The battle challenge ruleset this week is Silenced Summoners. In this ruleset, summoners do not give / take any buffs or abilities. I always make sure to use my lowest mana maxed out summoners in these matches.
The battle I chose to showcase is a 21 mana brawl battle with the FiveAlive, Silenced Summoners, and Armored Up rulesets. Fire, Water, and Life were the splinters available to play.
Here is a link to the battle:
https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sm_Bgh0VwjBwxVdeSfA2tL1
I chose the Fire splinter and decided to go with a strong sneak attack in this somewhat small mana match. In first position, I placed a mini tank with self-heal and the Void ability. Hopefully, it can hold on long enough for me to win the battle. Behind my tank I placed three sneak attack monsters. I find that sometimes my opponents end up using the same strategy as me. In this case, I want to slow down a possible strong sneak attack from my opponent. So, for my fifth monster in last position I used one with the Shield ability and plenty of Armor.
Start of Battle / Round 1
My opponent also chose the Fire splinter. Though their strategy was quite different. They used only three monsters and all of them will attack my first position mini-tank. Hopefully my mini-tank will hold long enough to give my sneak attack monsters enough time to win the match.
Round 2
After the first round, my mini-tank is still at six health thanks to a miss by my opponents’ big hitting gladiator card with Reach. If that hit had connected my mini-tank would have been defeated in the first round.
Round 3
After the second round, my mini-tank is still at six health due to its self-heal and another miss by my opponent. My sneak attack monsters defeated my opponents’ gladiator card. Now they are focused on my opponents’ first position monster since Dr. Blight in the backfield has Camouflage.
Round 4
Victory is near for me.
Overall my strategy worked for this match. I got lucky with my opponents misses but I think I still would have won even without those misses. My opponents’ three monsters were all on the slow side. With the speed advantage that I had, my strong sneak attack was too much. I have also found that in this game it is generally better to use more monsters rather than fewer. In this match I made use of all five slots that were available to me whereas my opponent only used three. My five monsters made very efficient use of the mana given for this match.
Silenced summoners can be an interesting ruleset in certain mana / ruleset combinations. For example it sometimes gives me the confidence to use a strong Magic attack against my opponent. Because I know that the Magic cannot be countered / buffed by a summoner. Though in this match, Silenced Summoners did not have much of an impact on my strategy.
