Splinterlands Beginner's Guide - Ability Based Daily Focuses!

Are you new to Splinterlands and searching for some advice, then you found the correct series! In this Beginner’s Guide Series, we are discussing things that new players of Splinterlands should know or try to learn. In this specific episode we will take a look at the new daily focuses. Since the new updated we have new exciting ability based focuses which make this game more diverse. We will quickly look over all of them and afterwards I will outline some monsters that are great to use for a selected number of daily focuses. If this article motivated you to start playing this amazing game, then feel free to join the fun over the following link:
https://splinterlands.com?ref=ga38jem

New Ability Based Daily Focuses

Since the new update, we finally get the new daily focuses which are based on Abilities. This does not mean that we do not have any of the old Splinter based Daily focuses but it certainly brings more diversity into the game. What’s more is that even if you do not use any of these monsters, you will get Focus Points rewarded to you if you win the battle. This makes it not only easier to collect more Focus Points but also helps you to get more daily chests!

With this being said, let’s take a quick look at all of the different ability based focuses: In total we have a selection of 14 new focuses. Each of them has a certain theme which encourages you to play certain monsters with selected abilities. This will result in more diverse teams as well as a steeper learning curve for new players as they are forced to use new cards and change up their strategies if they want to earn an effective amount of Focus Points. These Focuses can be divided into 6 groups. The first one being the Magic Neglection class with Anti-Magic and Reflect. Both are focusing on magic counters and should be very effective against magic teams.

Next class is the Melee Counter Focuses. Here we can see that all four Restrictions are based around a defending against Melee attackers. With Flying, Anti-Melee, Buffs and Defend you can protect your teams very nicely against Melee Monsters. The third class would be the butcher class. With Focuses such as Disable, Exploits and Fatalities you can definitely destroy your opponent with the correct selection of Abilities. Especially Fatalities can be very effective with Abilities such as Bloodlust and Life-Leech. Classes four and five are each separate Focuses. With Stealth and Healing, these two can not really be assigned to any class which is why we are going to give them their own. Last but not least we have the Sabotage Class where Abilities such as Poison, weaken or Cripple comes into play. The main aim is to make the opponent weak and includes the focuses of Aliments, Impair and Nullify.

Anti-Magic

Now that we looked at the Focuses in general, let’s take a look at some of them more specifically. The Anti-Magic focus is a very interesting one, as it includes abilities such as Void or Phase. My favorite cards right now to use these Abilities are definitely Djinn Oshannus and Tusk the Wide. Especially the legendary water card is very effective against magic cards. With the Phase ability on level 2 it will even be harder to hit and because it has 2 magic attack by itself, this card is the perfect magic counter. Tusk on the other hand is the typical damage eater. With 12 health on level 1 his health is incredible and will definitely hold the magic attacks for some rounds!

Stealth

The Stealth Focus must be one of my favorites so far. This is because my main strategy is most of the time to target the backline of the opponent. This is best done with cards that have the Sneak, Snipe or Opportunity Ability. In this case there are many very useful cards to use but we will stick to three of them. Number one is probably the best Sneak Attacker out there for the beginning stages. In my opinion it is Tenyii Striker. With a good amount of speed and 2 basic attack this card is a real destroyer when played in combination with Tarsa. If leveled up a bit, his attack even goes up to 3 which can be a big deal in the lower leagues already!

A very commonly used Opportunity monster is Deeplurker. Again, this card lacks a little bit of speed but makes up for it with 3 basic attack and 6 basic health. This is incredible for a monster that costs only 6 mana and it is no surprise that this card is used very often. Last but not least I wanted to introduce a very cool Snipe Attacker: Magi Necrosi. Not only is this card a magic attacker but it also has the Camouflage ability which means that it can not be targeted by Sneak attacker. This means that you could take advantage of his Snipe ability almost to the end of a battle!

Buffs

Next up is Buffs. This Focus should also be one of the most favored once. After all, who does not like to buff his own monster, right? The most common abilities here are probably the protect and strengthen abilities but swiftness and inspire would also be eligible to use. I am personally not at such a high level yet that I have monsters that would have the latter two abilities but I love to use Djinn Renova for its Strengthen Ability. Especially in rulesets like Poison this Ability comes in handy, as an extra health can make all the difference some time! With the Protect Ability, I really like to use Queen Mycellia. Because it is a Magic attacker, the protect ability allows us to apply and extra layer of Protection on our Magic attackers against Melee Attackers. It is also very useful in Earthquake rulesets.

Healing

Last but not least, I want to talk about the Healing Focus. Here we can use Abilities such as Tank Heal, Triage and Heal. Especially Triage can be used very effectively if you have a taunted monster in the backline that is able to attack from there. For this Focus I usually tend to use the Goblin Psychic for the Tank Heal Ability, Spirit Hoarder in order to heal the taunted backline monster and Xenith Monk for the regular heal ability.