Big shout out to the curators who have encouraged me to improve my posts. That includes the official Splinterlands team and the folks involved in the 
@underlock/steemmonsters-voting-criteria-splinterlands
In the spirit of improving my battle posts I'm going to retool my framework a little to help some of the newer folks follow my thought process.
With the latest season came a new set of powerful rewards cards. I've been grinding hard on my primary and secondary accounts to get ahead of the curve and fill out my decks with the new cards before some of my opponents have access. I was fortunate to crack my first new legendary monster before the end of season rewards dropped.
This weapons training ability gives me the opportunity to give the monsters on either side of Aves a magic attack so long as they don't already have an attack of their own. So before this battle came up I bought up a couple of fresh monsters with no attack to work on pairing with Aves.
That was the backdrop when I came to this ruleset
In this ruleset my eye is immediately drawn to the equalizer ruleset. With the equalizer ruleset I like to use monsters with a high damage per health ratio. I like to have tank healers and I like to fill every position on the battlefield.
For example. Monsters with a great damage per health ratio include options like Pelacor Arbalest which deals 6 damage when paired with General Sloan but doesn't increase the health of my opponent's monsters in the equalizer ruleset or Serpentine Spy which deals 3 damage when paired with Tarsa but also doesn't increase the health of my opponent's monsters. On the opposite side of this scenario you have things like Cursed Windeku which is an incredible monster but is not great in the equalizer ruleset because it will ensure that your opponent's monsters come with 9 health or more each.
Tank healers. One of my favorite frameworks for building a team on the equalizer ruleset is Obsidian with Wood Nymph and Goblin Psychic near the back of my line. They each come with a solid magic attack which will provide some consistent damage to my opponent's and the tank heal abiliy can easily become overpowered if my opponent' happens to put something with a lot of health on their team. If my tank goes down, the next monster will have that same high health and get the advantage of an outsized tank heal from the back of my line.
So looking at the available splinters in this equalizer ruleset I can't use the earth splinter, but fire and life look good. These are also splinters that I've seen a lot of my opponents use in the equalizer ruleset. In the Fire splinter Tarsa gets paired with lots of melee and maybe a ranged attack or 2. In the Life splinter General Sloan gets paired with a lot of ranged attacks.
I'm expecting to face either Fire or Life and there's a good chance they'll put something with the shield ability in the tank position, so I can cut through that with magic attacks and that's a great place to bring out my new Aves Sturgis.
Here's the starting frame
Think about how this might play out before you watch the battle
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_4e4e6927d57d2e2c9cee1acff6bea51e&ref=jingo-submo
Let's talk about my lineup.
Summoner: Delwyn Dragonscale
Delwyn buffs all of my magic attacks and gives me access to dragons in my lineup. I said that I was expecting to see something with the shield ability in my opponent's tank position and Delwyn will help me slice through that like butter.
Tank: Void Dragon
I like to have a tank with either the void or shield ability to minimize damage from my opponent. For my dragon and life splinter selections I could have gone with Chaos Knight which would have been great for the shield ability and my expectation for facing a lot of ranged and/or melee attacks. Void is second best here but the magic attack pairs with the magic damage that I want to deal to my opponent and the flying and speed give me a chance to get missed by my opponent occasionally.
1st position: Pelacor Conjurer
The Conjurer doesn't have it's own attack which allows me to try it out next to Aves for a little magic training. The Conjurer also has flying paired with some speed for a very low mana cost.
2nd position: Aves Sturgis
Aves Sturgis has the new weapons training ability which allows me to train the monster on either side of Aves during the battle. The magic attack gets buffed by Delwyn on Aves and both of those neighboring monsters.
3rd position: Truthspeaker
If you've seen any of my other battle challenge posts then you may know that I love the protect ability. With Truthspeaker I get the protect ability for just 3 mana. I don't add any health to my opponent's monsters and I get to try out the weapons training on Aves. The Protect ability is so powerful and it's even more important with my expectation of facing the life or fire splinter from my opponent.
4th position: Divine Healer
Not as great as Wood Nymph would have been here, but it will have to do for the available splinters. The tank heal ability comes up big for me in this battle.
5th position: Venari Crystalsmith
The Crystalsmith gives me another tank healer and this one has a ranged attack. Still not as good as Goblin Psychic would have been here, but it's still very good. I considered swapping the places of Divine Healer and Crystalsmith because I expected a good chance of facing sneak attacks from the fire splinter. Ultimately I decided that I would rather be able to keep attacking if these were my last 2 monsters.
Did we win?
Yes! This battle worked out beautifully.
Do I like Aves Sturgis?
Yes. This new weapons training ability is fun and powerful. It takes a bit of engineering to make it good, but things worked out beautifully in this battle.
What will I try differently next time?
I was very excited to see this setup work. I think that Chaos Knight could have been used in the place of Void Dragon and I think that I could have replaced one of my tank healers with Pelacor Arbalest. My Arbalest would have only hit for 4 damage, but that's still a lot.
Thanks for reading and thanks for all the upvotes, reblogs, comments and follows. I'll see you in the game. I hope the updated format that I used was helpful for some of you. Feel free to share any specific feedback in the comments.
