advantage of with Yodin's innately devastating skillset. With EVERYONE (and that includes your opponent) being affected by BACK TO BASICS stripping all units of their abilities, Yodin is like a cheat code which is able to give all units much more firepower! There is no stopping the monstrous Yodin 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 BACK TO BASICS was in effect. My opponent used the Dice edition Summoner Qid Yuff from the FIRE splinter as his main pick, while I also used the FIRE splinter. 🔥 VS 🔥

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

• His summoner level was higher than mine. My level 1 legendary Summoner is about the equivalent of a lv 2 Rare. Here he was fielding a level 4 Summoner!

• Needless to say, my units were also vastly out levelled. My opponent was able to field a max level team against what were mostly level 1s from me. 😭

• We all know that in a game of Back to Basics, raw strength is all that matters, and the higher level your units are, the more raw stats they gain. 😭

I was honestly expecting this to be a really bad matchup for me 😜🤣. This was a team who was of a superior level. Pound for pound, there was no way my units could match up against them. 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 BACK TO BASICS 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

Tusk The Wide is chosen for this slot. He plays the role of the Main tank perfectly with his great stats. This allows all other units to be kept safe until he is taken down.

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2nd CARD SLOT

The Scorch Fiend takes up the second slot. With his zero cost and 1 health, he will also take the place of the main tank as a sacrificial one hit backup tank.

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3rd CARD SLOT

The Fire Beetle occupies this slot. It's main role here to be a low cost ranged DPS for the team.

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4th CARD SLOT

The Imp Bowman occupies the 4th slot here. Like the unit before, it's main role here to be a low cost ranged DPS for the team.

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5th CARD SLOT

The Xenith Archer occupies this slot. Once again, like the unit before, it's main role here to be a low cost ranged DPS for the team.

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6th CARD SLOT

The Scavo Firebolt takes the last slot. Once again, like the few units before, it's main role here to be a low cost ranged DPS for the team.

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 a similar mix of unit types, BUT different unit choices completely, in our matchup. I went for a huge main tank backed up by a whole bunch of low cost ranged units. My opponent went a different way with a fearsome main tank cum DPS unit to carry his whole team, with his accompanying summoner choice reinforcing that too. 😱

🔥FIRE🔥 VS 🔥FIRE🔥

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My opponent used Grum Flameblade as his tank in the 1st slot which was a VERY good choice. With his great tanking stats and the VOID ARMOR and VOID ability, he makes a perfect tank that can easily take a hit, thus protecting the entire team even more effectively. Not to mention he also packs a huge punch and will easily kill anything in his path!

The Furious Chicken occupied his 2nd slot. With it's ZERO mana cost, I can assume that it is just there as a sacrificial tank.

In his 3rd slot was the Flame Monkey. Like the chicken before it, and at only ONE mana cost, it is also most probably a sacrificial tank.

The same goes for the Uraeus in his 4th slot. A low cost unit to hold the line, albeit one that could deal some damage unlike those that came before it so far.

His 5th slot and last slot was occupied by a rather hard hitting Pyromancer. This unit is probably the other main DPS-er other than his Grum right in front.

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 low mana game with 24 mana as the limit. The rulesets were WEAK MAGIC, BACK TO BASICS & HOLY PROTECTION.

• The first round saw both our sides launch a flurry of attacks. Even with Holy Protection, the power of the BLAST ability from my Yodin shone through!

• That first round salvo of shots fired instantly took out 2 of his backline units! That was fast!

• My own main tank was still pretty much unscratched, having only taking 1 hit from Grum thanks to Holy Protection absorbing the first hit from his Pyromancer. 💪

• Round 2 was even more devastating than the first. Not only did his Uraeus fall from the BLAST splash damage, his main tank, the powerful Grum Flameblade went down too!

• There was no way back now for the opponent as his ranged Pyromancer was the only one left standing and incapable of attacking at all being right in the front as a ranged unit.

• 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 BACK TO BASICS ruleset to make things even more disadvantageous for me. I had lost out horribly in terms of levels and stats. However it ended up being the entire reason for my win! The opponent was simply unable to cope with the additional firepower conferred upon my units by Yodin. Ironically, had his units not been handicapped by BACK TO BASICS stripping them of all their higher level special abilities, he would have easily won the battle too! 🤣

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 BACK TO BASICS 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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To any new players who wish to explore the world of Splinterlands, do feel free to sign up with my REFERRAL LINK 😊.

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