Splinterlands — Share your battle challenge

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Splinterlands

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Splinterlands — Share your battle challenge

🤷‍♂🤷‍♂ A Bit of the Unexpected 🤷‍♂🤷‍♂

Splinterlands offers many strategies thanks to the card's different levels, abilities and specific battle rulesets. The other factor to consider is that you are not just going up against the other cards, but also and opponent that is also considering the same strategies. With the opponent in mind, I choose to share this battle as it was not necessarily the "strongest" lineup, but a guess of what my opponent was thinking.

Battle Link and Highlights	Pre-Battle Screen Shot
Sloan v Obsidian

The only ruleset for this match was Broken Arrow and I choose to go with Sloan whose only buff is plus one to range attacks. What in the world was I thinking???

I can see why this would seem a very strange summoner selection with only that information, so let me give a bit of a deeper dive to explain my thinking. Fire, Life and Earth were the available splinters, and the mana cap was a modest 17. I could see from the pre battle screen that my opponent favored Obsidian and that their Obsidian outclassed me by one level. That didn't fully remove Earth from my options, but I also don't have full confidence in my Earth gameplay at lower mana caps. That left me to decide between Fire and Life.

I like playing Life at low mana, particularly against magic teams. The lack of the additional buff from Sloan was a bummer, but I still had a hunch it was the best play. Let's take a closer look at how the pre battle stats to see how that thinking looked initially.

	ME	OPPONENT
	19	16
	7	2
	1	7
	0	0
	2	12

Still Not Looking Good for Me

The chart above paints a bleak picture. I have a slight health advantage, and a great melee advantage, but my opponent's armor should be able to stand up while the magic attacks pick me off. Stay with my here, all hope isn't lost. Let's take a closer look at my lineup for some rays of hope.

Card	Synergy
	A great low level tank with six health. No attack of its own but expecting to face Obsidian the Magic Reflect was the key to this choice.
	Only one melee attack for four mana, but the Reach ability allows it to attack from the second position.
	Two melee damage for two mana and the Opportunity ability. Add in the FLight ability and she can be tough to hit.
	A key piece that turns the tables with the Amplify ability. If I guess correctly and a heavy dose of magic is coming my way, Conjurer can do double damage with Magic Reflect. If I guessed wrong, this becomes an eh choice.
	It's free with a zero mana cost. Put it in the back here to slow down potential Sneak attacks.

Well, my hunch was correct. My opponent chooses Obsidian and after that they didn't have a chance. In the first round Conjurer takes out Djinn Biljka and Khmer Princess. This is in addition to cutting Quenn Mycelia down to two health. He paid for the damage with his life, but took out two and a half cards for the effort. During the second round Stitch Leech was able to take care of Queen with it's armor gone. Queen going down took away the opponent's Protect. That allowed Stitch, Harpy and Dax to mop up the leftovers and finihs this battle in three rounds.

My opponent had some intangible with a Magic Reflect and Thorns of their own, but Conjurers high health, and my opponent's reliance on magic attacks made my interesting summoner choice pay off.

There are so many strategies and synergies that come into play in Splinterlands. Try reading your opponent and throwing the unexpected in now and then to turn what on paper looks like a loss into an easy win.