Splinterlands — Mantaroth VS Drybone Raider!

Hello everyone, welcome 👋, this is my post for the Splinterlands Social Media Challenge!

In this challenge, I will show you one of my battles in the Rise of the Champion tournament for the sixth anniversary of Splinterlands, which allowed all players to play with all the cards of each edition at the max level in the Wild Format. The great tournament of the year.

I was practically testing, since I had not played with all the cards before, much less at their max level. Mantaroth was the protagonist of this battle, one of the best and most powerful neutral creatures. It has good hit points and armor, it may not have much damage for an eleven mana creature, but its abilities make up for it.

Mantaroth 0.png

Rarity:	Legendary
Edition:	Rebellion (Promo)
Element:	Neutral
Abilities:	Shield, Armored Strike, True Strike, Repair and Blast

In this particular battle I was almost sure that my opponent would use Mantaroth, with Byzantine Kitty as the summoner (since I saw a lot of Kittys in the battles). Mantaroth has 11 Health, so Kitty would only restore it 3 HP per round. So, I was thinking of a way to defeat those cards, around the last 30 seconds I chose Lorkus since it will increase my melee damage units by +1. And not only that, I chose to give two of my monsters the Life Leech (will increase their health each time they damage an enemy's health by half the damage dealt), and the Affliction ability, which allows the units a 50% chance on each attack to apply Affliction (cannot be healed, good against Kitty's healing), thanks to the extra ability of Lorkus.

But as you will see, my opponent did not do what I was thinking.

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In this battle, all monsters may attack from any position and will target the enemy with the lowest health due to the Equal Opportunity ruleset. On top of that, the Amplify ruleset will increase the damage of Magic Reflect, Return Fire, Thorns and Retaliate by +1. And lastly, only Neutral monsters will be used due to the Shades of Gray Ruleset.

I decided to choose the powerful summoner: Lorkus, which allows the use of Death and Fire element cards, but since only neutral cards are allowed, this was not important. His passive ability will give all my melee monsters +1 melee attack. And the best part is that this card allows me to decide between giving 2 monsters the Life Leech and Affliction abilities or the Trample and Fury abilities. I opted for the first options, as I mentioned before.

Mantaroth, a big legendary monster that has 5 abilities! Firstly, it will take reduced damage from melee and ranged attacks by 50% thanks to its Shield. It will also repair a third max of the armor of a friendly unit that has taken the most damage each round. It has an additional attack with its Armor stat that deals melee damage, due to its Armored Strike ability. Their attacks cannot miss. And also their attacks will deal half damage (rounded up) to units adjacent to the enemy it attacks.

In the second position, since I only had 1 mana left, I decided to use Creeping Ooze, a gelatinous friend that has relatively low stats, but has the Slow ability, reducing the speed of all enemies by -1.

Since I had no more mana left, and Furious Chicken costs 0, I put it in the last position, so that even if it doesn't attack due to its low speed, it would act as a bait for the enemies. The chicken has a 50% bonus melee attack and speed when it's not at full health due to its Enrage ability, but I know that in this battle it won't be useful, as I haven't increased its hit points or given it armor.

Round 1:

Enemy Creeping Ooze defeats my Furious☠️Chicken.
My Creeping Ooze destroys Enemy☠️Creeping Ooze.
Mantaroth destroys Enemy☠️Venari Marksrat.

Round 2:

Mantaroth ends the battle by destroying Enemy☠️Drybone Raider.

Watch on Splinterlands

This was a fairly quick battle, only lasting 2 rounds.

My opponent forgot to use the powerful Chicken, and if he had, it would make no difference to the outcome of the battle, according to my calculations.

I wasn't expecting to see Drybone Raider in the battle, which took me by surprise, but I realized that it was no match for Mantaroth and Creeping Ooze, who quickly defeated it.