Greetings Everyone

Welcome to my weekly Splinterlands post. Everyweek Iwrite about Splinterlands game because I like this game. It is an unique Play to Earn TCG on Hive Blockchain. I believe Splinterlands is one of the best Blockchain Game, although this is debatable, but hey... This is why I like sharing anything and everything about it.

Today I make this post, which initially had a title of "Building A Solid Line Up". I think that is a good topic and there are two reasons that make me want to write about it.

First, there are still many people who get confused on how to build up a great team for the Splinterlands Battle. Most of them end up setting a team consists of strong units, I mean big strong units which most of them are Legendaries. Nothing wrong with that, because strong team are built by strong units, the stronger they are, the stronger the team will be...

Unfortunately it is not as simple like that. You need to build some meta(s) too, how you will attack, how you will defense, what kind of counter you set, what weakness you want to exploit, and many more. Sometime the strongest units lose badly due to those small factors.

Second, As the time progresses, newer cards editions are released, and the selection get too big. Sometime I think it is damn to vast to understand all Splinterlands cards, and I start to wonder whether this game can be played as casual game later in future.

As I said that, rather than trying to memorize every units, the easier or softer way to play this game is to set some meta or line up you like, then find the unit that can fit in to your role. Or have some golden combinations you like, and try to build up a team for them.

Ok back to the main topic

If you combine those two issues, undeniable you will see some people playing with great cards, strong and expensive ones, but end up losing. Well their team or line up aren't bad, because their cards are already awesome, but still... LOSE

I don't say they are bad players, stupid or dump. This is a game and we should have fun with it. Even the worst players can steal some win, and the best players still can lose badly. So rather than saying bad things, I prefer to say positive one

Maybe your mindset when build up your team is not clear and sharp enough. Instead trying to get the best and strongest team, why don't you try to make a solid line up. Solid line up which are:

1. Having clear offensive meta, you know well how your team will attack your opponents.
2. Defensive meta, you know well what kind of incoming attacks you are anticipating and build a defense to withstand them.
3. Counter and Exploit. You never know 100% exactly how your opponent will play, but you can predict how they will come, what their pros and cons are and try to counter and exploit it.

This is for example, we can know that this opponent have Ilthain so it's not a wise move to come with a full set of range squads against him during keep your distance rulest. The new interface let you know what kind of opponent we will have based on their last 6 battles, and so do they... They know what are our last 6 battles.

So don't think too much about getting the best and strongest, focus on building a good solid team, and let's check our battle then!

HIGHLIGHTED BATTLE

Ok this is the battle I pick for today topic. It is not a good Splinterlands post if we share no battle here. And This battle is what I think suit with my topic today.

Our formation or line up and what kind of meta we want to employ, all are depended on the ruleset we have here. let check them one by one.

27 Mana Cap. This is the most important one, so we have 2 approaches available for this, the first one is to get 6 units team and of course I have to rely with small mana units. The second one is to have less than 6 units in order to get spare mana and go with more big stronger units.

Holy Protection Ruleset. This ruleset gives Divine Shield ability to all units on the battlefield. So all will negate their first attack they get. There are three ways we can use to exploit this ruleset:

1. Bring as many units as you can. Having less than 6 units means you let your opponent gets the advantages.
2. Use multiple attack ability, such as double strike, blast or any that make you damage more than once.
3. Focus your attack, don't disperse your target or scatter your attacks.

Based on this condition, I should get 6 units team, and let see the last important ruleset...

Aimless. Every range and magic attacks will be scattered. This is not good due to the Holy Protection ruleset, so having a melee attack seems favorable

So I came up with this trio as the base of my attacking meta

These trio needed 10 Mana to allow them joining in your team. In general they look a bit suck, a bit slow with so so melee damage. But they have what I needed, a focused attack using opportunity ability and they bypass the Aimless ruleset.

This is the price of having a melee unit, because relatively they are slower. For the same reason I pick Void Dragon as my main tank.

There are two reason why Void Dragon is a good fit for my line up:

1. He only needs 5 mana, which is not burdening too much on my limited 27 mana cap team.
2. 5 Speed and a fly ability. I am expecting my opponent to come using some melee units too, so having a fast tank with fly ability which increase evade rate is a great decision.

Basically these 4 units are the base of my line up. I add Venary Crystalsmith and Stitch Leech to make my team more solid. So let see how this would go

• The battle started with both side buffing their team and debuffing their opponent. My opponent came with 4 units only team, which I believed this was his biggest mistake here.
• They came with 9 Melee damage and 3 range damage. Their combined damage was 12 damage per round.
• My team had 9 Melee damage, 2 range damage and 1 magic damage, so in total my fire power became 12 damage per round which was equal to my opponent's
• In general our firepower were the same, however strategy-wise, I believe my team was better here. We employed meta that suitable with the ruleset and countered their tactic

• They lost their fiend in the first round, Overall I owned the first round. The divine shield helped them not to lose more in that round.

• This time they lost their Kha-Zi Conjurer. Things looked ugly on their side, 2 vs 6, they were losing the number

• This time they lost their Drybone Megalodon. They had Grum Flameblade could not even land any hit on my Void Dragon

• Grum Flameblade indeed was very strong. Even I had 6 unit bashed him non stop, he didn't fall in a round.

• However without help of any healing, finally he got killed here. Good Game

Overall our units were not much different, their unit infact were better. They had max level Grum Flameblade, which was more awesome than all of my units.

The reason why my team won very clearly in this battle was not because we had better cards. The reason was simple, our line up was solid. We were solid based on these points:

1. We employed 6 units to gain benefits from the rulesets, they did not do that.
2. Our attacks were focused using opportunity abilities from 3 of our units. Actually they did the same, using Drybone Megalodon.
3. We tried to counter our opponent using Void Dragon, and they did not do anything about countering us.
4. I had two units a bit different, Stitch leech who sneak attacked and Venary Crystalsmith who healed. They could become a backup plan incase something bad happen, for example my meta got countered. Did they do the same? well mo.

Ok I hope this battle and explanation could give you a better picture what is a solid line up that I keep saying about. And that's all for today post, and Thanks for coming and let's meet in Splinterlands Battles!!

Thank you for visiting my Splinterlands post here, don't forget to leave your comments and feedback below. There are credits in this post for these people:

• @splinterlands : for holding Social Media challenge events
• carrieallen : for ultimate markdown tutorial
• thepeakstudio : for wonderful divider art