Today, I'm going to talk about another keep your distance ruleset strategy that not many people are talking about. Some of the top champion players use this strategy and it was eye-opening when I realized it.
Let's get into it!
What is the strategy?
This is a strategy that tries to out survive the fatigue by using high health, healing + last stand. You can use cards like the below, for example:
- Scarred Llama Mage
- Gelatinous Cube
- Kron the Undying
- Cornealus
Example Battles
26 mana Llama Cube
https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_2708c24bbd07a74ac5d22e359e9bd5ed
SPIRITS4YOU is a champion player who I see recently on the champion leaderboard.
The water team does 8 damage per turn and kills all the monsters except gelatinous cube in 6 turns.
However, the cube gets last stand and the HP becomes 30, which means it can heal 10 hp per turn. The blue team is only doing 8 damage per turn. So the llama cube wins in fatigue.
26 mana Llama Cube
https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_cadec86aed89a2fcad66b5be15b5f762
Gnarkada1994 is a player who is always on the leaderboard (at least accounts named like gnarkada[number] are always on the leader board)
Grimgerde is also a player who is often on the champion leaderboard.
In keep your distance ruleset, sneak archery or magic monsters are populor. In this case, they are Iza the fanged and Goblin sorcerer. They are attacking cube in the back but there's no way that they can kill cube because of the high hitpoint and self heal.
Another important aspect of this strategy is that cube blocks sneak attacks.
The max level cube has void. It's just highly unlikely that sneak archery or magic monsters can give enough damage to take out cube in the back. Before they take out cube by stopping heal with stun, the opponent monsters can kill sneak monsters.
It's worth noting that acid shooter does a great job poisoning and killing the opponent's backline monsters.
54 mana Llama Cube
https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_2b5599c531623bcd5225889d482ae191
In this battle, both players chose the same monsters except one. toocurious who is often on the champion leaderboard recently chose mycelic slipspawn but goldy146 chose Centauri mage.
This could be draw if there's not much difference in the monsters they picked but what they chose actually changed the game.
Centauri mage has repair ability, repairing friendly monsters' armors. Since both teams have archery attacks, reparing armor makes a big difference.
Round 13, toocurious's cube be in last stand mode when goldy146 has 5 monsters on the battle field. Fatigue kicks in at round 20.
Finally, round 28, goldy's cube goes into last stand with hp 36. Toocurious's cube has 34 hp. So that 2 hp difference gave the win to goldy146.
54 mana, Equalizer, Llama + Spirit of the forest
https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_e7052d188d54b3d5b6ab19dec7982472
This is an interesting battle because
TOOCURIOUS vs BULLDOG1205 (the biggest youtuber consistently talking about Splinterlands)
Equalizer rulest, Spirit of forest with tank heal can act like cube.
Bulldog's Venari spellsmith with amplify was doing a great job of reflecting damage to the opponent. Bulldog had good amount of damage, so the spirit of the forest became the only monster on toocurious side in round 7.
It seems that bulldog is going to win at the first glance.
However, equalizer ruleset + last stand gave the spirit of the forest 27 hp, which means it heals 9 hp per turn. Bulldog is only doing exactly 9 damage.
It goes to fatigue and the spirit of the forest wins in the fatigue.
How to counter this attack
- High DPS, more than 10 damage per turn to a monster with void
- (not the best) use sneak archery monsters
It's really hard to kill cube in the back in this ruleset because we don't have many archery sneak monsters in the game. Iza the fanged + Dragonling Bowman is your best bet because Iza can stun cube and cube has void, magic damage doesn't do much. You have to be lucky enough to stun a lot, almost every time to actually kill cube before you get killed.
I can't think of other ways to counter Llama Cube (don't forget that cube get cleanse at the start of each turn).
Please leave a comment if you know another way to beat this strategy.
Closing remark
This is not a very fun strategy but is a strategy that gives you wins in keep your distance ruleset where you don't expect powerful sneak attacks (like sandworm)
Let me know your thoughts in the comment section! Was this strategy new to you?
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