HELLO to all Splinterlands readers of my humble blog.👋🏻👋🏻👋🏻 Welcome to yet another week of the "new" iteration of the Splinterlands Weekly Challenges 😜.
For any old Hivers/Splinterland players who've just come back and are confused, fret not! Even with the name and format tweaks, right at it's core, battles are still the foundation of these posts.
In this week's edition of Battle Mage Secrets, we're literally dealing with a case of heavy handedness. Being heavy handed usually means someone is using too much force or being too rough. This ruleset encapsulates that definition pretty well in my opinion.
No matter! I present to you the ruleset — HEAVY HITTERS 💪🏻🥊
The game's description of HEAVY HITTERS is as follows: "All units gain the Knock Out ability."
This brings us to another question. What on earth is the KNOCK OUT ability? Well, knock out essentially allows your units to deal double damage when attacking an enemy that is stunned. Which then again brings us to the STUN ability. 🤣 When a unit with stun hits another unit, it has a 50% chance to activate and cause it to miss it's next turn.
So, what that being said, this is a pretty complicated ruleset to pull off actually. It requires units to have 2 abilities and depend on a stun proc to achieve it's effect. This is definitely one of the rulesets which requires some planning and luck to execute properly. When it works though, the effect is glorious. A stunned unit is already in a perilous situation, coupled that with doubled damage and it's literally marked for death! 😱
I will take advantage of this ruleset in my battle showcase today to show how 1 of my units in particular becomes a lot stronger than one would expect with HEAVY HITTERS. Introducing the Summoner, POSSIBILUS THE WISE.
Possibilus the Wise is a leviathan from the future that has adapted to rule on both land and sea. His mission is to find and secure the lost sacred rune tablets of his race that were shattered into pieces and strewn across time and space by the entity known only as Desolation. In his present time, a war rages on his home world of Nyuuldus, but Possibilus was tasked with traveling into the past and the future to find these runestone fragments and return with them to defeat Desolation.
From Splinterlands Lore on POSSIBILUS THE WISE
Possibilus The Wise is a Legendary card released during the Chaos Legion expansion. It has definitely found it's place in many Water decks given its availability and usefulness. It's effects on the battlefield are ❤️+2 HEALTH❤️ and it grants the TRAMPLE & REACH ability to all your units. It's summoning cost is, like all other Chaos Legion Legendary Summoners, 6 🧪MANA🧪.
The stat buffs it gives are nothing out of the ordinary, so at first glance, he might look pretty bland. However, all of it combined makes this Summoner one of the strongest in the game!
Reach allows any melee unit on the 2nd spot of your lineup to also attack. While Trample allows your units to launch another attack if it manages to land the killing blow. You can see then how Possibilus has the ability to multiply your army's damage 😱. The battle will very quickly turn against the opponent with a few well placed attacks.
I would venture to say that with the HEAVY HITTERS ruleset in play, we are heavily incentivized to pick DPS units. Add one and one together and I hope it's glaringly obvious by now that Possibilus is a match made in heaven for this situation. Possibilus gives that extra bit of additional health for your units to survive a hit that might kill most units under the "stun and double damage combo". Furthermore, his Reach and Trample abilities have the potential to punish teams even further if a unit gets killed! There is no stopping the monstrous Possibilus from devastating the entire battlefield! 🔥
This could make all the difference if the battle comes down to the wire where the slightest advantage is the fine line between victory or defeat! 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻 This is definitely what I'd consider game changing! 😱😱😱
Let me present a battle I fought recently in which the ruleset HEAVY HITTERS was in effect. My opponent used the Chaos Legion edition Summoner Thaddius Brood from the DEATH splinter as his main pick, while I used the Chaos Legion edition Summoner Possibilus from the WATER splinter. 💀 VS 💧
At first glance, it would seem like I was at a distinct disadvantage.
First off, the secondary ruleset in this battle was that of EARTHQUAKE!
All my units were NON FLYING and MELEE units!
My opponent had an ALL FLYING team save for his main tank which had THORNS. 😭
That meant my own units would take even more damage when trying to attack the opponent! 😱
I was honestly expecting this to be a really bad matchup for me 😜🤣. This was a team who had an innate advantage in this ruleset. FLYING units almost always beat NON FLYERS in an EARTHQUAKE ruleset. Would I be able to turn the tide of battle against such an opponent then? Victory or defeat would lie in the small details.
I would say that the ruleset HEAVY HITTERS was DEFINITELY the MVP of this match, having played it's role in turning the tide of battle. The advantage it gave my team resulted in me outlasting my opponent in this battle. It definitely provided the edge that I needed to overcome my opponent.
This ensured that the other units could eventually wear down the opponent until victory was achieved! 🏆🏆🏆
1st CARD SLOT
The Diemonshark is chosen for this slot. He plays the role of the Main tank perfectly with his great stats. His high Armor stat will also allow him to have much longer staying power on the battlefield. This allows all other units to be kept safe until he is taken down.
2nd CARD SLOT
The Coastal Sentry takes up the second slot. With his amazing attack damage and the DOUBLESTRIKE ability, he will be able to mow down the opponents quickly. He will also take the place of the main tank as a sacrificial one hit backup tank.
3rd CARD SLOT
The Demented Shark occupies this slot. It's main role here to be a MELEE BUFF for the team with it's INSPIRE ability.
4th CARD SLOT
The Deeplurker occupies the 4th slot here. With his OPPORTUNITY ability, he will be able to pick off any weak units in the backline.
5th CARD SLOT
The Venari Wavesmith occupies this slot. It's main role here is to buff all my units with +2 ARMOR with it's PROTECT ability.
6th CARD SLOT
Noa The Just takes the last slot. This card, like the wavesmith before it, is here for it's ARMOR reduction abilities. It inflicts -2 ARMOR to all the opponent units making them more vulnerable to my attacks.
I hope you're starting to see the pattern here in my team setup. 😉
As you can see, both of us fielded very different units in our matchup. The opponent went for almost all FLYERS while my own units were all grounded on the land. 😱
💧WATER💧 VS 💀DEATH💀
My opponent used the Cursed Windeku as his tank in the 1st slot which was a VERY good choice. With his THORNS allowing him to reflect my melee damage against myself, it would result in my units taking massive damage from both that and the earthquake ruleset.
The Gargoya Lion occupied his 2nd slot. This unit is an amazing all rounder with great stats and more importantly, the FLTING ability. It would likely also be the backup tank after his main tank fell.
In his 3rd slot was the Riftwing. It's SCAVENGE ability and fast speed and FLYING ability would make it really hard to bring down. This also meant my units would have a really hard time hitting and damaging it if RNG wasn't in my favour.
His other slots contained more ranged DPS units, all of which had the FLYING ability too. That meant he would be able to continue a sustained amount of DPS on my vulnerable units until I could get past his frontline units.
All in all, I would say that the opponent picked a really strong team.
My choice of the Main Tank was the Diemonshark who is perfect for this task. He has really high ARMOR stats in order to take extra hits to ensure that all the other units are protected.
The Coastal Sentry occupies my next slot. With it's high DPS and DOUBLESTRIKE, it will slaughter any units it comes into contact with. It makes a great backup tank and will be able to soak up quite a bit of damage too.
The Demented Shark is next in the 3rd slot, where it's role is mainly to buff the melee DPS-ers via it's INSPIRE ability with +1 dmg.
This is followed by the Deeplurker in the 4th slot. It's OPPORTUNITY ability and high DPS will allow it to take out the weakest unit amongst the opponent's team. No amount of tanks will be able to protect them.
Finally, the 5th and 6th slots contain the Venari Wavesmith and Noa The Great. Their ARMOR altering abilities will prove to by the lynchpin of my LAND BASED strategy against a FLYING TEAM in this EARTHQUAKE ruleset.
The battle started out with all our units just duking it out pound for pound. It was a high mana game with 46 mana as the limit. The rulesets were EARTHQUAKE & HEAVY HITTERS.
The first round saw both our sides launch a flurry of attacks. And boy was it a spectacular amount of fireworks, so to speak. 🤣
After dust settled from the first round of attacks, the opponent's main tank Cursed Windeku and his Gargoya Devil DPS-er had already died! My units were all still standing even after a round of EARTHQUAKE damage. Even I was surprised by that result.
I had been so fearful of his units having an "innate" 25% dodge chance against my grounded units.
However, with the RUST and PROTECT ability, I was simultaneously able to boost my defence and increase my offensive power!
My own main tank was still pretty much unscratched, having negated most of the damage with it's high ARMOR.
The 2nd round saw his Gargoya Lion die to my firepower.
Every subsequent round saw more of his units fall while all my units were still hanging on thanks to the additional ARMOR provided by my Wavesmith.
It was all over for the opponent now as I eventually mopped up his remaining units. 💀💀💀
Talk about doing WAY MORE than it was supposed to!!! 😱🤯🥳 All I expected was for the HEAVY HITTERS ruleset to give me a slight advantage. I had already lost out horribly in terms of the lack of FLYING for my units. However it ended up being the entire reason for my win! By capitalizing on the ruleset, I was able to smash through my opponents defences through raw damage output! The opponent simply could not handle all that DPS at all.
Well as you can see here in this GIF of my battle, the results were pretty good! 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
This was truly an eye opener! 😁🏆
Slowly, but surely, I wore down the opponent's team and the match ended up with me inflicting a crushing defeat. My team selection proved to be the edge I needed to eventually overpower my opponent. 💪🏻
Would I have done anything differently? 🤔 This might have seemed like a disadvantage at the start but I ended up winning handily. IF I had to use the same cards again, there would be no better lineup than what I had already used for the match. Any other combination MIGHT have resulted in a loss for me. I'm really satisfied with the results against such a worthy opponent. 🏆🥇
I definitely can appreciate the ruleset HEAVY HITTERS and how it changes the dynamics of usual gameplay. This is one of those rulesets which can be turned into a huge advantage if surrounded with the proper team. The role it brings to the battlefield will give a player the edge in squeezing out every tiny advantage to get the win. 👍🏻
I hope this article has given you some insight into its potential. 😉
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