Take a look at this starting frame and try to figure out who will win the battle before watching it play out.
Here's a link for this week's battle
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_10cb4a1703a791f52e490de35d877534&ref=jingo-submo
Here's the ruleset
The equal opportunity ruleset makes things interesting. It immediately brings to mind a couple of monsters that can cause huge damage to your opponent but sometimes get dealt with before you want them to be in the tank position. Grund and Grum are the 2 that I'm talking about but the fire splinter was not available.
Another option that comes to mind is the taunt ability which gives your other monsters time to work. That's what my opponent and I both went with for this battle.
Let's talk about my lineup
Summoner: Bortus
If you've read my posts before then you might already know I'm a fan. Bortus debuffs all of my opponent's magic attacks. This came in handy against an opponent with a lot of magic attacks and neutralized the buff they got from Delwyn. I can't wait to get a dragon summoner with the magic debuff.
Tank: Djinn Oshannus
Oshannus has void to weaken the already debuffed magic attacks from my opponent and is fast enough to dodge some of the other attacks. Also there's that gorgeous beard to soak up a few hits that might get through.
1st position: Igor Darkspear
Igor doesn't hit that hard but can soak up a couple of hits for just 2 mana.
2nd position: Venari Wavesmith
The protect ability is so great. This is another asset that my opponent recognized as you can see the Wavesmith on both sides of the battlefield.
3rd position: River Hellondale
The rusurrect ability is extremely powerful and often gets overlooked. I like to have my Venari Wavesmith resurrected to refresh the Protect ability across my team, but it's less helpful when my opponent's magic attacks all have opportunity and immediately kill the wavesmith again with their next hit.
4th position: Axemaster
I love the speed and the double strike. If Pelacor Arbalest had these stats (the speed and the health) you would see the light splinter used more often.
5th position (rear tank): Wave Brood
I just chose wave brood for the taunt ability so that my other monsters could get some work in. I especially wanted Axemaster to get a few turns of attack.
I think Wave Brood works best in the tank position with a lot of tank healing in the back row because there's such a huge health per mana ratio and each heal brings back 4 health. Pair it with 2 tank healers and many opponents can't string together enough damage to handle it for less than 20 mana.
Did we win?
Yes and wow what a match! My opponent made some great choices, I need to get an Agor.
Do I like Wave Brood?
Yes, incredible value for a taunt monster of that size. Wave Brood doesn't deal huge chunks of damage but can really stick around in the right situations.
What will I try differently next time?
I was certainly happy with the result of this match. I was also very impressed with some of my opponent's choices for this battle and it's interesting to compare those choices to my own.
We both used a monster with taunt to get the most out of the rest of our team. Between the 2 of us my opponent had the stronger individual monster there but the mana cost was also way higher. 7 more mana than Wave Brood. We both used Venari Wavesmith for the protect ability which helped us to get more out of our taunt monster. This came in especially handy for my opponent whose taunt monster had void armor. We also both used a monster with resurrect. I think that Oshuur is a strict upgrade over River Hellondale for the higher life total here and I think that my opponent got more out of their resurrection when Agor came back with 8 void armor to deal with all over again. I would love to come back with Delwyn, Agor, Oshuur and River Hellondale. It would be real tough to deal with Agor 3 times. First I'll need to get myself a copy of Agor.
Thanks for reading and thanks for all the upvotes, reblogs, comments and follows. I'll see you in the game.