Strategy Corner #08 - Aimless - Billy vs Jacek? - Battle Mage Secrets

Today's Battle Mage Secret topic is Aimless, as in the last article I mentioned that Aim True usually is not so important for me, Aimless is definitely the main catalyst that determines what setup you would like to play. Overall I'm not a big fan of any random effect, one of my idea for the Splinterlands battle is to run for example 10k simulation battle and choose the winner depending on the average Win Rate from those battles. In that case, you will not be dependent on one miss which ruins your whole strategy. I know that some of you like this thrill during battle when rng gods decide who will win :). Another counterargument to my proposed solution is that if the battle will be 100% predictable it could change the dynamic of the game, the bots will have it easier to calculate all odds and the game becomes boring and unplayable. I cannot disagree here, it could happen, so let's leave it as it is and try to tame rng.

My solution for this is trying to minimize all random targets, so my main option is a melee team, or if I need to rely on luck I would choose summoners that already got scattershot as an ability - Jacek. I really would like to present you the fight where we could see both strategies at once to have some direct comparison. Unfortunately, I recently haven't got his type of battle. So let's concentrate on one of the setups, this time Possibilus.

Ruleset definition:

All monsters have the Scattershot ability.

Scattershot will attack any opponent monster at random and is not affected by the Taunt or the Camouflage ability.

Firstly, the description of the ruleset in the game is not perfect, sometimes you got just general information which not giving you all information you need. Best way to read the full description as above from the game documentation at least once. You can check all here.

One of the important thing regarding scattershot is that effect only ranged and magic type attack monsters. Melee monsters still attack depending on their target abilities like sneak opportunity etc. That's why one of my main strategies for that kind of battle is concentrating on the melee team. Let's see what it look like in practice.

Today's battle is a regular ladder match. As you should know from my summary post, I usually play in the gold league, but my collection is silver card's level. Here we got an example when an opponent used a higher level monster, so for instance Windeku has already heal ability, which is significant. Let's see how we will perform.

My team as mentioned is almost full melee, I bring some distraction in form of 1 mana cannon fodder for the opponent's opportunity monster. Additionally, we got some healing backside abilities from Angelic Mandarin which could get us some protection to sneak monsters.

Round 1.5 :)
Usually, we stop after the first round, but the fight seems so quick and so much is happening here. Let's analyze the situation between the round. Our mentioned distraction worked perfectly but with rng help :). The opponent didn't bring any melee opportunity monsters but still had to waste the whole attack for 1 mana monster. Unfortunately, our last position monster got no luck and got a poison counter. His healing will save him for 1 more round, but his time is limited. :( Most important thing is our opportunity monster - Deep Lurker (we will talk later about it :) ), it found the perfect target and with the trample ability guaranteed by Possibilus, it managed to kill two targets in one round. As you can see everything happened so fast :).

Round 2 just started, out of 6 enemy monsters, only 3 are left on the battlefield. We are in pretty good shape here.

Still Round 2, our Mandarin was finally killed, but we got so much advantage in firepower. Cursed Windeku got plenty of hits, and got no time to heal, trample is just too powerful.

Still Round 2, the fight was so quick that we haven't even reached round 3. Trample and opportunity abilities just dominated that fight, let's analyze the line-up.

This battle is a perfect example of how important the rulesets are and how you should try to think to use them effectively. First Scattershot, I talked about it before, I usually try to maintain control of targeting, which in my opinion is the most important thing in Splinterlands. I usually try to avoid any significant range/magic damage dealers and focus on melee monsters. The second ruleset is aim true, our previous article topic. It gives even more hints to focus on the physical monster in this battle, because of no chance to miss. And last but not least Unprotected, the rule where the Possibilus team just shines the most. So all 3 rulesets come perfectly together here, so let's analyze our option.

Possibilus the Wise, for sure it's no all-around summoners like for example Kelya. As you could see above, in some circumstances our Billy is the perfect choice. If you see no armor ruleset Possibilus should be the first thing to consider. His ability with health buff, and reach are quite interesting but most important is trample. With good opportunity monsters, everything depend on the opponent's line-up order. Usually, opponents care more about sneak and opportunity but forget about trample. In that case one good attack can work wonders.

Demented Shark, great addition to every melee team. It was one of the first card which I bought with some others melee water monsters. Inspire - melee bonus damage - is very powerful, even if you cannot use Shark immediately as a damage dealer. With Possibilus Reach ability sometimes it's possible, but don't be afraid to hide Shark a little deeper to get better protection.

Deep Lurker, finally if you are regular viewer on my splinterlands.tv stream, you should know I'm not a big fan of this card, at least on the silver level. In general, I think there is too many distractions for opportunity monster to use effectively. The situation is changed dramatically when you can use specific circumstances like in the fight above. Deep Lurker with trample and no armor rulesets is just THE beast, period.

For today's battle we got medium to low mana setup. If you think of using Possibilus the Wise for higher mana matches Arkemis the Bear and Coastal Sentry could be a great choice. Protect for all your monster, high HP and halfing is a great combination. Sentry with Double Strike and trample from Billy is a real disaster for the opponent's team. I hope I could able to present you battle with her sooner than later. :)

I hope today's battle and analysis made you realize how important is the ruleset. Sometimes it's not so easy to find a good strategy, because one of the rulesets could not fit perfectly, it wasn't the case here :). Aimless is for sure not my favorite, but with some effort you can use it in your purpose quite effectively. I hope I will be able to present you with some battles with Jacek and scattershot ability shortly. How deadly could the blast damage with scattershot and speed guaranteed by Conqueror Jacek.
As you could see Possibilus the Wise may be very dangerous, but it's not the summoner for every fight. If you could fit him to the battlefield situation, and use the ruleset in you favor, the opponent's team could not have time to take a breath and will be annihilated before he/she realized what is going on. :)

I hope you like this kind of battle and strategy presentation. More strategy analysis, discussion, and prediction games you can find on my Wednesday Splinterlands.tv stream. You can check the schedule here

If you have any comments, please do not hesitate. Do you think I could improve anything just tell me :)

If you wish to try out Splinterlands you can use my reference link.

Thumbnails and other pictures borrowed with permission from the Splinterlands team or made in Cooltext