My Go-to Lineup For Range Only Battles

Hello there! @saydie here, playing Splinterlands everyday!

I've been playing Splinterlands for about four years now and one of the reason that I stuck playing the game is it's strategical gameplay with different rules and abilities that has just continues to evolve over time. And as I continue playing the game, I grow to get found to some lineups that I used in battles that eventually defines my playstyle, whether it was for a specific ruleset or a counter for a certain team.

That is why for this week's Community Engagement Challenge, I'm sharing with you one of my go-to modern lineup when playing under the Going the Distance ruleset.

Going the Distance

Battle Rules (A.K.A rulesets) are game modifiers that are added on each battles, starting in Bronze League. They were added to the game in order to give alterations to the gameplay and thus, deepen the strategy as well as to make a gameplay loop that will keep players engaged to the game. Currently, the game has 54 game modifiers available and each battle can have up to 3 active modifiers that players will need to analyze before building their team. Add to that the limit to mana cap as well as the available elements makes the strategy deeper.

Among the available modifiers, we have the Going the Distance where an Archon can only summon units with ranged attacks. This modifier incredibly reduces a players option for attack, given that most range units can't attack in the first position unless the unit have multiple attack type, have the Close Range ability or playing under the Close Range modifier. This makes the lineup that I'm about to show you quite interesting.

My Go-to Lineup

Given that Going the Distance is quite a niche ruleset, I was not able to encounter it in my recent matches so instead, I go to play a practice match which I think is much better if I want to show you how powerful this lineup can be under that ruleset.

Archon: Elias Max Pruitt

Being a dual element Archon, Elias Max Pruitt gives me access to both water and life units which increases my card option. At the same time, his tactic abilities can either give one of my unit the Repair ability that is useful in restoring my card's armor of the Pierce and Armored Strike that allows my card to attack using its armor and inflict the excess damage to the targets health. Not to mention, the additional armor that it gives on all ally units that makes it more difficult to damage the cards.

Units

Among this lineup, you can see that 4 of them have the Headwinds ability which reduces the range attack of the opponent and since they adds up, that means that I reduce the damage of my opponent by 4. Aside from that, Galicus having the Taunt and Shield ability makes it so that it will be the target of most attacks and that attacks that comes to it will be halved. Among my lineup, there is also Anachron Bolter which can Repair armor, Caravan Guard that can use Triage to heal backline damage, Areal Shieldmaiden that can use Armored Strike to attack, and Commander Goff that not only has tons of armor which is perfect for Armored Strike but also has Resurrect to revive an ally unit once.

Battle Showcase

Here, I have two battles to show you, using the exact same team under the exact same ruleset. The only difference is that I used different tactics to see how my team would fare. What you can immediately notice in this battle is that because of Headwinds, the damage of my opponent was significantly reduced that there is only one card that can effectively damage Gallicus and even that was reduced due to his Shield. But since it has armor, the opponent's attacks will do nothing more than to remove the armor, which will mostly be repaired during the same round.

Battle 1: Armored Strike & Piercing

While Commander Goff cannot directly attack with range being it at the first position, because of the Armored Strike ability, he can use his armor to effectively inflict damage which is far more than his range attack and even when it was reduced, I have Anachron Bolter to Repair his armor so that he can continue to attack.

Battle 2: Repair & Cleanse

Rather than focus on attack, this time, I decided to have a defensive approach by giving Commander Goff the Repair and Cleanse abilities, so while it can no longer attack, it can now also help in repairing the armor of my cards as well as itself because it often lose its armor in the previous match. Looking at it, it may be a far better approach because not only did I receive far less damage, all of my teams' armor was intact, and it just added another round compared to the previous match.

Closing

While this is one of my favorite lineups for Going the Distance, I cannot use it as often as I want, given that the modifier does not show in every battle, and even when it does, sometimes the other rulesets may conflict with it, or I do not have enough mana. It also was not such a perfect lineup that it could not be beaten or had any counter to it. So it's still important to check for your opponent's previous battles to get an idea of how they play their battle and use that along with the active rulesets to build your team.

Thank you and see you on the next post!

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