This week's Social Media challenge features what is always an enjoyable task - share your most remarkable Splinterlands moment! And while pinpointing the MOST remarkable moment is rather difficult, one of the more entertaining things to see in Splinterlands - at least for me! - is a battle where things don't quite go the way you expect them to. So I'm going to take a look at a ruleset where things go a little bit...backwards. Today, I'll be taking a look at the Super Sneak ruleset! Before we get into the battle, a few words about Super Sneak. Super Sneak gives all of the melee monsters in the battle the Sneak ability. This means that any melee monster in a lineup will attack the back monster on the enemy team, other than the front monster which still attacks the opposing front position.
As you may guess, melee monsters are a big winner in Super Sneak battles. Sneak allows melee monsters to attack from any position in a lineup, rather than just the front. Melee monsters tend to have more stats for their cost, so Super Sneak battles are likely to see more melee attackers than usual since they effectively get a "discount". This leads to the second category of winners - more melee monsters means that anti-melee cards are also great in Super Sneak. Monsters with Shield, Thorns, or other anti-melee abilities could be just what you are looking for in these fights - and we'll be seeing some of those in out battle today! 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. We have What Doesn't Kill You, which gives all monsters Enrage. We also have Up to Eleven, which grants the Amplify ability. And of course, we have Super Sneak, which gives all melee monsters Sneak. The final piece is the splinters and mana, which happen to be slightly restrictive for this fight - we have a medium-lowish mana budget of 24 mana to work with, and just 2 splinters to choose from - Earth or Death.
The combination of Enrage from What Doesn't Kill You and Sneak from Super Sneak makes me think that I would like to have a bulky melee attacker at the back of my lineup. And it would be even better if that bulky melee monster also happened to have a bit of sustain. It just so happens that I have a monster in mind for this, but it requires a specific summoner. We'll get to that monster later, but for now we're going to go with Lobb Lowland as our summoner of choice. Lobb isn't the cheapest summoner around and costs us 6 mana to use, but he debuffs the enemy team's speed and allows us to use a Gladius card - all good things!
The front of my team looks a little unusual, but remember that this is a backwards battle! I started off my lineup with Mycelic Morphoid and Fungus Fiend. Both of these guys aren't particularly impressive, but they'll buy time for the rest of my monsters in the back to get to work with their Sneak attacks. Oh, I should also mention here - this battle was in a Novice league tournament, which means that all monsters will enter the battle at level 1.
In Super Sneak battles, melee monsters tend to be used more often than they would be normally. Disintegrator is a great anti-melee monster thanks to the Demoralize ability, which debuffs enemy melee attacks. And let's not forget - with the Super Sneak ruleset, Disintegrator will also pitch in some melee damage even from the middle of my lineup!
I finished off my team with the monster I had in mind from the very beginning - Quora Towershead! Quora is crazy powerful, combining plenty of bulk with dual magic and melee attacks, as well as the Heal ability. With Super Sneak she can attack from the back, and with What Doesn't Kill You in play she also has a chance to attack for some bonus Enraged damage
With the lineup set, it's off into battle! When I see the selected teams I like what I see. It seems that both me and my opponent have decided to go with a Quora lineup. there are some important differences though - they have positioned some weaker monsters as a buffer at the back of their lineup. While that does buy time for the monsters in the middle, it also gives me more opportunities to gain some Bloodlust buffs on my own Quora. Oh, and one more thing - the Disintegrator count is 1 to 0 in my favor, which is something I nearly always like to see.
In the first round of battle my team gets off to a great start - my Quora is able to get a quick kill off on the enemy Fiend and earn the first Bloodlust buff. My front line seems to be getting the worse of the battle, but this fight will hinge on the pair of Quoras on the field.
One more round, and one more Bloodlust buff for my Quora. My opponent's Quora also manages to gain some stats thanks to Martyr, but I have no complaints about a 2 to 1 stat buff advantage.
By the beginning of round 4 the outcome was becoming clear - with a narrow speed advantage, my Quora was poised to knock out the enemy gladiator. And the battle didn't even need to go for another round - my Disintegrator managed to finish off Queen Mycelia at the same time! And again, if you wanted to see the whole battle for yourself, you can see it right here.
While my opponent and I both used similar strategies for this battle, slightly different orderings were enough to make the difference and allow me to win the battle of the Quoras with a small edge in Bloodlust buffs. Super Sneak battles are a nice change of pace. While the melee monsters at the front still attack each other, the rest of the fight plays out in a somewhat backwards fashion - it certainly keeps things interesting!
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:
One Loaded Battle - Battling with Explosive Weaponry! - A Splinterlands battle analysis, featuring Explosive Weaponry!
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!
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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.