Hi Everyone in the SplinterLands community!
Just a quick background of myself, I've been playing Trading Card Games way back in my early teenage years. I've lost count on how many hours I've put into TCGs like Magic The Gathering and HearthStone. Had to stop playing due to real life responsibilities.
NFTs became a huge hit and started looking for something I can spend my time with and then I found SplinterLands. The gameplay requires critical thinking and the strategy does not only happen when battling but also on how you will manage your resources (time and funds).
What really attracted me is the amount of time needed to be spent in this game to stay competitive. I can still balance my time at work and with my family. I think that's enough about me for this blog :) Let's get started!
The basic concept of every battle is to put a monster that has high health that can either have self heal, damage reduction or with high hit points hence the term "tank" in the 1st position. Their main purpose is to soak all the damage the enemy team can dish out and sometimes the attacker even pay for it when the tank card has return damage abilities. It's even more harder to bring these tanks down when there are backline sustain cards (tank heal, repair, etc) ensuring that it will be kept alive for as long as it can. This is where the sneak ability comes in.
Before we go in depth with sneak, let's breakdown the game's description of the ability:
"Target's the last Monster on the enemy Team instead of the first Monster".
The description is self explanatory, kind of...it did not state that if the Card with the sneak ability is in the 1st position, it will then attack the 1st position monster as well from the enemy. I guess for these type of abilities that has this effect, there should be a simple description and an in-depth description option.
The ability sounds cool, right? Just like a ninja targeting the supposedly most protected position in the game hence the ability icon :) Though the description have a need to know mechanics.
"Unless there is a monster with Taunt on the enemy's team, Sneaking Monsters will always attack the last position"
That's always something to think about when playing sneak cards. Usually sneak cards have high attack but with low HP therefore a tank that has a counter ability (thorns, return fire, magic reflect, etc) will give you a run for your money. However, this should not stop you for playing sneak cards.
The game is designed for you to think on your feet. I still strongly lean on the basic strategy with any games that I play and that is to go for the supports. The backlines in which I call enablers since these cards enable the tank to fully function what it's intended to do. Without the enablers, the tank is just another card with high HP and a possible sustain ability that can be brought down.
When to use sneak? You should always study the enemies previous matches (this just gave me an idea for another blog to go in-depth with this). If your opponent is very fond in placing critical cards at the back then sneak is the way to go. Like I mentioned earlier, I am very bias with clearing out the backlines first so I use sneak whenever I can.
I know I am only scratching the surface with the full potential of sneak here but the game is so complex that we can go for hours and hours to discuss any ability though I believe I've made some points in this post. To finish off this blog, see card monsters which have the sneak ability:
It would be my pleasure to talk more about this ability with you in the comment section and if you have any other ideas or topics in mind, don't hesitate to let me know. Also, I highly encourage anyone to correct me on any of my statements on this blog, I strongly believe that mistakes makes a person better.
By the way, if you are a newbie and need some cards to start your SplinterLands journey, you may want to take a chance with my free card giveway blog: https://www.splintertalk.io/hive-13323/@cadama/community-giveback-program-free-card-giveaway-2
Thank you and happy grinding to everyone!