Good day everyone and the Splinterlands community. Today's Blog highlight will be the battle in the low mana cap Going the Distance rule set. This time, we're focusing on which is ideal for low mana cap rule set battle, and exploring effective strategies for utilizing abilities of useful units in this battle.
Based on my experience for most of my battles in low mana cap, I'll try to share the disadvantages and advantages of using a single unit deploy versus a strength-in-numbers strategy in low mana cap Splinterlands battles
Single Unit Deploy (Strong Unit) Strategy
Advantages:
Scenario 1. High Damage Output: A single, powerful unit often deals heavy damage, which can quickly eliminate opponents' weaker units. Especially if has Bloodlust ability like Quora Towershead and Jared Scar.
Scenario 2. Durability: Strong units usually have high health, armor, or defensive abilities, making them harder to take down. It's quite common to use Healing abilities in this battle with useful abilities to survive most attacks on the opponent and will also survive up to 20 rounds to win the battle with Fatigue.
Scenario 3. Simplified Strategy: Less to manage, making your battle plan more straightforward and focused. Sometimes just an on-the-go strategy is easy and sometimes work if lucky.
Scenario 4. Special Abilities: Often, powerful units come with game-changing abilities that can turn the tide of battle (e.g., healing, shield, or retaliate). In terms of abilities, it also coincides with both Durability and Damage Output if you are confident that a single unit is strong enough.
Scenario 5. Resilience to AoE Damage: Fewer units mean less vulnerability to area-of-effect (AoE) attacks, as your opponent’s AoE won’t hit multiple targets especially if you want to only tank a single unit that can do Backfire opponent attacks with Amplify, Magic Reflect, Return Fire, and Backfire abilities.
Disadvantages:
Scenario 1. All-or-Nothing: If your single unit is defeated, the battle is likely lost, leaving no backup plan.
Scenario 2. Susceptibility to Debuffs: A strong unit can be easily neutralized by debuffs like stun, poison, or affliction, severely limiting its effectiveness. Like if you have triggered your Bloodlust ability then it might also be taken away once it hits by Dispel ability and even if you have Healing ability for endurance it can be countered by Affliction ability.
Scenario 3. Single attack on Small Units: If your opponent uses weaker, numerous units, your great damage may be wasted on overkilling low-health enemies. Especially the Chaos Agent which is good for tanking in a low mana cap rule set and the enemy might have more attacks on single rounds.
Scenario 4. Vulnerability to Swarm Attacks: A single unit can be overwhelmed by numerous opponents, each chipping away its health bit by bit. With overwhelm attacks on low mana cap rule set you only get single attack per round which is not good for a certain battle.
Scenario 5. Lack of Flexibility: Only having one unit limits your options in responding to different battle scenarios or counters.
Strength in Numbers (Multiple Units) Strategy
Advantages:
Scenario 1. ScenarioFlexibility: A variety of units can adapt to different situations, filling various roles such as offense, defense, and support. You can dominate the opponent with various strategies in numerous useful units.
Scenario 2. Resilience: If one unit falls, you still have others to fight on, ensuring a single bad hit does not defeat you and can do a tanking strategy to let your backlines attack on given rounds.
Scenario 3. Spreading the Damage: Opponents’ attacks are divided among multiple units, preventing one unit from absorbing too much damage. I often use sneaky attacks on this rule set in water active element to attack the backline of the opponent and it's also advantageous if the opponent uses a single unit because I have more damage attacks per round.
Scenario 4. Synergy Potential: Different units working together (tank, healer, damage dealer) can create powerful synergies. As many strategies are useful on certain rule sets with low mana caps, more units mean more useful abilities to use.
Scenario 5. Better Crowd Control: Multiple units can target a variety of enemy types, handling both front liners and backliners simultaneously. If you assume that the opponent tries to attack the backline then you can add an additional unit as a tank in the backline on certain rules given, especially the Super Sneak rule set.
Disadvantages:
Scenario 1. Lower Overall defense and damage Per Unit: Each unit may be weaker, meaning they can be quickly eliminated by stronger opponents. If the opponent has a True Strike and Piercing abilities with Bloodlust, then 1 by 1 would likely get stronger because of low health and defense which is easily executed.
Scenario 2. Vulnerability to AoE: Area-of-effect attacks can severely damage or wipe out multiple units at once. This is quite rare but useful with Trample ability with True Strike, only a single round can easily dominate the battle if they are stronger legendary units in low mana cap rule set.
Scenario 3. Mana Constraints: This is the only scenario in which all abilities won't be able to be used on certain rule sets. With low mana, you may need to sacrifice quality for quantity, leading to a weaker overall lineup. This is only rare but if the opponent utilizes the use of magic damage would likely easily execute every unit in a single round. It's only good if you have stronger low mana and take tanks bait most units in the first position.
Scenario 4. Complexity in Strategy: Managing multiple units requires more planning and can be less straightforward than a single powerful unit. I sometimes go single unit because I feel more confident on a single unit than using multiple units as sometimes multiple units can be very easily executed by a legendary or useful card of opponent use and not a single hit is missed. I sometimes question this Chaos Agent if it misses or not, or just the luck difference.
Scenario 5. Weak Against High Damage Units: A strong opponent with high single-target damage may quickly cut through your smaller, weaker units. As example of that is Bloodlust especially Quora Towershead as it will get stronger once it defeats per unit making a multiple-unit disadvantage when it comes to Bloodlust.
Both strategies come with trade-offs, and success often depends on the rule set, specific matchups, and how well each strategy is executed. This is just my most recent battle experience in Modern League and hopefully, you gain some of my experience.
Into the battle
Link of the Battle: https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_af267c091b175b9146830c28765a5ef5
The rule sets given are Target Practice, Blood & Sunder, and Going Distance.
My Simple Plan Line up
First position - Naga Assasin
- Act as a tank in first position because of useful abilities to tank. Swiftness ability which adds all friendly units by 1 speed stats and Backfire which is an ability that can backfire opponent attacks if they miss and will deal 2 melee damage with decent 6 speed stats. Which I hope that opponent attacks will miss.
Second position - Acid Shooter
- Second position because of Health difference from my other range units, it has 2 range damage and its abilities Poison, Cripple, and Scattershot. In this case, Poison is actually what I want on this unit as it will have a chance to poison the target which will then take 2 damage per round ends.
Third position - Blackmoor Jinx
- Additional unit because it only costs 1 mana, a legendary rebellion card with 1 range damage, 2 speed, and 2 health, and as of now I only have level 1 Blackmoor Jinx but still useful.
Fourth position - Iza the Fanged
- Last position for Iza the Fanged because I want this unit to survive most of the rounds. It has 3 range damage, 4 speed, 3 health, and with abilities, Sneak, Scavenger, and Stun. I like this unit because it has a Stun ability which can have a chance to stun the target and will not attack on respective speed and next round.
Selecting a useful ability in this battle with a good amount of damage will increase your chances of victory in this type of rule set.
Will my Strength in Numbers strategy work?
It seems that the opponent also uses Quix the Devious summoner which decreases both speed and range damage by 1, and the opponent deployed Queen of Crows, a rare Riftwatcher card range type attack. It has overpowered abilities which is also useful in this rule set given. A Closed Range is an ability that can attack in the first position, Headwinds is an ability that can debuff range damage of the opposing team by 1, Slow is an ability that decreases my speed by 1, and Return Fire can reflect my range attacks takes 1 damage per attack. It is useful for a single unit that costs 9 mana plus Quix the Devious that costs 4 mana which equals the rule set given 13 mana cap. I calculated the total damage that I will receive from Return Fire and the total damage I will hit the Queen of Crows. I have 10 healths in total with 1 attack damage to each unit and will receive damage, the Queen of Crows has 13 healths so statistically I will lose this match. But I didn't include my Stun from Iza the Fanged and Poison Acid Shooter abilities, and in this battle, I luckily applied both Stun and poison to the queen of Crows in the second round. If it didn't apply the chances of Stun and Poison before it executes from Return Fire then I would likely lose in this battle.
I win this match with my useful abilities in multiple units strategy, this scenario likely relates to Scenario 2 Resilience, and Scenario 4 Synergy Potential. Dominate the opponent with useful abilities and endurance attack before the opponent takes a chance to attack. Speed is also important in this battle for the chance to miss incoming attacks of the opponent.
Depending on the rules stipulated and the opponent's past battles, therefore be sure to research and evaluate the potential lineup you wish to utilize. Remember that to employ effective tactics, you must combine cards that have powers that are appropriate or beneficial for the given rule sets, place them in favorable positions, and get familiar with your opponent's lineup. Stronger opponent cards? you might still defeat and win it even with your basic lineup 🤗.
This is another simple strategy yet helpful for certain matches in the Earth line-up element, feel free to check my other blog that uses the Water element which I commonly use, and hope this could help you in the battle. 😊
Thank You! for being here, coming this far, and supporting me. I hope this will help you in some of your battles.🤗
You can share thoughts and ideas about what could be possible to use in this rule set.
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Credits:
The first photo background is generated using AI Microsoft Bing
And edited Design photo Splinterlands using PicsArt
