Watching great players

If you want to make the most out of your Splinterlands collection, you have to play it yourself and win! That's what's going to make the most bang for your buck. But if you want to win, you have to study the game, otherwise you'll do nothing but waste your time, all while not earning as much as you could.

That's what we're doing in Bronze TOP BATTLES Studies: we analyze three battles from the highest MMR players, learn their strategies and try improving upon them. That's how we're going to become great players that make more money. We begin after our giveaways!

Djinn Oshannus delegation

The most upvoted comment by value in this post wins a regular foil Djinn Oshannus for the rest of the season! This is only valid until my next post is up, so participate as soon as possible.

Random common card giveaway

Additionally, a random comment is awarded a common card, which is sent to your account before my next post is created. This is only valid until my next post is up, so participate as soon as possible.

Winners from my last post

• delegation: @luizeba
• common: @stekene

Thank you for participating and I hope you join again!

@elaris999 vs @bandongbayawak (link)

Where should Djinn Oshannus go? As a frontliner, or as a backliner? This match shows his role as an aggressive shield for the rest of his team is ideal.

Having high speed allows him to dodge many physical attacks. High health equals stronger sustain through healing from the backline. His Void ability helps greatly against all magic attacks. Last but not least, there's enough magic damage to deal significant damage in any scenario - at least when paired with Alric Stormbringer.

Using him in the backline means missing out on all of his qualities. Many other monsters are better suited for other placements. If you wanted to deal high magic damage from the backline directly to the opponent's frontliner, Nerissa Tridawn would have done that job much better.

@or4sn4 vs @hunnidk (link)

This was a frustrating battle to watch. If @hunnidk had used nothing but Grund, they would have won. But since they insisted in using Mycelic Morphoid before Grund, Grund didn't attack for the entire first round. That's two monsters he couldn't kill. That alone would have been enough for @hunnidk to come out victorious. But it doesn't end there.

Because of @or4sn4's Yodin Zaku, Grund took a lot of splash damage from Blast attacks before he finally got the Last Stand buff. When his health doubled, it was already down to 6, so he didn't get that much of a boost compared to how much health he would have gotten by getting Last Stand at the start of the match.

When you really want to use Llama with just one monster, sometimes not filling the remaining 1 or 2 mana with anything really is the best option.

@or4sn4 vs @voidwalk (link)

@or4sn4 put together an anti-melee team for this Little League match, but their opponent didn't pick a single melee monster for their composition. We could blame it on luck, but would that be appropriate?

There are four ways to win a battle which you can mix and match: melee, ranged, magic and heal. In a defensive strategy, you have to cover every possibility, but @or4sn4 never considered they'd face ranged or magic compositions.

Ranged and magic compositions deal a lot of damage, burying the opposing frontliner like it was nothing if they're not defending appropriately.

However, when all options are available, it's not worth being defensive, because you have too much ground to cover. Getting offensive with a couple of defensive gimmicks is usually the way to go when a match's rules aren't restrictive enough.

We can see that in the shape of Kelp Initiate seconded by Creeping Ooze on @voidwalk's side, followed by the higher health Fire Spitter which will tank for a while in case it has to, specially because of Flying and high speed which help to dodge physical attacks.

Image sources: https://splinterlands.com/ and @nane-qts/free-splinterlands-graphic-resources-20