This weeks Battle Mage Challenge is about the Stampede rule.

Splinterlands tells us the following about the Stampede Rule:

Trample will retrigger infinitely as long as the trampling unit keeps killing other units.

    Prime use case for Summoner Possibilus the Wise.

There is also a detailed explanation about the various interactions between other abilities and Trample + Stampede, which can be found here

Stamepede is a rule that often does not come into play. For one thing, its somewhat rare to trigger Trample, and Trample is also mainly found on high mana units. However, when Trample does trigger in a Stampede ruleset, it can be deadly. Many seasoned Splinterlands players have experienced a Magnor or Desert Dragon taking out the a whole team in one go.

Incompatible Rules

Little League, Going the Distance, Keep Your Distance, Wands Out, Back To Basics.

Desirable Abilities

(Trample, Demoralize, Inspire, Rust, Protect)

Obviously, Trample is the highest value ability in this rule. Secondary priorities are the abilities than either help trigger a Trample, or reduce the opponent's chance of doing it.

Advantaged Summoners

This rule is Possibilus's main strength. Since all his units have Trample, there is a high chance that it will trigger and enable the Stampede effect.

Secondary priorities are any summoners that affect melee damage or provide armor or Piercing or Thorns, but their advantages in this rule are not that large.

Disadvantaged Summoners

No summoners are really disadvantaged in this rule.

Desirable Monsters

My Battle : Stampede battle

My battle had the following configuration: Modern Champion league. 19 mana, rules: Stampede, Fire & Regret, Briar Patch. Splinters: Water, Earth, Life.

This is somewhat typical for the Stampede rule. It can often be irrelevant or in conflict with other rules. Here, all monsters will have Thorns, so any unit with Trample will take a lot of damage itself if Trample triggers. Other times, there just aren't any relevant units with Trample to use in the battle. Here, we have five possible Trample units:

First of all, this is a low mana battle, and Trample units are generally high cost. Of the options here, only Diemonshark is any realistic alternative, but the thorns make it pretty unattractive. Maybe it could be used alongside a Merdaali Guardian and a Scavo Hireling in order to restore its health and armor. Realistically though, we face a lot of magic damage in this battle, and playing the Diemonshark would be very risky. Alternatively, we could play Possibilus and Tide Biter. That would not take any thorns damage, but its probably not effective enough to warrant the mana cost. So here I choose to ignore the Stampede rule, and play assume that we will face a magic damage team.

My lineup

For this battle, I could see that my opponent had access to high power cards in their battle history. I had to assume that I would not be able to compete in terms of putting together the strongest magic damage team. Instead, I chose to rely on Baakjira+Kelp Initiate to soak up every bit of magic damage that could come. In principle, a Coral Wraith could also deal magic damage to my backline, but thats a risk I'm willing to take. For damage, I went for only a Merdhampir. The advantage of this card in this matchup is that it will heal back a bit of the Return Fire damage. At the same time, I have Triage to heal it, and over time, Triage will heal more and more due to the Merdhampir's max health increasing with Life Leech. I spent the remaining mana on Venator Kinjo, an Albatross (to further support my Baakjira) and finally a Torrent Fiend.

Opponent's lineup

Predictably, my opponent went for a magic damage setup. They protected themselves against magic by picking Immortalis and using Failed Summoner as their tank. Beside that, they added a Queen Mycelia for Amplify and Triage, and at the same time providing armor with Protect. Khmer princess is used to keep the Failed Summoner alive, and finally they added Epona and Dr. Blight.

Battle progress and Result

As expected, I would not have been able to match my opponent if I went for a magic-based setup, but my current team will be pretty well matched against this setup. Since all their damage is magic, there is not rng related to wether the attacks will land or not. However, they have pretty low damage, and my Baakjira will only take 1 magic damage per turn due to Void. I have Kelp Initiate who will remove Poison and Affliction and the speed advantage I gain from Kelya will make sure that Baakjira is able to Heal before Dr. Blight can apply poison each round. So there is no way that Baakjira can die here before fatigue sets in.

But I also have very low damage, since I only have the Merdhampir to rely on. To my annoyance, the Protect+Repair will make sure that I cannot kill the Failed Summoner either. However, it will be left at one health eventually due to Cripple. Lets see how it plays out.

After buffs and debuffs are applied, we have this situation:

The interesting part now is to see if Merdhampir is able to survive the start of the game. As long as it lives the first few rounds, its max health will grow and Triage will heal for more and more. When it attacks, it deals 3 damage to the Failed Summoner (but that is absorbed by the armor). Return Fire does 2 damage for a 3 damage attack (3/2=1.5, rounded up -> 2 damage). Then amplify increases that to 3. So, my Merdhampir takes 3 damage in round 1, and is left at two health. Next round, Kelp Iniate heals for:

+2 ..., so my Merdhampir takes more damage back than it is healed. However, it also gains one health from Life Leech:

So it takes exactly as much damage as it is healed to begin with. As already mentioned, Triage will heal for more and more over time, so the Merdhampir eventually stacks up a lot of health.

The rounds proceed like that all up to fatigue. In round 21, when fatigue begins to do damage, the game state is this:

So finally, the Failed Summoner dies, and the other units starts taking damage too. The next rounds, the units begin to die off. At the beginning of round 23 only these units remain. The only question now if if Dr. Blight scavenges enough health to outlive the Baakjira in a fatigue fight.

After fatigue does damage in round 24 we are left in this state.

So after all, Dr. Blight is not able to outlive Baakjira, but its not that far off. Finally, the match ends with a victory for me. Since this is a Modern Champion league match, I get rewarded a good chuck of SPS too!

Alternate lineups

Immortalis

Bortus

Lux Vega

Mother Khala

I hope you found this post interesting. If you did, you might also enjoy my other content.

Battle mage challenges

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Best of luck in Splinterlands!
Kalkulus

Battle Mage Challenge: Stampede. Strategy, My Battle and Alternative Lineups