Welcome back to our Weekly Battle Mage Secrets!
This week, we are featuring the Earthquake ruleset.

Earthquake:

• All non-flying units take 2 physical damage at the end of every turn.

• Snared units are considered non-flying. Since the damage given is physical, it can be reduced to 1 if the unit has the shield ability.

Earthquake rulesets are both fun and annoying. Fun because if you have the lineup for it, you can win pretty handily. Annoying because if you are limited by different rulesets like Back to Basics, no amount of planning will save you against earthquake. There's a love-hate relationship going on with this ruleset which spices things up in the game to say the least.

Synergies
Flying	The first one is obviously Flying. Flying negates all earthquake damage so you are free of that pesky damage every turn. Brightom Bloom is the ideal summoner pick here if you have it as it gives flying to ALL your lineup.
Void Armor	The next best thing you can have if you don't have Flying is to buff up your armor. Void Armor works best because it also protects you from magic damage. If your monsters have armor, damage received uses up armor first prior to going after health. You potentially win games by outlasting your opponents due to this. Grandmaster Rathe can be a big plus here.
Protect	This ability usually comes from monsters rather than summoners. Monsters like the Venari Wavesmith can help beef up your lineup by giving them extra armor. This ability synergizes well with the Void Armor mentioned above and that extra armor can make or break your games.

Counters
Snare	Similar to how Flying gets you the leg up in this ruleset, the Snare ability completely counters that. Removing the flying ability on your enemy makes them one with the land and they can therefore receive the same damage as those who aren't flying. One thing to note here is that Snare gets applied per unit hit. This means that if you hit the same enemy over and over, you may not get the chance to snare other units. Variety here to hit many enemies in different positions like Scattershot or the Aimless ruleset can be important.
Rust	We mentioned having armor and having even more via the Protect ability in the synergies could help tank the earthquake damage you'd be experiencing. The Rust ability however, negates much of those buffs and can have you take direct HP damage instead because your armor is on the lower end or gone completely.
Shatter	Speaking of gone completely, if Rust removes a portion of the enemies' armor, Shatter removes it completely when hit. If you can't have both Rust and Shatter in your lineup, I'd suggest you use Shatter instead. The new soulbound card War Pegasus is a key card for this ruleset due to it having both Flying and Shatter abilities.

This week's feature is from a regular match in Diamond League. Rulesets are as follows:

• Tis but Scratches
• Up Close & Personal
• Earthquake

Mana on this match is much more manageable compared to last week's. While we do have more mana though, the problem is that this is melee only and the pairing with earthquake might mean dealing damage will take a while. The overall survivability of your units will also play a key role in this match.

Round 1

I have a summoner level disadvantage this time around but you can see that we both opted to have extra armor to help with our lineups. Every little bit helps when it comes to the Earthquake ruleset because the longer you survive, the better the odds. The enemy did an amazing job putting 2 backline cannon fodder to help tank sneak hits as well as having the Ever-Hungry Skull be placed after those. This cards shines in these rulesets because it's both flying and has high armor.

Round 2

Round sees us essentially trading backlines but I'd still give the slight edge to the opponent. Once cannon fodder are gone, we go back to working on the skull and the only way I get the leg up is if I poison it. Luckily, RNG was on my side in this particular time and while my Uraeus died, it successfully poisoned the skull effectively taking it down with it.

Round 3

Round 3 shows us the tail end of the skull going down due to the poison damage we just talked about. It's also important to note that the Cursed Windeku is surviving way longer than what I'd like by virtue of it's heal. Having thorns on it is an added bonus but luckily my Tide Biter doesn't take thorns damage so it's able to dish out quite some good damage. The gamechanger in this lineup too is the under-leveled Deimonshark since it already has both Enrage and Trample activated so not only does it deal high damage, it also has way higher speed now and to top it all off, if it take out the enemy, the Trample will kick in.

Round 4

Diemonshark did end up taking out the Cursed Windeku and also trigger Trample. While it wasn't the most effective hit, removing the armor of the Pelacor Deceiver successfully made it more vulnerable for future hits. A 4v2 scenario in my favor with a monster in the Gargoya Lion being untouched pretty much secures the win together with the Pelacor Bandit. The opponent has lesser monster and even lesser health.

Results

GG! My under-leveled Kelya did a lot of work this time even against a fully decked out Lux Vega. It was closer than I thought but thankfully I had more flying monsters in reserve even if I had to go against the multiple thorns monsters on the opposing side.

That's it for this one and see you next week!

Full battle here.

*Images provided by Splinterlands in game and via Weekly Battle Mage Challenge post.

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