The battle challenge ruleset this week is Reverse Speed. In this ruleset, monsters with lower speeds attack before monsters with higher speeds.
The battle I chose to showcase is a 16 mana Brawl battle with the Back to Basics, Corrosive Fog, and Reverse Speed rulesets. Life, Death, and Dragon were the available splinters to play.
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sm_PLDRmH3AhReyX7PBIuRx&ref=ninjamike
Generally I like to go with a strong Magic attack in rulesets without monster abilities. Because there will be less defenses against Magic like Void and Magic Reflect. In this match, I chose the Death splinter, and went with the summoner that will reduce my opponents Magic by one. Since attacks in this match can only attack first position, I placed three buffer cards at the front of my lineup. Behind them I placed three Magic attack monsters which will be able to continue to attack even if they fall into first position.
My opponent chose the Life splinter with a summoner that makes it so that my Magic attacks will have to go through shields first. They chose the same strategy as me. Placing three buffer cards at the beginning of the lineup and three Magic attack cards behind them.
During the first round, I defeated my opponents two low health zero mana cards. My mini-tank is holding on.
During the second round, I lost my mini-tank and a zero mana card. I defeated another of my opponents’ monsters.
After three rounds, victory is near for me.
With my first hit in the fourth round I was able to declare victory.
Overall my strategy worked for this match. My opponent and I actually had identical strategies. I won mostly because I chose a better splinter. My Magic attack monsters simply had higher Magic attacks and higher health than my opponents’ did.
I think that Reverse Speed is an exciting ruleset. Fire and Earth are my two favorite splinters for this ruleset. Fire has a lot of fun, high powered Melee attack monsters and Earth has a lot of good Magic attack monsters with low speed. But in this match, both of those splinters were unavailable.
Sometimes in the Reverse Speed ruleset I make the mistake of becoming too obsessed with picking out only low speed monsters. You have to be careful when doing this. It is too easy to pick out monsters based on their speed and pay too little attention to their other qualities. A lineup that is much better and more powerful will generally win even if it does not have the speed advantage on its side. But in this match I did a good job of putting out the best lineup I could while still keeping the speed factor in the back of my mind.
