Hey everyone! I hope you're all doing great, in life as well as in your splinterlands journey!
It's a Thursday so it's time to make the first @splinterlands blog post for this week, it already launched two days ago but something like this requires some time, and I like to be alone so I can think about what I'm going to write, so, with the kids at school and my wife at work, Thursday is a perfect day for me! 😁

This weeks Social Media Challenge is the same as last weeks:

🔥 Share Your Most Remarkable Splinterlands Moments: Do you possess a battle of epic proportions that deserves to be seen by all? Have you crafted something extraordinary within the Splinterlands realm? Maybe you've got profound thoughts, insights, or strategies related to stats, cards, abilities, or gameplay that are waiting to be shared? We want it all, and we want it to be nothing short of AMAZING!

The truly amazing thing for me that happens in the Splinterverse now, but really it's been building up last weeks is the momentum gearing up in the splinterlands community on X, it seems like more and more people are interacting and sharing a lot of positive things, even 'outside' accounts sharing posts about splinterlands, it's amazing what we are building together!

People like @goldmatters, @dejota and the splinterlands DAO account (and so many more of course but it's too many to mention) are doing excellent in constantly making cool posts about the game, and a message from this morning really stood out to me, so cool!

Well.. I just wanted to mention this, but it's not enough to make a post about, so let's talk about...

Strategy!

Before I started playing Splinterlands, I had never touched a trading card game before, thinking it would be boring, I was always interested in strategy games like command and conquer and started loving crypto in general since 2017, but only became active in it since 2019.
Thinking a trading card game would be boring couldn't be further from the truth, it's a steep learning curve but very much worth the effort, and so here I still am, over 3 years later, playing this game every single day, except when I'm abroad in the summer vacation.

All the different cards, summoner boosts or nerfs, ablities, ruleset combinations, available splinters and varying mana caps for every battle makes the possible options and tactics a player can choose from almost endless, and when your brain is used to how the game works, it's really fun exploring all possibilities and to out think your opponent, of course this doesn't work every time because they're really talented players out there, especially in the higher leagues!

At the moment the win rate for my main account is only 53.7% but I think it's around the 50 mark for most players so it's not that bad, in fact, at the end of the season it happens I fall just below the 50% which is fine, as long as it's fun and the rewards are good! 😀

So, when we as splinterlands players sees a certain ruleset combination, the available amount of mana to use and the available splinters to choose from, our brain gets to work about the most obvious play to use, but then what!? are you going to just play the best team for this battle, or are you building a counter team to this best team, or maybe a counter to that counter!? 😅
Brain training and FUN at it's best!

So, to share an example for this, I saved a great battle I had last week, the Life splinter is all about preserving life, healing, protecting and supporting, and my strategy worked perfectly, killing off an entire enemy team with 6 x 14 = 84 Health Points with only taking 1 damage at the end of the battle, leaving my entire team standing.

The battle I have saved for this post is a battle played in the Modern League, at the moment I'm playing all my battles in Modern because the rewards there are great, and it helps me build my bag of SPS and earn glint so I can get stronger reward cards to win more, all in preparation for the big change coming next year, when Conclave Arcana launches. Back to the topic! This battle is a 33 mana Equalizer / What doesn't kills you / Armored Up Battle with only the Life, Death and Dragon splinters available to choose from, since this is a strategy post, let's talk about every ruleset first...

Equalizer

In the Equalizer ruleset, every monster gets the same amount of Health Points as the monster with the highest amount of Health Points on EITHER team. In my opinion it's important to focus your fire when this rule set is active to kill off high HP monsters one by one, instead of spreading damage all over the enemy team, so in most cases, I avoid using sneak or snipe abilities.

What doesn't kill you...

In the What doesn't kill you rule set, all monsters that are hit receives +50% melee attack power and speed if not at full health, rounded up, ranged and magic monsters still get faster but don't get a higher attack power. Many melee monsters will get above 5 damage with this boost, so the forcefield ability works great when this rule set is active. Also using the speed boost to your advantage can have great effect, for example to use Djinn Oshannus as a tank, with it's speed boosted it's very hard to hit.

Armored Up

In the Armored Up rule set, all monsters get a +2 armor boost, making melee and ranged attacks less active, and magic attacks more effective because they bypass normal armor. In general you can expect magic heavy teams in this ruleset and at the same time, magic heavy protection in the enemy team, summoners like Immortalis, giving Void to the entire team, or Grandmaster Rathe, making all armor, Void Armor works great.

Looking at the combined rulesets

So, I expect a magic heavy team against me, but at the same time I expect the use of void in the enemy team to protect against magic, because that's the most obvious play here!
Knowing this.. I want to have a tank that somewhat protects me from magic but at the same time I don't want to go heavy on magic but that's what my opponent will expect, countering this with Iziar's or Void Dragons void ability.
Speed is also important here, both to be able to hit the enemy team as well as to dodge incoming attacks. Speed is boosted by the what doesn't kill you rule set in this case...

First look at the battlefield:

Lux Vega, an expensive neutral summoner, expensive and very good! I was right in calling anti magic, Iziar is here, and it's getting healed by Spirit Hoarder... My opponent is spreading his damage across my back and front line, using two sneak attackers...
My use of a tank heal and well as a triage monster, being able to heal to back in combination with the high amount of health points will be very effective since every heal will be 1/3 of max health, rounded down, so in this case 14 / 3 = 4.6 rounded down is healing 4 HP every turn.

My Line-Up:

• Summoner: General Slaon - reason: Boost ranged attack, my opponent won't expect this!
• First position: Pelacor Conjurer - reason: Fast and evasive, even for magic, it also reflects magic damage.
• Second position: Time Mage - reason: Good damage, speed management.
• Third position: Djinn Renova - reason: High damage, Triage in case of rear attacks.
• Fourth position: Venari Crystalsmith - reason: High damage, tank healer.
• Fifth position: Pelacor Arbalest - reason: Double Striking high damage archer.
• Sixth position: Supply Runner - reason: High damage, speed management.

The Battle:

Round 1: That's a nice start! I'm doing so much damage, healing Iziar was impossible and it's killed in the first round 😆. Djinn Renova gives my team 1 extra HP due to the strengthen ability, so now my team is healing for 5! After healing, NO damage taken in this round!

Round 2: Many misses on my tank once it got enraged, front and back now at a whopping 9 speed! Enemy tank is almost killed.

Round 3: Again, a lot of misses, my back line is healed back to full health, enemy tank died, four more to go!

Round 4: Even now my Supply Runner is poisoned by Uraeus, the poison damage is just out healed, another enemy monster killed, three left, my team is doing awesome!

Round 5: 'Another one bites the dust' music on the battlefield! It's a bit repetitive but a lot of misses and another kill on the other team, two to go!

Round 6: Because of the high amount of HP, it's one kill every round, while taking minimum damage myself, one more!

Round 7: And it's over, this battle was crazy with only 1 damage taken after healing!

You can watch the battle unfold for yourself here.

This battle was in the early days of this season, so the glint and SPS wasn't at it's highest just yet, but still it's pretty nice!

This is it for this post, back to ranked play, I'm trying to keep the battle energy for both accounts below 50!

When you're a starting player but think it's a bit overwhelming, let me know and I'll guide you!

Thank you for reading!!!

If you haven't made an account already, please consider using my referral link to sign up, I'll happily send the amount I get for your signup back to you in DEC or SPS to help you start.

Have a great day!