This week the theme of the Splinterlands Community Engagement Challenge was Underdog Victories. Nothing is more satisfying than telling that story where you enter a battle almost without hope, thinking defeat is already written, but in the end… a sweaty victory. Snatched from the claws of the impossible. And that’s exactly what happened to me recently in a match that seemed lost from the very beginning.
The battle rules already put me on alert.
For those who have been playing Splinterlands for a while, you know this combination is no joke.
Fog of War eliminates any chance of Sneak, Snipe, or Opportunity attacks, meaning everyone has to go straight for the tank or frontline. Meanwhile, Earthquake is that “invisible poison” since if you don’t have creatures with Flying, you’ll keep losing 2 HP per round until only the toughest remain. And guess what? I didn’t have anyone with Flying available at that moment.
The total mana cost was 42.
A number that normally allows for some fun, but with these two specific rules, things get complicated. I already knew I couldn’t count on aerial evasion, so my strategy had to be purely based on survival and wearing down the opponent. That’s when the first crucial decision came: the Summoner. I chose one that applies -1 max health to all enemy creatures. This choice may look small, but it makes all the difference, especially in matches where effects slowly chip away at monsters’ resistance.
To reinforce this debuff approach, I placed a creature with the WEAKEN ability, which also reduces -1 health from the entire enemy team while it’s alive. This combo was like “taking the air” out of the enemy, cutting their stamina round after round.
On the other side, my opponent came prepared with a tank made of steel:
That worried me right away, because any tank that heals constantly in long battles can become an almost impenetrable wall. And let’s be honest, with Earthquake in play, everyone knows the fight is going to drag on longer than it should.
For some reason my graphics card couldn’t render the image, so it ended up a bit blurry like this.
At the beginning, the battle seemed controlled by my opponent. The Dread Trafarian took hit after hit, always healing and holding the frontline. I’ll admit, at one point I thought “that’s it, this one’s gone”.
While Earthquake kept eroding everyone’s health, my maximum health reduction strategy was proving more and more effective. The enemy tank could heal, but the backline monsters started falling faster than he could hold the line. It was as if my team was playing in “hardcore survival mode”, resisting just long enough for the global effect to do the dirty work.
The match went on in that tense rhythm, with me losing one creature here, another there, but always keeping pressure on the enemy HP. Before I knew it, we were down to a 1 vs 1: my last creature against the Dread Trafarian. That was the moment my heart almost jumped out of my chest, because if he timed his heal right, I could still lose.
And then came the turnaround.
Each round, Earthquake was taking those two HP, and combined with the missing max health (thanks to my summoner + weaken), it made the enemy bleed little by little. There came a point when not even the Dread Trafarian’s HEAL could save his health bar. In the final round, with both of us already at the edge, it was my monster who survived and landed the finishing blow. What I enjoyed most about this game was seeing that even without having the “perfect answer” (like Flying cards, which would’ve made Earthquake much easier to deal with), I still managed to create an alternate plan purely through strategy and resilience. The max health debuff combo was simply essential and showed that sometimes the solution isn’t to hit harder, but to make the enemy weaker.
If I could summarize this victory in one word, it would be...
What seemed like a lost fight turned into one of those stories you keep to remember later. After all, it’s not every day you win a match ending in 1 vs 1, on the edge of defeat, heart in hand, already mentally typing “GG” too early.
