This Splinterlands Social Media challenge post features a battle with the Shades of Gray ruleset! This is a ruleset that eliminates a rather large selection of cards from consideration - only Neutral cards are allowed, which means that every monster that is part of a splinter is banned! As you may expect, Shades of Gray has a very clear cut set of winners and losers - all Neutral monsters love to see this rule since they are the only ones who will get to play, while all of the other monsters are not so lucky.
Shades of Gray is an interesting ruleset, because the removal of monsters that belong to a splinter means that both players will theoretically have access to the exact same selection of monsters. While this limits that variability of lineups that you may see in the fight, it also places an emphasis on summoner selection, since summoner buffs and abilities become that much more impactful given the limited environment. As you'll see soon, today we will be taking advantage of some powerful summoner abilities while fighting in today's battle!
If you wanted to jump right to the action, the Battle Link is right here. Want to hear some more about the lineup? Read on further!
As mentioned above, the rules for our battle feature Shades of Gray, which means that only Neutral monsters are allowed. We also have Aim True and Close Range, which mean that all attacks will hit and that ranged attackers may attack from the front position. We have a medium mana cap of 29, and can choose from the Water, Earth, Life, and Dragon splinters.
When it comes to neutral monsters, there are plenty of melee and ranged monsters, but not so many magic attackers. With my summoner choice I wanted to give my team some strong options against one of those categories - melee monsters. Eternal Tofu grants my whole team Thorns, as well as some additional health. This should deal heavy damage to any melee monsters on the opposing team, while also granting my monsters some additional bulk thanks to a health boost and a Tactics-granted Divine Shield.
First up was Mantaroth. As I just mentioned, with only neutral monsters available, I expect this battle to be heavy on melee and ranged attackers. Mantaroth is great in this situation because of his Shield ability, which effectively doubles his bulk against those attack types. Pair that with Thorns from Eternal Tofu and you get a durable front line tank capable of dishing out plenty of damage to the enemy melee monsters.
In my second position I slotted in Pallus. Pallus is a heavy hitter who can attack from the second spot with its Reach ability. Pallus has plenty of bulk as well with 8 health and some evasion with Flying, which makes it a great secondary tank. I was dedicating most of my mana for the battle to Mantaroth and Pallus, so my plan was for them to be able to sweep through the opposing monsters as quickly as possible.
Finally, I closed out my lineup with Scavo Hireling. Scavo Hireling doesn't attack at all, but comes with the very helpful Repair ability. Since Mantaroth and Pallus both have armor, my hope was that Scaveo Hireling would be able to keep them armored up and in the fight for that much longer.
With the lineup set, it's off into battle! When I see the selected teams I am not sure how the battle is going to turn out. On one hand, the enemy team does not have any magic damage, which means that Mantaroth and his Shield should be in great shape to tank the enemy attacks. On the other hand, that opposing Uraeus looks to be positioned perfectly to take out my Scavo Hireling early on in the battle. With no recovery on my side of the battlefield, my team will be in a much riskier position.
In the first round of battle my Scavo Hireling takes heavy damage. One more attack will knock it out of the battle, but luckily Thorns means that it is not a one sided exchange - another Thorns counterhit will take Uraeus off the field as well! At the front, things are going according to plan - my pair of heavy melee attackers have already wiped out the enemy Disintegrator.
Over the next 2 rounds of battle, Mantaroth and Pallus do some great work and make steady progress through the enemy team. By the start of round 4 things are looking up as there are just 2 enemy monsters remaining, both of them relatively fragile ranged attackers.
One round later the battle was just about over. My Mantaroth's Shield was particularly effective, as he still had plenty of health left. On the other side of the battlefield, all that was left was a lone Xenith Archer. Victory! And again, if you wanted to see the whole battle for yourself, you can see it right here.
This battle showed the importance of reading the ruleset and choosing proper summoner abilities. Shades of Gray significantly reduced the monsters and strategies available to both of us in this battle. While Thorns did no directly counter all of my opponent's monsters, it made relatively quick work of their tanks. This allowed my own melee monsters to quickly make their way on to the weaker ranged attackers and claim the win.
Thank you so much for reading all the way to the end. Interested in seeing some more of my writing in the future? Be sure to give me a follow! In the meantime, if you'd like to see some of my recent posts:
Taking them to the Clean(s)ers - Battling with Noxious Fumes! - A Splinterlands battle analysis, featuring Noxious Fumes!
Splinterlands Economics: Causation - A look at causation, and how we can apply it to Splinterlands!
Splinterlands Economics: Ceteris Paribus - An introduction to the concept of Ceteris Paribus, and how we can apply it to Splinterlands!
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All images used in this article are open source and obtained from Pixabay or Unsplash. Thumbnails borrowed with permission from the Splinterlands team or made in Canva.
