Greetings, battle mages!
It's been quite a while since I wrote a Splinterlands article, but I have been playing the game very actively. That cannot be said about my previous guild which saw a major decline in players participating in brawls which then led to a drop in rewarded Merits and SPS. I made a hard decision and bid farewell to the old one and joined a new, much more active guild.
Amazingly, after the first brawl in the new guild, I received almost ten times more SPS than with the previous one so this alone has boosted my enthusiasm to come back each day to battle.
Speaking of battles, today I thought I'd share a pretty cool one with you guys. It's an Opportunity battle with a high enough mana cap to showcase some of my deadliest monsters! Let's take a look at the setup and lineups first.
The Setup
After a long losing streak, if you get a battle setup like this, it's bound to put a smile on your face as when you are picking the team, more and more cunning strategies come up in your mind and you are almost certain about the outcome.
Now, I don't wanna sound cocky or anything but when I saw the opponent lineup, I knew this one was in the bag. Don't get me wrong, my opponent has a very lethal team that could do very well on certain occasions. However, this was not one of those.
We both picked a level 5 Helios Matriarch as a summoner. This Dragon card brings +1 speed for all friendly units and allows bringing one Gladiator monster to battle.
The Dragon Splinter consists of some really powerful magic monsters such as Chaos Dragon and Night Reaper but as there was a Counterspell rule in play, I decided to pass on those units and focus on a much more evil plan.
The Equal Opportunity ruleset is perhaps my favourite one in the whole game. It gives every monster the Opportunity ability which forces them to attack against the weakest link in opponent ranks - from any position.
This opens the door for strategic thinking: if they are all going to be targeting my weakest unit, is there a way to benefit from that in some way? To turn it around?
The Martyr
My approach to Equal Opportunity battles is to (mostly) add a monster with Martyr ability to my squad. Usually, it happens to be Venari Marksrat because it is a Neutral unit and therefore can be added to any Splinter.
Most of the opponent units will now attack the poor Marksrat who has the lowest amount of health points. If and when it will perish, the Martyr ability is triggered and the adjacent units will gain a boost to all their stats.
To make things even more fun, I've added River Hellondale to my team. He has the Resurrect ability and since it's written in stars that the Marksrat is about to go down first, it will then also be the one to be reborn. Soon Marksrat will die again and make his friends around him even more powerful and deadly.
The Friends
But who are these loyal friends who boldly stand next to our Marksrat until the very end?
Well, the two units in question are actually quite recent additions to my deck, both are extremely lethal and in a way, pretty similar. Therefore I find myself pondering which one to use but on happy days like these when there's enough mana to use, I often choose both ladies.
Drybone Raider is a high mana cost unit with both ranged and melee attacks in use. She also has the Double Strike ability making her able to attack twice in a single round.
Since this battle has the Equal Opportunity rule, the Drybone Raider can also use her melee attack from the back line. This will then make her attack 4 times in a round!
In a case of my opponent is heavily armored, the Raider has one more ace in her sleeve: the Shatter ability. This will completely destroy any armour the hit opponent monster might have.
Tatiana Blayde is another mean lady or perhaps under the right circumstances, even meaner.
She too has both ranged and melee attacks and thanks to the ruleset in play, she will use both of them from her spot.
Tatiana is also very fast and since she is forced to attack the weakest enemy unit, it's very likely that after a quick double attack, her Bloodlust will be triggered. This will her even more deadly in the next round.
So, if the stats of these two fighters look impressive now, wait until a few rounds of battle, after two deaths of the Marksrat and look at these two then!
The Battle
Almost forgot! Before we go into the battle, there's one unit I'd like to introduce to you: Coastal Sentry.
This melee monster can also attack twice in a round thanks to the Double Strike ability. Her melee strength is 4 points and when this is combined with double strike and Piercing ability, no one is really safe.
Now, let's get to it. You can watch the whole battle HERE and don't forget to comment what you thought of my strategy.
BATTLE REPORT:
I can understand my opponent's strategy of picking Iziar, a monster with Taunt ability drawing most of my attacks toward her. However, this only slowed my progress a bit as Coastal Sentry took the high mana unit out by dealing a -8 melee attack damage.
Veneri Marksrat was also terminated, twice, as was planned. His demise however resulted in Drybone Raider and Tatiana Blayde becoming a super-strong duo.
Drybone Raider for example destroyed 2.5 enemies in a single round!
Tatiana Blayde on the other hand attacked their tank unit, Drybone Barbarian, and while she managed to be successful, the Barbarian used his Retaliate ability and unfortunately, Tatiana was also wasted.
Now all there was left from the opponent team was a lonely Marisol Contuma who, in my opinion, should never be underestimated. Still, despite her strong armour, I had a unit with Piercing and a unit with Shatter left so Marisol didn't have much of a chance here. The game was over,
Conclusion
Even though this wasn't such a walk in the park as I expected, I do think my strategy was spot on. If there is enough mana at your disposal, I'd advise you to go in with full force. Use units capable of attacking multiple times in a round, and take advantage of the Martyr ability to grow them even stronger. Don't forget the fact that Speed matters a lot in Equal Opportunity battles so choose fast monsters and a summoner with a speed buff or debuff. You really want to get that advantage.
Thank you for reading!
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