Overview
Welcome back to another installment of "For Guild & Glory," where I document the brawls of the two guilds I am a member of and how I performed in my frays. As a reminder, my main account @ducecrypto battles with the 3rd-ranked @splinterlands guild @shield-of-glory, while my alt account @shaelien battles with the 2nd division of @the420syndicate, dubbed The Gold Syndicate. Although I was much more successful playing in Tier 2 than Tier 1 this time around, both of my guilds finished with a respectable 2nd place finish. It is impressive to note the difference in rewards between Tier 2 and Tier 1 when both guilds placed second: 68 crowns and 4250 merits in Tier 2, and 20 crowns and 923 merits in Tier 1. There are so many great incentives to invest in your guild, and being able to move up a tier is certainly one of them!
Personal Record
As usual, both of my accounts were again on Gold Foil duty, in their well established roles in Bronze League. In Tier 2, DuceCrypto plays Fray 14, which is modern format, while in Tier 1, Shaelien plays Fray 11, which is wild format. DuceCrypto had another stellar performance, finishing 5-1 with the only blemish a tight loss to a very accomplished player from the top finishing Legendary Dragons. On the other hand, it was a brawl to forget for Shaelien, who did not win a single battle of the three contested. Read on for details and links for all the action.
DuceCrypto Battles
As you can see, it was quite a successful brawl for DuceCrypto with an impressive 5-1 finish. Although I typically battle in wild gold and diamond league for ranked battles, I have started to become more familiar with the metagame choices playing in modern bronze. It takes real commitment to remember your monsters' abilities at different league levels, especially in the short 3-minute window we have for picking our lineups. It definitely took me a few weeks to refamiliarize myself with the best strategies in bronze, but I'm in a much more confident place now, especially when it comes to picking up a few rentals.
Speaking of rentals, I have also worked on double dipping with my Gold Foil rentals, using them for brawl as well as any available GF tournaments offered through Splinterlands. This time around I was also able to secure a top64 finish in a bronze league GF tournament, for a quick 10x on my SPS entry fee. Thanks again to the sweet @peakmonsters platform for allowing me to find and rent these seven powerful GF cards all in one easy and smooth transaction.
Here are the replay details with some commentary below:
Battle 1 vs. @moriarty95 --> Replay
Battle 2 vs. @tooshytochat --> Replay
Battle 3 vs. @enton81 --> Replay
Battle 4 vs. @omra-sky --> Replay
Battle 5 vs. @gipszjakab --> Replay
Battle 6 vs. @awkwardai --> Replay
Regarding my one loss to The Grandmaster Moriarty95, it was certainly a risky choice going for Yodin in a low 16cc battle, while my opponent selected Lorna. Keep in mind for those doing the math, we also receive a bonus allowance based on the barracks level, with each guild in this battle getting an extra mana to use to pick our lineups. While I did have a slightly faster attacking lineup, I also had to overcome the divine shield on each of his monsters. I think if my Radiated Scorcher was able to deliver one attack to break the full armor of his tank, Blinding Reflector, it would have been a tighter battle. However, his choice of using two magic monsters paid off as his last monster was able to apply the finishing blow from first position, while my ranged monster could only watch as it got blasted to oblivion.
Battle 2 is also interesting, as I nearly got demolished by the big beefy gladiator Chimney Wallstop. However, the +1 armor from Drake, my dragon summoner came in handy to soak up a huge nine-damage attack from said gladiator and preventing it from restoring armor via the bloodlust ability. River Hellondale resurrecting Diemonshark was also quite helpful, since my opponent only had one magic monster in their whole lineup. However, I would have done better if I had just used Kelya as my summoner, since I did not end up playing any dragon monsters and she grants an additional speed as well as the armor.
The last Tier 2 battle I want to highlight is #4, since it was the first time I have been able to play with a GF gladiator myself, recently opening the rare life monster Ajax Lightfoot. Because of the close range and even stevens rulesets, I felt like this was a good opportunity to put the speedy Ajax in the tank position and harness the attacking power of Sloan's +1 range. My decision paid off as Ajax was able to dodge a key attack from Cursed Windeku while also nullifying his thorns ability, which ultimately allowed the arbalest to get an all-important second attack. If Ajax gets hit there, chances are I would have lost that battle -- what a difference a dodge makes!
Shaelien Battles
Battle 1 vs. @kimaleksp --> Replay
Battle 2 vs. @meisterjay --> Replay
Battel 3 vs. @lofone --> Replay
There really isn't much to say about this poor performance in Tier 1 besides that I need to do a better job at managing my GF collection to ensure I delegate more cards I'm not using on the main account. Truth be told, I felt pretty outmatched in all three of these battles. If you check out the replays, you'll see that none of them felt particularly close.
In Battle 1, a low mana 17cc affair, his five monsters overpower my three monsters handily. In Battle 2, my +1 armor from Drake is no match for his +1 magic from Alric. And in Battle 3, I couldn't effectively leverage the high mana 58cc encounter, fielding only 34cc worth of monsters against my opponent's 41cc. Plus they were able to field three range monsters with Sloan, while I only had one magic monster to pair with Alric. Some tough lessons to be learned from this 0-3, but I will be better prepared to put up a stronger fight next go around.
New Brawl Preview
Since I'm posting this report before the next brawl matchups have been posted, there's no preview available at present. But I'll be sure to come back and edit this article once the matchups for the next brawl are revealed.
Thanks for following along with my brawl adventures and best of luck in your conquests of the Splinterlands.