Hello Everyone, Especially Splinterlands players

I just made a funny title above, guard your backline!! For new players this might sound funny, but for older players, or returning players from the past, this should sound somewhat that make sense.

The basic mechanic of this game is simple, attacks land starting from the first unit in front, and after he or she or It dies, the unit behind the first one will come forward. And we call any unit on the first spot as the tank position.

Now here is the difference between the past and present. In the past, units which have Snipe ability, Sneak Attack, or Opportunity are not as many as nowadays. I do not say they were scarce or very limited, but the option was definitely very limited.

Starting from Chaos Legion set, then Riftwatchers and Rebellions, we have got many new units with Snipe, Opportuniy and sneak attack ability. So even without specific rulesets such as super sneak ruleset (every unit get a sneak ability), equal opportunity (all unit get opportunity ability), or that sniping ability ruleset, your backline are not that safe anymore. Many units still can aim and kill your backline.

So let me share you my battle, which my opponent who is actually not a bad one, end up defeated badly because he comes with unprotected backline.

HIGHLIGHTED BATTLE

Ok this is the battle. In general they came with better units, all of their units had better levels than my line up. It looked very promising regarding the ruleset was like this:

All units would be Melee units and all attacks would land perfectly due the aim true ruleset. Everything looked like going well with their plan, and I did not know how my opponent thought like that... He put the strongest, in term of the hardest to kill in front, and the weakest in the last.

He would lose badly from this type of lineup, because he had no defense for the backline at all. Did I have a defense? yes I did, and these were how I built my defense:

1. I brought a unit who had a protect ability, it was Alkemis The Bear. He would give +2 armor to every unit in my line up, and that would be a game changer.
2. I had Venary Knifer in the rear, with his thorn ability, he could kill any incoming sneak melee units.
3. I had my Thanalorian Blade on the second from behind, right after the Venari Knifer. She had that extra +1 Armor, although this sounded silly but I believe it could bring a big difference if she could just last one more round.
4. The last, I had my disintegrator into my line up. That gorilla had a demoralize ability which would debuff -1 melee damage from my opponent. This would help my backline survive sneak and opportunity attacks too.

So I had these 4 approaches for the defense, what did they have? big zero. Ok let see how they were paying their mistake there

• The battle started with both side buffing their team and debuffing their opponent. It's an all melee battle, their approach was to have all units joining attacks, whilst mine was to protect a core unit, Katrelba Gobson, and hoped she would wipe out all of her enemies herself
• They came with 10 melee damage per round, They should get 16 but my Disintegrator managed to debuff their damage.
• My team had 8 melee damage per round. Only 3 units in my line up which joined in attacks, the rest were supports and wall.
• If They used a big wall behind, they should be able to defeat my lineup easily because they had way better stronger units due to level difference. But this time, they would pay the price for playing too open

• The first round was a total victory for my side. We swiped out two of their units, Uraeus and Celestial Harpy, however their uraeus managed to poison my Venari Knifer, I believed he would die from that poison.
• In this second round, they managed to kill my grund. Uriel The Purifier managed to land his Charged Attack, which was too hard and my Grund could not withstand it. However my team killed their Dumackle Exile, so we maintained our superiority here

• Looked at this point, 3 vs 5. Definitely my team would win this battle. It's too bad my Venari Knifer died from poison in this round.
• In this round, my team managed to kill two of their units, the speed superiority make my team moved first, killed them first without any incoming retaliation.

• Round fourth here, 1 vs 4. I believed this was very clear, they were losing this battle

• My Katrelba Gobson landed the final blow, good game!

The Back Line Was Too Open

There are many ways we can see this battle and many things we can discuss here. I can say that Katrelba Gobson is very powerful units, and if my opponent doesn't make a good lineup, she could punish them alone.

But this post is not about Katrelba Gobson, this is about the backline lineup. The game has changed, many units such as Katrelba Gobson that could kill your backline easily and got buffed up from it. As the time progress, they would become super strong, OVER POWERED units that none can stop them.

To prevent this, you must put the last unit as one of the hardest to kill. The unit doesn't have to be super hard, great wall or anything, it just have to be something that not be killed in one poke, not a unit like Celestial Harpy.

If my opponent put Dumackle Exile as the rear, the battle should be more evenly that this. It would be better if they put big melee unit behind, or similar to my approach, put someone with thorn ability behind to shut down incoming sneak attacks.

I think my message in this post is as simple like that. Guard your backline, don't leave them open unguarded. 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