This Splinterlands Social Media challenge post features a battle with the Going the Distance ruleset! Going the Distance is a rule that you may enjoy if you are a fan of long range combat. In fact, your monsters won't even be eligible to participate in today's battle unless they are able to hit their targets from far away!
Battles with Going the Distance only allow monsters with ranged attacks to be used. Want to select a monster with only melee, magic, or no attack at all? Well, unfortunately you're out of luck for this fight. While this is clearly a win for ranged attackers and a loss for non-ranged ones, there are also other slightly less obvious winners and losers. Monsters with dual attacks are extra useful in Going the Distance, since those are the only way you can get melee or magic damage into the fight. There are also quite a few abilities that become much more powerful in battles heavy on ranged damage - Return Fire, Headwinds, and Protect are just a few that you may want to keep your eye out for.
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!
Here are the rulesets for today's battle. Of course, we have Going the Distance, eliminates any monsters without a ranged attack. We also have Aimless, which gives every monster Scattershot. Finally, we have 3 splinters to choose from in Fire, Earth, and Life, and a medium to highish mana cap of 38. This battle is looking to be a chaotic one - Going the Distance means that we won't be able to rely on melee attackers to remove any of the Scattershot RNG!
For our summoner I opted to go with Tarsa. Tarsa is a little bit of an unusual selection for this fight because her summoner buffs are suited more towards melee attackers, while Going the Distance is a decidedly ranged attacker-heavy ruleset. However, in this case she was the best one I had available for the job. Some of my other Fire splinter summoners were a little underleveled relative to Tarsa, and with Scattershot in play I wanted to have all of the levels and monster stats that I could get - the more bulk, the better!
Speaking of bulk, it is a little harder to come by in Going the Distance fights, since ranged monsters often are a little on the fragile side. I led off with two of my better options - Molten Ash Golem and Lava Launcher. Both of them have plenty of health, with Lava Launcher also packing a heavy attack and whole lot of armor.
For my midline I went with some monsters with useful abilities. Flame Mephit is awfulyl squishy, but the combination of Flying and 3 speed makes her a little harder to hit, and her 2 damage for just 2 mana is very cost effective. Ash Mirage has the Headwinds ability, which is incredibly useful in Going the Distance - thanks to the ruleset we know that it will debuff the entire enemy team!
Finally, I finished off the team with my anchor. Tinderlock is another bulky monster, and one that can attack from the first position thanks to Close Range. My ideal scenario will be that my team gets off to a fast start and never looks back while building an advantage that quickly snowballs, but if things get scrappy then Tinderlock will gain a boost as the last monster standing with Last Stand.
With the lineup set, it's off into battle! When I see the selected teams I am cautiously optimistic. My opponent has brought a team of monsters that should be strong in Going the Distance, with plenty of high damage attackers as well as a Headwinds monster. However, upon closer inspection many of those monsters do not have a whole lot of health. Of course there is a high amount of RNG in this battle, but with the enemy team looking rather fragile, the Scattershot odds seem to be tilted a little bit in my favor.
The battle starts off slowly. In the first round, attacks get spread out fairly evenly and both teams remain fully intact. The enemy midline has taken a few hits though, and it looks as though a lucky shot or two can do some serious damage in the next round.
I get a little bit of a stroke of luck in the next exchange of attacks, and my team knocks out the hardest hitting enemy monster - their Pelacor Arbalest. With my opponent's Aria Bandit also getting taken down, it is looking as though my team is well positioned to finish off the rest of the enemy team.
One round later the battle was all but over. The enemy team was down to 2 heavily damaged monsters, while my entire team was still standing on the battlefield. A few more attacks and my team sealed the victory. And again, if you wanted to see the whole battle for yourself, you can see it right here.
Despite my selection of a slightly less than optimal summoner, my team of ranged attackers were able to ride their high stats and collection of helpful abilities to the win. This battle showcased the importance of bulk - having monsters with high health allowed my team to survive for longer and get off more attacks, even in the face of the random targeting forced by Aimless.
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:
Up, Up and Away - Battling with Earthquake! - A Splinterlands battle analysis, featuring Earthquake!
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.