Hello everyone, it's time to make another post for my favorite game called Splinterlands - did you hear about it? 😄

AT the time of making this post it's a Saturday morning and there are 6 more hours left in this season, I have used up most of my battle energy and have settled for a 2400 rating to have a comfortable 38th position on the leaderboard which is hopefully enough to stay within the top 50 so I can earn the 25k glint reward.

So I can't play Modern League at the moment, which leaved me with two choices, either grind Frontier Mode or make another post!

My last Splinterlands post was two days ago so let's start with the post, because I have another glorious battle to show off with but don't get me wrong, I am defeated slightly more than I win my battles especially against these higher level opponents but nevertheless I enjoy thinking about every rule set and my options to build a nice team with but at the same time think about what my opponent would probably play so I can maybe interfere with their strategy a little bit...

The Thick Skinned rule set

This rule set is fairly new and it's a very cool one I think but you really do need some specialist cards for this and this starts with Rage because it's one of the few magic attackers that has the Void ability as well as high Health Points so it can be used as a tank.

A couple of weeks ago I pulled a Black Foil Frontier card I sold and I bought Zarin the Scorch with because I felt it would help me more in my daily battles than a Frontier card will.
Zarin at level 2 gives the Phase ability to the card in front of it so it is able to dodge magic attacks when it's fast enough and of course the Flying ability also helps with this because it increase the chance of dodging attacks by 25% I think but I'm not really sure about that number.

So while the tips giving in the Splinterlands Support Site are good ones, on the battlefield I just see heavy melee teams and even the Frontier Water Archon giving +1 magic damage being used.

Sharing a battle

Building a team and what I choose really depends on not only the available Splinters that are open to be chosen from but also the amount of mana, in lower mana battles it can indeed pay off to choose the Frontier Archon but in high mana battles like the 90 mana we have here there is really only one option: The Dragons!

Dragons have powerful monsters which are generally very expensive in mana, it's also important to sustain your team with some kind of heal and a good Splinterlands player will know what Splinters will be able to heal in this situation, do you?

The answer is: all of them! 😄

The water splinter has the 6 mana healer that can also cleanse, the life splinter has the 5 mana healer and the death splinter has two corrupted healers but I only own one, it's the 5 mana Arachne Weaver.

In the previous battles I could see I would be at a level disadvantage again and I'm losing a lot of these battles but just building the teams is fun as well so we just have to try and hopefully outsmart the opponent with clever use of abilities.

OK... I have to admit I was impressed with the other team, except for Gottem which is really nice even at level 1 the entire team is maxed out! We both chose the same Archon to give Ambush to two units, my opponent choose to give this to Slade and Mindless Thrall which is a good move I think since my tank has the Void ability.
I chose to give Ambush to Rage and Barashkukor which is pretty obvious because they have the highest attack power.

The start of this battle was really great, for me at least, both Ambush attacks on Rage missed!

That Mindless Thrall is a Black Foil Arcana card by the way, a very unique and beautiful card that has an animation every time it attacks.

Is that a BUG?

Wait.. that can't be right...

Rage is doing 4 magic damage, and Gottem doesn't have Void so WHY does it do only 2 damage or am I missing something?? Same for Barashkukor's attack...

I really DO think I have found a bug because in round 1, the damage Rage does is 4 damage...

The funny thing is while I did enjoy watching this battle, I haven't notice this detail before and I really think it is a bug so I posted my battle link in the Splinterlands Discord server.

Zarin was the game changer in this battle and had a great synergy with Rage, the magic attacks that DID land got halved by the Void ability but many attacks missed and my healer sustained Rage enough so the enemy team couldn't get through it.

One by one, the enemy monsters started to die and while my Rage got really close with only 2 Health Points left, it wasn't enough to kill it and when the battle got longer, the enemy total attack power got less and less so the chance of getting through my tank was gone.

The awesome thing about Corrupted Healing is it just heals the full amount of HP minus 1 max health instead of one third of the total Health Points and now it was only that amazing looking Thrall that was left, waiting to be killed.

You can watch the battle unfold for yourself here.

Well, that was a nice win worthy to make a post about. I am scheduling this post to be launched tomorrow or maybe Monday so maybe by that time I have a reply on my Discord Bug report, if so I will update it here!

'BUG'UPDATE

So, I got answered by an even more experienced player than myself with a perfectly good explanation 😅

The enemy healer has the Look Out ability, and it halves incoming Ambush attacks! 😅

So thanks for explaining that AlmightlyMelon, even after many years I'm still learning here, it's just that I never actively use the Look Out ability and at my level the Soothsayer doesn't even have that ability. 😆

Thank you for reading!!!

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Have a great day!