Ability strategy analysis: Backfire

Ability strategy.gif

Introduction

This week we are going to look at the backfire ability. This i a ability that is not used that often and most of the time is also not the monster that dominate or carries the battle.

Ability

If an enemy misses this Monster with an attack, the attacker takes 2 damage.

Official ability information from splinterlands: List abilities

Synergies / strategy

Dodge - Has an increased chance of evading melee or ranged attacks
Flying - has an increased chance of evading Melee or Ranged attacks from Monsters who do not have the flying ability.
Swiftness - all friendly monsters have increased speed. Dodging attacks is the key to success.
Slow - All enemy monsters have decreased speed. Also here getting higher chance in dodging is key.

To counter backfire you could use
true strike - will make backfire useless because you will always hit your target

Rulesets:
Reverse speed - often backfire monster have high speed therefor the chance that your opponent will miss is less in this case
Aimtrue - Backfire becomes useless because all monster will hit their target.

Select / favorite

The monsters that i have with backfire are:

No1 Card.gif

Pelacor Deceiver is my number one, a CL reward which is very powerful in my opinion.
The speed in combination with flying makes it high change to miss which will trigger the backfire ability. against a monster with 1 speed it has a 55% miss change, 25% flying and 4-1 speed, 3*10=30% 25+30=55%.
I play on gold level so the retaliate is not available yet.

Strategy

Next I will demonstrate a match where the Pelacor Deceiver has an great contribution

All monsters get sneak and no range monsters are allowed, there will be a melee or magic attack battle.
Bit of a gamble but my opponent has chosen more melee than magic in his last matches so I pick a counter melee in this case.

Rulesets

Broken Arrows:
No ranged monster may used in this battle

Super Sneak:
All monster will have sneak ability meaning they will attack the back.

The Lineup

Summoner

Card	Reason
	Almost a standard for my battle reports lately, I expect an melee battle. Lux will have some nice demoralized possibilities with death

Monsters Lineup

#1	#2	#3	#4	#5	#6

Pelacor Deceiver (lvl 8)
Star of this week. High health/speed/flying and the backfire should do some return damage.

Djinn Muirat (lvl 3)
If magic is used this might help when it is in the front to do some reflect magic damage.

Legionnaire Alvar (lvl 3)
Demoralize monster number one. Because of the sneak it can attack from this position. Also when a magic attack is chosen it still has some extra protection because of the void armor.

Harklaw (lvl 3)
Demoralize monster number two. This will heavily reduce the damage outpuy that the enemy can do with melee. Also when it get in the front the shield give another nerf to melee damage.

Cursed Windeku (lvl 6)
Sneak ruleset is in play so the cursed windeku is now more in the back when it is hit it can heal itself.
Again all about the gamble it is a melee play then the thorns will do also some return damage.

Ever-Hungry Skull (lvl 8)
This is the biggest gamble if my opponent does not use a melee attack but magic then this monster is quickly killed. When melee is used the number of shields and thorn is extra beneficial.

The Battle

Reference

Link to the battle:
Link to battle

Rounds

Start :

Gamble correct my opponent has chosen melee, this is crucial to the match my backfire and thorn can do maximal return damage.
My opponent has also brought demoralized and the arkemis the bear which is good choise to reduce my melee output.

Round 1:

Some misses already and some torn damage strategy look to work like planned. Note and reminder to myself magic does not follow the super sneak rule set so it hits the front tank, in this case only 2 damage because of the void of tusk the wide.
Important the first backfire has hit for 2 damage.

Round 2:

Some first monsters has died. my Ever-Hungry Skull his Forgotten One and
Exploding Rats. Exploding Rats died because of the thorn love it, the redemption took some shield down.
Again the backfire has been trigger 2 damage again, total of 4 damage now.

Round 3:

Another miss 2 more damage, now 6 free damage in total. With this miss also causes that the halving of the arkemis the bear is not landed.

Round 4:

with a 35% miss change it has not helped this time. My team is still standing strong.
Next round it is over.

Round 5:

Win, not to underestimate the heal in the back, cursed windeku almost has fully healed up.

Conclusion

Gamble on melee was godd and the rest of the strategy worked like a charm. The backfire and torn has done a lot of extra damage wich quickens the game drastically in my favor.