This week the Share Your Battle challenge monster is the Centaur which has the snipe ability. It is a Common Beta card that I do not own. I use to take it for granted because it was included as a card in the Starter Deck. However, when Chaos Legion was released, the Beta cards in the starter deck were replaced. So I rented a Centaur for the purposes of this week’s challenge.
I have a general rule for involving snipe in matches. If I decide I am going to use snipe as a strategy, I always include as many as possible to really focus in on the front of my opponent’s back-line. The only exception to this rule is very small mana matches(12-15) in which case I am willing to use just one sniper.
The battle I chose to showcase for this week’s challenge had a mana cap of 25 with an Armored Up ruleset meaning all monsters get +2 armor.
Here is a link to the battle:
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_16973f131e1ec8b24ea7b5b5c19e26ad&ref=ninjamike
I picked the Life splinter for this battle so I could use the General Sloan summoner which will add +1 to the range attack of my Centaur as well as other ranged monsters.
For my lineup, I chose the ShieldBearer to be my tank. This card has become my favorite tank in the Life splinter. Then I added two snipers, one of which was the Centaur. Then I added a Venari CrystalSmith to heal my tank as well as provide a range attack. Finally, I had enough space to squeeze in my Furious chicken into my lineup.
Start of game / Round 1
Start of Round 2
The first round worked perfectly for me. Despite the added armor, my snipers were able to take out the Goblin Psychic in second position. It has the healing ability, but was wiped out before it could even heal the tank once. The bad news is that next my snipers will be attacking a Regal Peryton which is a flying monster with speed 5. This means that each attack will have only a 1 in 4 chance of hitting it. I could be in trouble.
Start of Round 3
During the second round, one of my snipers mananged to hit the Regal Peryton so its shields are gone but it still has 6 health remaining. My tank still has a decent amount of health thanks to my healing monster.
Start of Round 4
During the third round, I knocked out my opponents tank and the incredibly hard to hit Regal Peyton is now in position 1. So now my snipers just need to take out the Khmer princess in position 2 and then all 4 of my monsters will be attacking the hard to hit Regal Peyton.
Start of Round 5
During the fourth round, my snipers took out the Khmer princess. Now my opponent has only one hard to hit opponent left.
Start of Round 6
During the fifth round, I managed one hit to the lone monster and am now one hit away from winning. My Long Boatman sniper is now in the tank position.
Round 6 ended up being the last round as I managed to finally finish off my opponents last monster.
Overall, my strategy of using multiple snipers worked in this battle. Given the ruleset, in this battle it was even more important since the attacks had to get rid of the 2 armor first. I used a tank with taunt ability so my back-line was safe from attack until my tank was wiped out. This kept my snipers as well as healing card from being knocked out in the early rounds. Both sides began the match with a healing card. Once I wiped out my opponents healing card in the first round it definitely gave me an edge.
As far as what I could have done better, I wonder if the order of my two snipers should have been switched. The reason is that the Centaur has lower attack but higher health than the Lone Boatman. So I would think that it would be better to allow the Centaur to fall into tank position first.