Greetings to all Splinterlands players! In several days we will reach EOS day again, how is your rating everyone? Finally, break into the Diamond league and right now already reach diamond 1. I hope can reach Champion 3 again before EOS.

We have interesting news from Splinterlands discord "Splinterlands has removed 500,000 packs from the market and reserved them for use in the NFTy Arcade platform. If successful, this would bring in new users and increase engagement. Rewards generated from these cards will be burned, and if the project is unsuccessful, the cards will be destroyed by request of a DAO vote. The experiment will be run for several months to determine its effectiveness." I wonder how this will be implement for new player. Just play free without rent but don't get any reward at all, only for practice and rating ? What do you think ?

Today I will make Social Media Challenge this is a popular event held by Splinterlands. The theme is Diemonshark, monsters of the Water Element. It's a very popular monster many Splinterlands players used it from novice league up to Champion League, including me 😀. He has 8 mana cost, 6 Armor and 10 HP, and 3 skills he has very supportive in winning melee vs melee monsters battles

This is my battle from diamond League Modern Format with my scholar account from Balthazar. My deck consists of max level chaos legion cards, some neutral cards, and reward cards acquired through both purchases and delegate gifts from other scholars. There are still many reward cards that I don't have, especially legendary ones.

This guide is created to help those new to the game, or those playing on a budget, to reach the Diamond or Champion league. It offers strategies for using more affordable monsters instead of renting expensive ones. As an example, my account cards shows that budget cards can help one achieve Champion 3.

I apologize if the quality of my writing is not up to par; I don't have much experience in this area. Nonetheless, I will do my best to make my strategy clear, in order to help beginners and new players increase their chances of winning.

Battle Link

If you want to watch the full battle link you can click Here.
For the video you can watch it here :

Ruleset

From left to right :

• Explosive Weaponry, All Monsters have the Blast ability.
  • Blast Ability does additional damage to Monsters adjacent to the target monster, Additional damage is equivalent to main damage divided by 2, rounded up.
• Spreading Fury, all Monsters have the Enrage ability.
  • Enrage ability has increased Melee attack and Speed when damaged, Attack and speed increase by multiplier x1.5 rounded up.
• Mana Cap 56.
• Can use the element Water, Life, and Dragon.
  

My Lineup and strategy

When playing with the blast ruleset, there are several things to keep in mind:

• Use a Summoner that can speed up your own units or slow down opponents, and give armor if possible.
• Monster with this ability will help :
  • Swiftness (add speed) or Slow skill
  • Reflection Skill, damage from the blast will be ignored.
  • Taunt skill, all enemy monsters will attack this monster if they can, to control the blast effect to focus on 1 monster
  • Defense skills like void (half magic damage), shield (half melee and range damage),
• Use Melee tanker with Retaliate skill.

The Water and Dragon elements are the most suitable for this battle due to the summoners' abilities to increase speed (Kelya Frendul) and reduce speed (Quix the Devious). As I only have one summoners from each element. I decided to use The Water element summoner which is ideal due to its ability to increase speed and armor, with armor allowing it to withstand one blast attack from melee or ranged monsters. Additionally, Wave Brood from the Water element has a Taunt skill, a Magic Defense skill, and can return range attacks.

The monster lineup that we will use is as follows:

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The summoner

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My summoner Kelya Frendul from Chaos Legion Card can increase the speed and armor of a friendly monster by 1.

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Diemonshark, first position - Tanker and attacker

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Strengths :

• Good damage and speed of 4.
• Have big armor and HP
• If hit by an enemy melee attack has a 50% chance to hit back the enemy.
• The Enrage skill will increase the stat to further increase the damage and speed which is already big.
• The Retaliate skill is very dangerous in this ruleset, as it can inflict damage to two monsters simultaneously every time it is activated

Weakness :

• Weak against magic attacks.

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Flying Squid, second position - Attacker

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This is our 2nd attacker to attack the first position monster, because of the skill reach it can attack from this position.
My main reason to use this monster is because of the Blind skill which will increase the chance to evade the enemy range and melee attack by 15 percent, and also because of the high speed and HP he has.

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Deeplurker, third position - Attacker

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Has high damage good speed, and can inflict poison, he has the support skill Demoralize which is useful to decrease all enemy melee monster attacks by 1. If the enemy does not have a monster with the Taunt skill, this monster can attack in the middle of the enemy formation, potentially dealing a great deal of damage to the attacked monster, as well as the surrounding monsters. I placed this monster in the third spot, in the hopes that it would be safe from enemy attack, as it is quite vulnerable if attacked.

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Nerissa Tridawn, fourth position - attacker

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Boasting both high magic damage and high health points, this monster may be slow, but it's high health points give it the potential to last long enough to inflict a significant amount of damage. I chose this position for this monster in order to protect it as long as possible from the attack of an enemy monster.

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Baakjira - Support

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Have many great support skills, but can't attack though.

• Void, reduced damage of the magic attack by half.
• Slow, reduce all enemy monster speed by 1,
• Strengthen, increase the HP of all friendly monsters by 1.
• Heal, restore 1/3 HP rounded down.

This is our tanker to deal with the effects of the blast skill.

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Wave Brood- Tanker & Attacker

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This is our main tanker, a ranged monster with taunt skill, it is strong against magic, have void armor can reduce magic damage by half. If hit by range attack will return back the damage to the attacker. Has big HP. This tanker is in charge of controlling the attack with the blast skill, to make sure the enemy monster attack only hit first and last position monster.

The Battle

Round 1:
Starting with Buffs and Debuffs. Here we can see that on average the attacking monsters we bring have a higher speed than the enemy monsters, because of Baakjira's slow skill, which reduces the enemy's speed.

Our Side :

• Diemonshark activates the retaliate skill when attacked by the Carnage Titan, when counterattacking the Carnage Titan he gives a blast effect to River Hellondale and Djinn Chwala, a counterattack that injures 3 enemies at once.
• When Diemonshark was attacked by Djinn Chwala again he activated his Retaliate skill and counterattacked causing the Carnage Titan behind him to be hit as well.
• The other 4 monsters on the enemy side all attack Wave Brood, there is something interesting in this round when enemy Deeplurker's attack on Wave Brood can be avoided even though Deep Lurker's speed is higher. This is due to the Flying Squid's Blind skill. Likewise, attacks from enemy Wave Brood that have the same speed can also be avoided by our Wave Brood.
• All monsters stay alive in this round.

Enemy side :

• No monsters die in this round.
• The enemy's Wave Brood is poisoned by Deeplurker.

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Round 2:

• Enemy Wave Brood died in this round, from the effects of poison and was attacked by Deeplurker.

In this round, we see Diemonshark's greatness after activating the enrage skill in round 1 due to being hit by the Thorns skill from Djinn Chwala, attack and the speed of Diemonshark has increased by 2.

• After killing Djinn Chwala Diemonshark activated the Trample skill and attacked the Carnage Titan, causing River Hellondale behind him to be hit by the blast effect, his HP remaining 1.

• Djinn Chwala was resurrected by River Hellondale with his Resurrect skill.

• Hit by our Nerissa Tridawn Djin Chwala dies for the 2nd time.

• Enemy Carnage Titan hit the Diemonshark which make the Retaliate skill active once again, Carnage Titan die with River Hellondale behind cause got damaged from the blast skill, then Diemonshark activates his trample skill and attacked Deeplurker leaving his HP as much as 2.

• Enemy Deeplurker attacks the Diemonshark and kill it, but before dying Diemonshark activates his retaliate skill and kills Deeplurker and Djinn Oshanus.

With the dead of Djinn Oshanus, the victory was on our side.

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Did your strategy work?

This strategy works well, better than expected.
Skill Blind from Flying Squid makes enemy monster Deeplurker and Wave Brood miss when attacking our Wave Brood, that is one of the keys to our victory because our Wave Brood at the end of the round has 11 health left and on the enemy side, there are only left 5 HP and affected by the poison.

When the enemy's Wave Brood dies, our attack team can focus more on the enemy's front tankers.

Baakjira who has slow skill is very helpful, causing us to attack first, and always hit the target.

The attacking team on the enemy's side actually has a much greater base damage of 12 per round (carnage titan double attack 8) while our attacking monsters in first and second positions are only 5.

Despite the high mana and HP of the Enemy's Monsters, the Battle Concluded Quickly, only 2 rounds because the enrage skill is assisted by the Diemonshark retaliate skill which is active many times, making it seem as if we have an army of melee-type attack teams with great damage attacking enemy tankers in the front position several time.

In this battle, Diemonshark activated the retaliate skill 4 times and trample skill 2 times.

Other strategy i want to try

If someday I have enough money to buy it, I want to replace Baakjira with Oshuur Constantia. This Monster has Reflection Shield, Heals the First Position monster, and can Revives One Friendly Monster, While Also Being Capable of Delivering a Significant Amount of Magic Damage.

I really appreciate you taking the time to read through my battle review. If there are any mistakes, please let me know and leave a comment. Thank you friends.

If you're new to the game, feel free to use my referral code https://splinterlands.com?ref=poplar-22 to join.

Credit

• Thumbnail using canva
• Divider taken from @kyo-gaming
• Card description, Image and graphic taken from https://Peakmonsters.com and https://Splintercards.com