In a basic battle formation monsters position two through six are unable to attack unless they have specific abilities to allow them to attack or their attack is magic and or range. Such limitations have made melee monsters beyond position one to be unfavorable. However one of those ability that can tip the favor toward the monster's favor is opportunity.
Monsters with the Opportunity ability may attack from any position and will target the enemy Monster with the lowest health
Not only does opportunity allow monster to attack it will attack the one with the lowest health in the opponent's formation. On first read of this one may think such an ability would trump some others that allows melee attack beyond position one. That sentiment is very valid. Both sneak and snipe allows monsters to attack beyond position one.
However both abilities would be nullified in rule set Fog of War. While opportunity will still be available for use if Fog of War is active. In addition opportunity is attacking specific monster with lowest health while sneak will always attack the opponent's rear monster and snipe targets only magic and range monsters.
12 cards with Opportunity
In the current set of cards there are 9 that are playable in rank battles and 3 that are in brawls. I will focus only on the 9 that are in rank battles since majority of players will likely use or have these monsters. While the 3 in brawls are still very limited due to their recent release.
Reward's Screeching Vulture
The only reward card with opportunity but a very good card is the Screeching Vulture. At base level 1 it already has both opportunity and flying abilities. By level 6 it also has Scavenger making it that much more difficult to knock out if it was position further back in the formation.
Although max attack is only melee of 3 the opportunity sometimes do not need much attack to knock out its opponent's monsters. The following Untamed monsters is proof of this.
Untamed Cards With Opportunity
Beside's Earth splinter's only reward card with opportunity the remaining splinters except for dragon all have one card in the Untamed series that includes opportunity.
As I mentioned earlier that it does not take a lot of attack to make a kill if a monster has opportunity one can realize why when they see the Untamed monsters with opportunity. Four out of the five cards have a health of 1 or 2, so basically a Screeching Vulture at level 4 and above gets to attack first any of those Untamed monsters except for Cave Slug would be knocked out.
On the flip side of this is that these Untamed monsters if used under specific rule sets like equalizer it makes them some survive longer as their health is raised to which ever participating monster's highest health is. On the other hand their opportunity ability is somewhat weaken in that they would be attacking at random as all monsters health are high and the same.
The real use of the Untamed monsters is to allow players to setup formations with melee attack and allow their monsters to be able to attack even if they are not in first position. This means opportunity is a very good card when used in combination with other abilities and the player is focusing on a melee attack formation.
Dice is One and Only Battering Ram
If one neutral monster with opportunity is not enough we have two. The second one is in the Dice series and is the only card with Opportunity. The Battering Ram only has a melee attack of 1 until it reaches max level but its 2 then. Overall not a very aggressive monster when it comes to the name of o the card but again Opportunity is an ability that does not need much attack that can likely make a kill with one hit.
Disadvantages with Opportunity
As mentioned earlier with the ability the monster often comes with a low melee attack. In addition as all know melee attack by itself will go through toughness first before health. This leads to mostly life splinter monsters that have an upper hand in somewhat protection on opportunity monsters. For example in an extreme case Enchanted Defender would be able to handle any of the max level opportunity monsters with ease on first attack since its health is 1 and toughness is 4. All of these stats based on a level 1 Enchanted Defender!
Advantages With Opportunity
Being able to use melee attack beyond first position is a huge plus. Another advantage comes when players combine the opportunity with other abilities that are pro melee such as Inspire. Inspire boosts all melee monster's attack by +1, which makes the opportunity just a bit stronger.
Conclusions
There are plenty of battles where it feels a melee attack formation is ideal. Opportunity provides the player one more option to use for melee attack that is not in first position of the formation. A mix in abilities or rise in level to max out monster's melee attack will prove to be best when using opportunity. Above all the ability actually exceeds others in the form of allowing its monsters' attack beyond first position and focus specific to the monster that is weakest in health. This is definitely an ability that should be focus on for players who enjoy using melee attacks.
Until next time thanks for reading!!!
Post was written with the use of data from:
https://splintercards.com/abilities.php?Aed=6
and
https://monstermarket.io/
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All You Want To Know About Reward Chests
Helpful Links for New and Veteran Players
Splinterlands Good Cards To Own
Splinterlands Rentals from a Lender Perspective
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