Hey everyone here I am again with a battle I just fought a couple of minutes ago that's worth talking about, well to be honest I just like to talk about my favorite game and because my family doesn't care and don't understand anything Splinterlands related I will just make posts about it. 😄

I think the Splinterlands team is doing a wonderful job in making almost every card desirable as a Splinterlands player, I am still playing with my Rebellion archons but eventually I will have to start saving for the Conclave Arcana archons so I can keep playing after the next rotation or I could also skip this set but it's a really nice and fun set!

On a Novice level alt account I sometimes play a couple of battles when I have extra time, just for fun and even down in the lower rankings it's a lot of fun using archons like Bella and Kaylia and it also helps me understand better what their powers are with the bloodline thing because for my modern deck this is not for me just yet.

When Captain Frankie, the first Legendary archon in this set launched and I met it in battle I was pretty overwhelmed, well made teams having incredible melee attack powers with Piercing AND Truestrike.... It's a bit like the Elias / Slade combo hitting like a truck but then more versatile, so... would facing Frankie mean a certain defeat EVERY time I met it in battle or could I maybe find ways to counter it?

Seasons getting more competitive?

It definitely feels like the seasons are getting more competitive with more high level decks in Gold 2 than before, in the final days of a season I would usually be able to push in to Gold 1 and earn some extra Glint and SPS but it doesn't look like this will be possible this time, that being said I am still within the leader board top 50 and my win rate is about the same, in the 49% range.

I am not complaining though, I think it's a good thing and a Silver level deck shouldn't be able to push really high, even in to Diamond sometimes so the rating inflation we faced in the past seems to have vanished.

Sharing a battle

So just like in most of my Splinterlands blog posts I talk about a specific battle, I hope you - the people reading this like this as well but if you like me to talk about specific topics let me know!

There are a lot of really high mana battles lately, so we are able to make teams with the big guns, in the previous fought battles I could see my opponent liked to use Frankie and with Melee Mayhem ruleset it was an obvious choice they would go for Frankie this time as well, and as you know I like to adapt my teams on what I expect my opponent to play to hopefully be right and counter their plans.

Like many times in Gold 2 now I'm facing a max level Archon but not all monsters are max level so that's something! Because I was expecting a heavy melee team I started with two tanks with the Shield ability, and a healer in the back to sustain this - hopefully it's enough to let them survive a couple of rounds so Slade can work the other team.
One of the fall pits in making a team that's counter melee is failing because the other team has a high damage magic attacker in the back of the team so I brought a unit with the Silence ability to somewhat counter this, in hindsight this wasn't needed.

My opponent did exactly the same thing with the two tanks with the Shield ability, and that Mantaroth is a much better one than my version so I wasn't sure at all about this battle, I think it's a well thought out enemy team the only thing I would have done different is using that Calamity because in long battles like this the damage it does to your own team really adds up.

The damage the front of the enemy team does is really impressive but I tend to underestimate my own team, when I look at the total damage output per turn as long as everyone is still alive is 28 damage for the enemy team but my team is doing 36!

Let's see how this plays out...

With so much healing, no one died in the first round and by the start of round 3, both Mantaroths died and got resurrected, but that ZAPPED damage is helping me, doing 6 damage every round while Calamity itself is only doing 2 damage to my tank.

By the end of round 4, the front of the enemy team collapsed while I still had some good HP the other team needed to get through, and without the strong attackers this didn't seem possible anymore.

Slade's attack power alone is 13 per round, too much for two healers to sustain 😁 I love Slade!

So, what I learned today is, Frankie teams CAN be countered but I think the bad thing for me is because the use of the tactics combined with the crazy melee attack power is when the attacks are NOT aimed at the front of my team but rather with Opportunity or Sneak I would lose anyway. I thought about this when making my team by also making sure my rear had a Shield ability, this game is so complex with so many strategies and options - It's why I love it so much!

A nice 3.5 SPS reward and over 400 glint for the win, this season I already passed 150k Glint total earned which is more than in my previous seasons.

Okay, I've bothered you all enough with my Splinter Talk, back to grinding it is to get my fifteen daily wins in, not an easy task nowadays! 😅

EDIT: One hour later, and I faced the same player again, knowing that Frankie would be played I still couldn't stop this team and I got defeated, so it's 1 - 1!