Hey! 👋 I have an interesting battle for this week's challenge.
This is the link to a battle which was fought during the Tidalring Modern Bronze Invitational, a recent tournament.
It was a really close call, let's see in detail what happened in the match.
There was a mana cap of 39 and only the fire and life splinters were available.
As you see the only modifier was holy protection, granting all units divine shield for extra durability.
I defaulted to Lorkus as a summoner, a card I'm very happy to have bought!
I knew my opponent would likely use Tofu but I couldn't be sure.
With the reassuring help of the divine shields I decided to use some melee units but in hindsight I would have been better off with none whatsoever and simply focusing on magic instead.
These are the teams we chose:
Notably, on my end the two most important cards were the emberguard (which as far as I'm concerned is the most impactful reward legendary right now) and the chaos evoker.
I gave these two the leech buff and they will turn out to be the MVPs!
Chaos evoker, in particular, is quite strong when there's thir rule granting divine shields all around. She's no slouch in normal matches either 🤣 A great card!
My opponent picked Olivia. This is a deceptive card that often takes way too long to become dangerous but when you pair her with the innate beefiness that Tofu provides she becomes a more ideal choice.
The other carry card was Gramel, the hunger. Quite an expensive card but sometimes a decisive one in high-mana battles.
In this case, however, it wasn't able to make full use of its melee attack and similarly the mana warden in the second position couldn't attack right away either.
A somewhat passive choice from my opponent.
As the battle started we both lost the weaker units fairly quickly.
It came down to these last few units and Olivia in particular was the one my opponent was really betting on as she had the triage.
It's not every day that you see a unit with two full lines of effects but it didn't end up mattering too much as my strong magic attacks took care of her sooner rather than later.
Perhaps with a different choice of triage from my opponent and different positioning I would have lost here!
It really came down to luck as I got to only one hit point a couple of times with my last card but it was always enough for me to survive and heal back up thanks to life leech!
What to learn from this?
I think this was a nice showcase of how Lorkus can be Tofu's natural enemy.
So long as you don't lean too much into the melee units this summoner is capable of countering and often outsustaining the big cat.
Of course there's going to be times where magic units won't be available or you'll be forced to rely only on melee attackers in which case.. the side that can afford Tofu usually wins. I've had quite a few matches that went like that in tournaments 😏
If you wanna hear me talk about this battle on YouTube you can visit this link.
What do you usually do if you see Tofu coming? What's your approach? Do let me know!
If you're curious about Splinterlands here is my referral link. You will automatically get an Hive account, free of charge, and some cashback on the purchase of the 10$ spellbook required to start earning in this interesting game 😉