Splinterlands - Beginner's Guide - Scattershot Ability

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 I want to highlight the Scatter Shot Ability and how to utilize it to be more successful in your battles. We will talk about which monsters are best to use, in which occasion it is best to utilize and finally play trough some example battles. If you found this article but are not playing this game yet, then feel free to join the fun over the following link:
https://splinterlands.com?ref=ga38jem

Scatter Shot

Let’s begin with the Ability itself: Scatter Shot. What does it do? Every monster who has this ability is choosing its target randomly. This means that it does not matter the battle ruleset or whether the opponent has a taunted minion. The monsters with Scatter shot will fire wherever they can. This has some upsides but also some downsides. The downsides are very obvious: Because we can not concentrate our firing power and potentially distributing our firing forces over the opponents field, we risk not killing our opponents tank which could lead to some serious damage to our team. In many cases it is easier to concentrate your forces on one minion and bring it down as quickly as possible but there are several cases where the Scatter Shot Ability can be a potential game changer.

Not only does this ability bring a little bit of RNG into the game it is highly effective when playing against a Taunted minion. In a lot of cases the Taunted minion has to be supported by minions with heal or repair abilities in order to protect these monsters. It is a natural giving and taking between those monster types. But what if we can go around this taunted minion and potentially target those support units as they usually do not have the highest amount of health. Scatter Shot is exactly designed for this purpose. Not only that but this ability becomes exponentially better with the Explosion or Poison Ability or During an explosive Ruleset. Whenever explosions are involved we can deal damage to both minions next to our target which is a very good way of destroying the backline of our opponent. With the Poison Ability it is possible to put a quick end to any monster that this scatter shot hit.

But what cards do have this cool ability anyways? As far as I know there are only 4 cards in the game with this ability as this Ability is relatively new. Therefore, only Chaos Legion cards have this ability. Those are the Portal Spinner, Gem Meteor, Chaos Dragon and Acid Shooter. While the last one gets an additional Poison Ability on a higher level, the Chaos Dragon shines not only with its magic damage but also with the explosion Ability on level 2 making him one of the best and most mana costly cards currently.

Team & Strategy

Because everybody has access to the Portal Spinner, I will focus on a team and strategy including this card. To make the strategy a little bit more fun I am including the Gem Meteor which is very cheaply to obtain. With both these cards being ranged attackers the perfect summoner would be General Sloan as she grants us an extra ranged attack. This gives us the opportunity to deal 5 random damage over in the opponents team. Furthermore, it is important to protect our damage dealers which we achieve with a taunted minion ourselves. In this case, Shieldbearer is one of the best choices you could make to protect your support units as well as your damage dealer.

In order to maintain our Protection we fill the board up with monsters that support our Taunted tank with abilities like tank heal and repair. The perfect choices here are Venari Crystalsmith and Adelade Brightwing but Scavo Hireling is perfectly fine as well.

Example Battles

With our strategy drawn out, let’s take a look at some example battles. In the first battle we are going up against a very strong Death Squad with very interesting monsters. The ruleset gives us the chance of having a big amount of health and the absolute certainty that our shots won’t miss. Because of the health ruleset our strategy is a little bit countered and it shows our troubles during this match up as we are not able to focus our striking power on one minion. On the other side we manage to deal enough damage throughout the battle to win this battle with our last minions.

Battle 1

The second battle is much more how our strategy should look like. Admittedly, our opponent does not have the best supporting units but with our Scatter Shot ability we are able to pick apart his long Ranged attackers one by one which ultimately helps us to secure the win in this match up.

Battle 2

I really hope that I was able to show you a new side of this amazing game. It surprises me every time how many different strategies this game has to offer and I encourage everyone who has not joined the game yet to give it a try. If you missed the previous beginner’s guides, feel free to check them out down below! 😊