Hello dear Splinterlands community! Today I am writing my first post for the new Community Engagement Challenge. The topic is favourite strategies.
There are so many things to consider when building strategies and there are so many different circumstances. The rulesets play a role, the mana cap, the splinters you can use and most of all, the cards available to you. Then there are combinations of different strategies you can apply but for the sake of this post, I am going to discuss a common approach I use: stealth monsters.
There are three stealth abilities plus scattershot: Sneak, Snipe and Opportunity. These abilities do the following:
Sneak allows melee monsters to attack the last monster in the enemy lineup.
Snipe allows range and magic monsters to attack the first non-melee monster from position 2 onwards in the opposing camp.
Opportunity allows all monsters from position 2 onwards to attack the lowest health enemy monster.
These stealth abilities are a very effective strategy to use, as your team will attack enemy monsters in different positions, rather than simply hammering the enemy tank. This is important for two reasons. Firstly, when the enemy tank is heavily protected by defenses like Shield, Thorns and Heal, among others, you will have a hard time getting through that tank and your monsters will get exhausted one by one as the enemy attacks different positions in your team. Secondly, many smaller monsters in the enemy midfield and backline are very dangerous and you need to be able to pick them off before they destroy you.
The achilles heel with this strategy is when your opponent uses Taunt, which overrules stealth and redirects all fire to a particular enemy monster. Yet, when your team is strong enough, even enemy Taunt cannot stop you from becoming victorious.
To illustrate the power and effectiveness of using stealth monsters, I would like to show you the following battle, in which I fielded one of each stealth type. This strategy is not only effective for its own sake, it is a good goto plan when you have no other ideas or are limited in your card choices. Most splinters have different stealth monsters and there are neutral cards to choose from also.
The battle I have chosen to show you today is a mid mana battle using the death deck.
The battle stats are the following:
RULESET(S): Ferocity
MANA: 40
SPLINTERS: red, white, purple and green
Here is the team I put together:
Thaddius Brood is my favourite CL rare summoner. He takes one health from each enemy monster and takes one magic. As enemy magic monsters are especially lethal against unprotected monsters, debuffing the enemy magic capabilities play a significant role.
Cursed Windeku is a great tank to use in mid mana battles. He costs 6 mana and provides Thorns and Heal. He has high health to boot and altogether his stats make him a formidable opponent at the frontend of your team.
Harklaw is here as a backup tank to make sure the frontline doesn't collapse early. I also have plenty of mana to work with for my stealth candidates, so Harklaw can wait in the wings to clean up later if required.
Magi Necrosi is my preferred Snipe monster in the game. his stats are unbeatable and Camouflage gives him good protection. Hidden behind 2 tanks, he is more or less guaranteed to survive until very late in the fight.
Uraeus, my second stealth monster of choice, brings Sneak. Positioned in the midfield, he should have a several chances at sneaking a hit at the enemy backline.
Lira The Dark is the Opportunity stealth monster in the lineup. She is the fastest of the three attackers in focus and with her great speed, she should have first strike. If there is an unprotected low mana enemy monster around, its good night Saigon.
Here comes the second Sneak attacker in the team, Silent Shavi . Together with Uraeus, they will wreak Havok in the enemy backline.
So here is the lineup with 4! stealth monsters, so let's see how effective this strategy is:
Round 1 started with a double charge at the enemy backline. This was not going to be difficult but there was an Enrage monster with 12 health in the first enemy position, which was going to be tough to get through. Clockwork Aid at the end was heavily battered and poisoned to make sure he would not be there in the second round. Cursed Windeku barely survived the round to scrape in with 2 health.
Round 2 saw two enemy monsters bite the dust in quick succession but Cursed Windeku also perished. It was 5 to 4 and the enemy tank, Drybone Barbarian was standing firm. He retaliated and got healed to this was going to be harder than I thought.
Harklaw was the first to be toasted in Round 3, which brought Magi Necrosi to the front, causing the battle to come into the critical phase. Fortunately, the enemy team was sufficiently hammered to give us a chance of success, although Drybone Barbarian still had 12 health!
Round 4 saw two more enemy monsters disappear in a flash, which turned the tables.
In Round 5 Drybone Barbarian was quickly left with no support monsters and was left standing alone against 4 attackers and got stunned. It took one hit in round 6 to end the battle.
This battle shows you the value of the stealth strategy. My Sneak attackers took out the last two enemy monsters by the beginning of round 3 and the Snipe and Opportunity monsters destroyed the enemy midfield early enough to prevent a desaster when my frontline collapsed.
I hope you enjoyed reading this post and I am looking forward to discussing more strategies in future posts.
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WHAT IS SPLINTERLANDS?
Splinterlands is an autobattle digital card game on the Hive blockchain. The playing cards are NFTs, therefore they belong to you and you can trade, transfer or delegate them as you please. All you need to move cards and other ingame assets around is a Hive Keychain login. There are three types of battles you can play: ranked battles, brawls and tournaments. Every battle you win brings rewards, including SPS and/or loot chests containing cards, potions, packs and merits. The ingame currency is DEC and the governance token is SPS. For gladiator packs you need to earn merits through brawls and loot chests. Tournaments can bring you stacks of SPS if you play well. There are several third party card markets, including Peakmonsters.com and the best places to learn to play are PeakD and YouTube.
