The battle challenge ruleset this week is Equal Opportunity. In this ruleset, all monsters gain the Opportunity ability. The lowest health monsters get eliminated first in this ruleset.
The battle I chose to showcase is a 15 mana brawl battle with 3 rulesets: Silenced Summoners, Explosive Weaponry, and of course Equal Opportunity. Fire, Water, Earth, and Death were the available splinters to play.
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sm_GxdMlud1K1uhRlSY7Jef&ref=ninjamike
I chose the Death splinter since I wanted to make use of my Epic gladiator card Trapp Falloway. This is a niche card that is very powerful in certain situations. I like to use it in Equal Opportunity as well as some other rulesets such as 'Super Sneak' or 'All Monsters Can Attack First Position'.
I tried to protect my Trapp Falloway as much as possible by placing it in the middle of my lineup and away from my two lowest health monsters. My Trapp Falloway has the highest health of all my cards so it will likely be targeted last. However, it is still at risk of taking on blast damage. Hopefully the Bloodlust ability will increase its health even more.
Start of Battle / Round 1
My opponent chose the Water splinter. Their strategy appears to be attacking me from the front and rear rather than my lowest health card necessarily. Most of their other monsters have low speed and health and so will almost certainly be wiped out before they can attack.
Round 2
The first round was brutal for both sides. After the first round, I only have two monsters remaining and my opponent only has three. However, I am in better shape because I still have my Trapp Falloway. Because of the blast it was able to eliminate two monsters with one hit. And so it received Bloodlust twice in the same round increasing its Melee damage and speed all the way to six and health to five.
Round 3
This match is all but over.
Overall my strategy worked for this match. Building my entire lineup around one niche card worked. It was protected enough in the first round to survive and become even more powerful through Bloodlust. I think we both could have done better placing our cards. But with a small mana, Blast ruleset match like this one, deciding on the placement and order of your cards is tricky.
I like the opportunity ruleset though I am often indecisive when deciding what type of attack to use. It is usually fun to go with Melee attackers because I am able to make use of some Melee attack monsters that I rarely use. This is because they do not quite have enough health to be tanks and at the same time they do not have abilities like sneak or opportunity. It is exciting and often effective to use monsters with the Double Strike and Blast abilities in the Opportunity ruleset because these abilities are more difficult to counter in this ruleset.
