Kobold Miner is an original Alpha/Beta 2 mana Fire card with the Sneak ability. At max level, it has 3 melee, 5 speed, and 6 health, making it a cheap threat to an opponents back line. For this battle example I wanted to show the importance of placement, as I selected the Kobold Miner for the role of a second tank rather than an effective attacker.
For this battle challenge, I chose an Alpha Silver League Tournament where Kobold Miner helped me place for payout. Alpha tournaments provide a nostalgic battle setting for players who want to experience the original game design. The Alpha card designs are fantastic too! In Alpha, 2 mana is the cheapest card, and there are only three of them. The splinters also only have one sneak monster, preventing the stacking of low mana sneak attacks that is a common strategy in beta and untamed. This makes Kobold Miner an important card for any Alpha player.
The battle parameters were 20 Mana, Armored Up, with Fire, Water, and Dragon.
Looking for maximum damage with only 20 mana, I chose Fire splinter. Cerberus was an obvious tank, but loses retaliate and two health for silver league. Knowing I wanted to include the blast damage of both Elemental Phoenix and Fire Demon, Kobold Miner fit in perfectly in the second position to reach 20 mana. More important than its melee attack in an armor match, Kobold Miner became a second cheap tank with 4 health.
My opponent chose the Water splinter with a more defensive lineup to include Frozen Soldier, Pirate Captain, Crustacean King, and Water Elemental. With the additional 2 armor, it was going to be a challenge to beat this heal heavy team!
Round 1: Elemental Phoenix strikes first with damage to Frozen Soldier and Pirate Captain. Armor limits the damage from the rest of my monsters.
Round 2: Elemental Phoenix knocks out Pirate Captain, but I lose my tank Cerberus. The race is now on to see who can keep a range attacker on the back-line the longest! This is Kobold Miner's time to swing the battle by staying alive just long enough to let Elemental Phoenix clear the field.
Round 3: Kobold Miner goes down, but not before Frozen Soldier. Kobold has bought just enough time as the second tank to keep Elemental Phoenix alive.
Round 4-7: Now just a race between Crustacean King healing versus my Fire team damage. Fire Demon knocks it out, and the threat of additional damage is eliminated with Water Elemental unable to range attack from the first position.
Kobold Miner is typically used to cheaply stack sneak damage, but in this case I used its health as a meat shield second tank. It survived long enough for my blast monsters to finish off a defensive Water team and win an important tournament victory! Placement of the Kobold Miner was the critical aspect of this win.
Hopefully Alpha continues to attract new players as the card design and tournament play really show the contrast in how far the game has come while preserving that retro feel!
This battle is already receiving a lot of impressions on twitter!
https://twitter.com/SplinterlandsG/status/1298398453492584449
- SplinterlandsG
Thanks for reading my first Battle Challenge! 
