Image generated with AI (Hidream), free to use through PeakD | Prompt: Splinterlands epic battle
Epic Splinterlands battle
Hello everyone!
Today I have a day off so decided to take some time to check out the latest Splinterlands Social Media Challenge. It made me think what is a remarkable moment in my recent Splinterlands history? Well, there was one battle of the last days that definitely was the most remarkable compared to my other battles. I am going to describe the battle and trying to explain my strategy for picking my monsters. But first I want to take some time to thank the PeakD team.
A word about the cover image
As explained by the source under my coverimage, it's made with AI. Today, I saw an article of @peakd in which they explained a couple of updates. The most awesome update in my eyes, is the possibility of utilizing a free AI model, once every nine seconds, to generate a cover image. I haven't often used AI-created images as it was some kind of hassle to go to another site to create the image, but now that it's possible to do it on PeakD, I decided to give it a go. I know it has been an option for months, but it was payable. Which I ofcourse understand, as it costs money to PeakD as well, but guess I am kind of too cheap to pay for such a tool when I could just utilize original images. If you utilize PeakD as a frontend, go and try out these free AI images!
The EPIC battle
As you can see on above picture, it's a battle with relatively high mana. These are the ones I like the most as you have plenty of possibilities to tackle the fight. To be more exactly, it was a 41mana battle in which it was possible to utilize fire, nature, light and dragon splinters. Another important aspect is that it's in Wild Ranked, it's thus possible to utilize monsters and summoners from all the available editions. The reason I play wild, is that it's free for the moment. It's a gift from the Splinterlands team to its players for the launch of the latest set: Conclave Arcana. Normally, it costs 2000 dec to play in the wild season, thus +/- $2. The last element of the battle, is the ruleset. As you can see, it's the normal ruleset, so no special things there. Some consider it as boring, but I usually like it. Especially when combined with a high mana cap, it still makes things interesting and let's the monsters play as they are intended.
My line-up
As summoner, I have chosen Lobb Lowland. The mainreason I choosed him, is because he has the Conscript ability. This ability let's you play one extra gladiator card. As this isn't a brawl battle, it allows me to play with a total of one gladiator card, which is exactly what I wanted. His other ability gives minus one speed to all the enemy monsters, this is an extra nice to have.
My tank in the first position was Ulundin Overseer. He can't deal damage himself, but he's definitely a TANK. He has 12 health and a shield of 5. Although he can't attack himself, he has the ability: Flank. This ability gives reach to your second monster. Reach let's a melee monster attack from the second place. While not being able to damage himself, he gives the opportunity to attack to the second monster.
In the second place, I utilized a monster which would benefit greatly from the reach ability it gets from my tank, it's Grund. He has a whopping three damage AND has the Double Strike ability which lets him attack twice. So, that's a damage output of 6 in one turn, that's a ton of damage.
My third monster is the Venari Marksrat. Not that usefull on its own, as he becomes mostly powerfull when he's killed. That's because of his Martyr ability which gives a bonus of plus one to all the adjacent monsters their stats when this monster is killed. It would be great if this monster would be assassinated to give Grunt the bonus, but otherwise it's mainly placed here to buff my next monster.
The allmighty Quora Towershead. She's actually the main monster of this battle for me. There are plenty of monsters before her, so with some luck, she can stack her bloodlust ability to become even stronger. She will normally benefit from the Martyr ability as well. Besides all the power, she has heal to make sure she won't die. Still quite OP in my eyes.
At the last place, I utilized Creeping Ooze, I still had some mana left and it has the Slow ability, which gives all enemy monsters minus one on their speed stat. Combined with the debuff of my Summoner, that's a total of minus two on the speed of the enemy monsters. Love it to annoy the enemies!
Round 1
As you can see in above picture, a lot has happened in the first round. My tank already died, the enemy tank nearly died. Furthermore, all monsters target the first monster, so my Venari Marksrat won't die earlier to buff Grund and Quora faster. No worries there though as it will still buff Quora, which is the main monster in my line-up.
Round 2
During round 2, the enemy tank was killed and my Grund got killed as well. In terms of losing monsters, I am definitely not on the better hand. BUT my main monster, Quora managed to get her bloodlust triggered. Her base stats are already powerfull but once bloodlust starts to pile up, she becomes really strong. Next round she will benefit from the death of my Venari Marksrat as well. The snowball is rolling!
Round 3
Once again, in terms of monsters still alive, I am definitely suffering. BUT my Quora once again managed to trigger her bloodlust and she got the buff from the martyr ability. Will she be able to outheal the damage of the enemy monsters while dealing enough damage herself? We'll see it in the next rounds.
Round 4
Quora survived another round and next round she'll kill another monster thus giving her another stack of bloodlust. The battle seems to start to tilt in my favor. As expected Quora is the one playing the mainrole.
Round 5
As expected, Quora killed another monster and became even stronger. Now the enemies can't outdamage her healing anymore. It's just a matter of time until she kills the leftover enemy monsters and the battle is won. To be complete, I will keep sharing the next rounds though.
Round 6
Surprise, Quora made another kill and became even stronger. What would happen next? I have no idea, wink wink.
Round 7
Quora made another kill, stacked bloodlust and will finish the battle in the next round. Well played Quora!
Conclusion
My strategy worked out as intended. I wanted to put enough meatshields in front of Quora so she could hopefully get het bloodlust stacked. When she became the monster in the first position, she had received one buff of bloodlust and the buff of Martyr. Quora was definitely the main card here. But my Grund dealt his damage as well. Through the reach ability, he could deal quite some damage and kill the enemy tank as well. Lining up everything fine for my Quora to finish it off.
As you can see at above printscreen, I managed to win from someone with quite higher rating, who used leveled cards as well. So, don't give up when you face a tougher opponent, with a good strategy, you can still win the battle!
Link of the battle: https://splinterlands.com/battle/sl_a017050f0a252e0185b678fd1a80a20c?ref=stekene
How did I begin to play Splinterlands?
It all began in December 2021, I was a bit bored and was looking for a new game to play on my laptop. After googling a bit, I saw the term play2earn in my google results. I didn't know it at that time but it seemed awesome, earning money while playing games instead of spending money on those games. Soon I learned that play2earn means that you can indeed earn some money to play the games. How does it work? While playing those games, you can earn NFT's of those games. These NFT's can be traded and sold for cryptocurrencies which could be swapped for fiat if you would like to. That's how I started.
Do you want to try out Splinterlands aswell?
Here is my referal link: https://splinterlands.com?ref=stekene
