This week's Social Media challenge features a fun task - share your most remarkable Splinterlands moment! And while pinpointing the MOST remarkable moment is rather difficult, one of the most fun activities in Splinterlands is battling it out with groups of fellow players in tournaments. So today, I will be sharing an epic Splinterlands battle from a tournament with quite a bit on the line - a top 8 finish, to be precise! Our battle for today features some classic gameplay, with the added spice of an additional impact on the tournament rankings!
Before we begin, a few brief words about tournaments. Tournaments are a whole lot of fun because they allow you to compete with groups of players with a (relatively) even playing field, since you can pick and choose the league and format of the tournaments you want to enter. Anytime tournaments have the added benefit of being able to enter in your battles at any point within a 24 hour window. If you haven't given tournaments a try yet, what you you waiting for? Go on and give it a try!
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 rules for our battle. We have Fog of War, which removes the Sneak, Snipe, and Opportunity abilities for this fight. We also have Close Range and Ferocity, which allows ranged monsters to attack from the first position and grants all monsters the Fury ability. Our roster options are somewhat limited for this game, as we only have two splinters - Fire and Water - to choose from, and just 16 mana to work with.
For my summoner I decided to go with Tarsa. Tarsa is a great low mana summoner since melee monsters tend to be efficiently costed for their stats and abilities. Fog of War isn't the best ruleset for Tarsa since it limits our options in getting our melee monsters able to attack, but I just so happen to have a lineup in mind that will work even in Fog of War.
For my first monster I went with Antoid Platoon. Antoid Platoon is a great tank for 4 mana, pairing 2 armor and 4 health with the Shield ability. This was a little bit of a calculated risk because Antoid Platoon does poorly against magic attacks. But given the low mana and available splinters, my guess (or perhaps hope) was that my opponent would focus more on physical attacks with their monsters.
For my second monster I wanted to add some attack damage. While Fog of War stops many of the abilities that melee monsters use to attack outside of the first position, one of the abilities that still works is Reach. Radiated Brute with its Reach ability will give me 2 attackers to work with - and 2 is oftentimes better than 1!
I finished off my team with some support. I didn't have any healing available, but I did have something nearly as good - Repair! Scavo Hireling is easy to overlook because of his lack of an attack, but for just 3 mana he gives my team some sustain which could potentially allow my to stall out the opposing team's attacks. My hope was that he would work with Antoid Platoon's Shield ability to effectively give my team twice as much recovery.
With the lineup set, it's off into battle! When I see the selected teams I feel pretty good about my chances. My opponent has indeed choosen a team which is heavy on physical attacks - in fact, every single one of their attackers is a melee or ranged monster! On the other hand, they do have a bit of a numbers advantage on my team. While Antoid Platoon's Shield ability can negate any 1 damage attacks, if I somehow manage to lose it then things could get ugly in a hurry.
Thanks to both teams bringing along a Scavo Hireling, the battle takes a while to develop. The enemy monsters aren't able to make much progress against my Antoid Platoon's Shield ability, and my own team is only able to deal health damage to the enemy monsters when both of my melee attackers are able to land their hits in the same round. You would think that this isn't a difficult task, but let's just say that the RNG is not on my side. So things go slowly, and by the beginning of round 4 all that has happened is that the frontline tanks on both teams have taken a bit of damage.
Over the next few rounds my team is finally able to make a breakthrough - my monsters manage to coordinate their attacks and knock out the front 2 enemy monsters. But the start of round 7 things are looking pretty good for me - both of the remaining enemy attackers only hit for a single point of damage, which is great when your tank has Shield.
With the enemy attacks completely negated by my Antoid Platoon's Shield, it is just a matter of time until my monsters are able to wear down the other team. It (again!) takes a while for my monsters to be able to both land an attack in the same round, but by round 13 the battle is all but over. And again, if you wanted to see the whole battle for yourself, you can see it right here.
My strategy for this battle worked out perfectly. I guessed that my opponent would select melee and ranged attacks, and was fortunate enough to be right. The result was a victory, and some valuable tournament points that contributed to what ended up being a top 8 finish. Not too shabby!
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:
Small Strategy - Battling with Close Range! - A Splinterlands battle analysis, featuring Close Range!
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!
Thinking about giving Splinterlands a try but haven't signed up yet? Feel free to use my referral link: https://splinterlands.com?ref=bteim, and be sure to reach out to me if you have any questions!
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.