Hey guys! It’s shadow346 again and I am the Guild Master of Illusions of the Grave on Splinterlands. Today, I will be going over my strategy for the newest weekly challenge. The challenge was to use the pirate captain on my team during a battle. Just for fun- I thought we could use a festive pirate photo for this post! Happy holidays!
You Can Watch the Battle Here
**Mobile Link: **https://m.splinterlands.io/#/battle/game/process/sl_4e855b43f58c1265832cb33ddf5e3feb
PC Link: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_4e855b43f58c1265832cb33ddf5e3feb&ref=shadow346
**Formation Strategy **
The battle had the target practice restriction meaning that all ranged and magic attack users have the snipe ability. For those that aren't familiar, the snipe ability goes after the first monster on the enemy team that has magic or range. I assumed because of the restriction that the enemy team would be using either range attack monsters, magic attack monsters, or a mixture of the two. I used the summoner that lowers the magic attack of the enemy team. That definitely would have weakened a magic team immensely. But it also did nothing to help with the range portion. It turned out that the enemy team used mostly ranged monsters with the exception of one magic user.
It’s a good thing that the second part of my strategy was made specifically to weaken the range users. I used the Venari Wave Smith to add +2 shield to each of my monsters. That gave my monsters extra defense against ranged monsters due to how ranged attacks hit shields before health. The strategy wouldn’t have defended against magic users at all since magic hits through shields. In that case, the Venari Wave Smith would have just been an extra attacker and his ability would have been mostly useless.
Look at how the enemy team had both the Bone Golem AND Haunted Spirit. Yikes. I would have normally been worried about the Bone Golem’s resistance to magic. But since we had the snipe restriction going on, we weren’t really aiming for him as much. I used 3 mages in order to bypass enemy shields and focus on direct health hits. The snipe ability did make my mages more vulnerable to attacks. However, the shields kept them alive long enough to get in at least a few hits directly to the enemy team’s health.
I put the Water Elemental in the very back to act as a healer. Keeping him alive would help to protect any middle characters from the sneak ability. Since the Pirate Captain is a ranged character, he was put in the next back position since range monsters can’t attack when they reach the very front. In the front, I put the Serpent of Eld as my tank. He causes the enemy team to have a chance of missing- plus he has high speed and attack. He’s not a healer like I normally use but if the enemy can’t hit you, you don’t need healing!
My Thoughts on the Pirate Captain
I more than likely could have won this particular battle without the pirate captain. I like the pirate captain but I’m not a HUGE fan of a non-levelled Pirate Captain. It’s nice to have an extra range character for only 3 mana but he is not going to take out an entire team on his own. Success relies on how the rest of the team synchronizes. But you can’t hate on a character who attacks and only costs 3 mana though. I hope you guys enjoyed the battle!