Welcome to another Splinterlands Battle Mage Secrets post, this time featuring the “Maneuvers” rule.
When the Maneuvers rule is in effect, all Monsters get the Reach ability, which allows them to use their Melee attack, if they have one, to attack from the second position.
This rule is certainly a great advantage for many Melee cards, but especially those which happen to have one of those mixed attacks, since you don’t need to force them to be in the first position, which makes them much more vulnerable to attacks. Because that is how it works with the most offensives Melee cards; they are great to cause damage, but they don’t last long enough, since their defense is quite poor, making you use some sort of diversion, such as a card with Taunt. One example would be using the Mycelic Slipspawn in last position, to protect Grund, who has a very strong Double Strike effect, but doesn’t have any kind of protection against damage, so he’s quite exposed.
Considering this last aspect, those Melee Monsters that you should use are those with a very strong Melee damage, who probably have mixed attacks or a Double Strike effect, or a combination of both. Remember to boost your Melee damage, if possible.
Now defensive wise, of course, you should consider using a Monster or Summoner who’s able to de-buff Melee attacks as well as a tank with the Shield ability, or plenty of Armor, which you can Repair.
This battle was done during a Brawl, in which I was the host, so Quora Towershead was banned. For the fray, we could only use Gold Foil cards from the Chaos and Rebellion sets, with a Silver level cap. Now, the battle itself had plenty of Mana to spare, all Splinters besides Fire and Water were allowed and the only rule in effect was Maneuvers.
Because of the high requirements, at least high for me, the variety of cards I have are not that wide, so I wasn’t very sure what strategy to follow. Fortunately for me, I have a Gold Foil Katrelba, so I picked the Earth Splinter, which allows me to summon her.
Well, I lost… I don’t think I assembled a bad lineup, since it was quite logical, with a strong tank, being watch over by a healer, and with some pressure being taken away by a Monster with Taunt. On top of that, there were two very strong cards dealing heavy damage, Grund and Katrelba.
So, I believe that my team was defeated because of three
reasons:
The combination of that Armor and the higher Speed, made my team work much harder, especially considering that most of my attacks came from Melee Monsters. I should also mention his Summoner Sthispa, who grants Phase (ability to dodge Magical attacks), and made my Goblin miss an attack, delaying the death of the Drybone Barbarian.
This is it, thank you for reading!
