Splinterlands Weekly Battle Challenge - Portal Spinner

The Portal Spinner lore explains that she has the scattershot ability because she is a time-traveling magician with an addled brain.

Portal Spinners siphon life magic from their surroundings to open mini-rifts in the fabric of reality. Some thought to use these portals to travel between realms. However, after attempting to do so, many a Portal Spinner was consumed by whatever foul beasts dwelled on the other side of the portal. Others emerged... rearranged... and either dead or wishing they were dead.

Even the Chaos Knight is terminally unprepared for the level of recklessness that she brings to the party.

The Portal Spinner sat alone at a table in the tavern, enjoying her dinner and sipping an ale.

“You almost got the lot of us killed out there,” the Chaos Knight said, the words a growl.

She sawed off a chunk of venison and waved the fork at him. “You're alive enough,” she said, and popped the meat into her mouth.

Portal Spinner: An absolute gem.

If you are unfamiliar with scattershot, this gif explains the logic fairly well:

So, when do you need that much chaos in your lineup?

I think my favorite time to let the algorithmic fates decide is during the blast rule set, to try to spread out damage and hit unsuspecting, unshielded monsters because it's unpredictable. Of course, this can also backfire because it’s impossible to tell where she’ll hit. Portal Spinner also completely disregards any taunts because she simply dgaf.

Link to the Battle

Lineup

General Sloan is my summoner and I chose her because she will increase the attack of both my glass canon Pelacor Arbalest and the wild-card Portal Spinner as well as the splash damage they do.

In the first position Shieldbearer effectively taunts all enemy monsters while in the second position Venator Kinjo has a reflection shield to negates splash damage.

I took advantage of Soul Fiend's zero mana requirement to insulate the Harpy and the Arbalest from splash damage after Shieldbearer goes down.

Celestial Harpy also does opportunity damage, and in particular against Kelya could help to remove some of the shields for subsequent damage to health of the more vulnerable monsters so that Portal Spinner can hit their soft, unsuspecting bellies that is if she wants to.

In the fifth position Pelacor Arbalest has double strike, and does three damage per hit, but is easy to kill.

And finally to round out the team, Portal Spinner will hopefully takes out some shields and or do direct and splash damage to monsters who would normally be protected.

Analysis

The strategy worked, but the mismatch in speed bit me a little. In the first round Portal Spinner chose to attack the flying Ice Pixie with twice her speed, and she missed, but hey you know what you're getting when you tag her in. In the second round she hit Uraeus, removed the armor from Deeplurker and got her revenge on the Ice Pixie. In the third round all that was left to do for her was hit the Deeplurker who swam his way to the front.

However, running it through Splintertools I got pretty lucky (range: 27-45% win), but making better use of the Portal Spinners armor by moving her in front of Pelacor would have increased my win chances by ~20%.

I really like using Portal Spinner (and other scattershot monsters) in specific situations, battles with moderate mana cap and no equalizer, and especially in the blast rule-sets and if there is no armor or no healing, she can strip off armor or kill weak monsters with a lucky strike. She also avoids taunt and can contribute to taking out key monsters or armor early on if you are being taunted.