Hello everyone who likes the Splinterlands game, time goes by really fast, and without realizing it, it's almost close to EOS again. It's time to chase the rating and try to reach the league we want.

This time I will make a Social Media Challenge held by Splinterlands, about a battle using 2 melee monsters from Dragon Element. The ruleset this time causes us to only be able to use melee-type monsters. This time I battled using my scholar account from Balthazar, in Diamond League Modern Format. The cards I carry are chaos legion cards, some neutral cards, and all max level. I have several reward cards too which I bought, some got delegates from other scholars.

This strategy does not use Mylor who is the best summoner for battles with a melee-only ruleset. Mylor is expensive to rent.

This guide is not suitable for a pro player to cause only battle using cheap monsters. But I think very suitable for newbies/beginners who want to try Diamond league but do not want to rent an expensive monster.

I'm not very good at writing, sorry if there are mistakes or many shortcomings in this writing. I will try to explain as best I can the strategy that I use, hopefully, it can help new players/beginners get more wins.

Battle Link

If you want to watch full battle link you can click Here.
For video you can watch here : 3speak

Ruleset

From left to right :

• Up Close & Personal , Only Monsters with Melee attack may be used in battles.
• Mana Cap 44.
• Can Use element Fire, Earth, Life, Death and Dragon.

My Lineup and strategy

There are several strategy options that we can choose for the Up, Close and Personal ruleset:

• The strategy commonly used is to use monsters with sneak/opportunity skills. Like Sand Worm (Neutral Monster), Mordeus (fire), Dragon Jumper (Dragon Element), or Runi which has great damage.
  But as we have been informed above, the decks we carry are cheap decks, so we don't have these cards, renting the cards above for the max level is expensive (Runi can't be rented).
• Choose a summoner that increases/reduces Melee attack (my scholar doesn't have a summoner like that)
• Bringing attack monsters/tankers that have great damage and armor.
  The monsters brought better if have one of the skills below:
  • Shield (reduces melee damage by 50%) can be placed in front or behind as a tanker against sneak attacks.
  • Demoralize to reduce enemy Meele's damage by 1.
  • Poison, every time you attack there is a possibility of giving poison status as much as 50% to the enemy, if you get poisoned, your HP will decrease by 2 every round.
  • Inspire, increases the damage of a friendly monster by 1.
  • Dodge (25%)/Fly(25%)/Blind (15%), to increase the chance of dodging enemy attacks.
• By placing it on the back or front of a monster that has the thorn skill (deals 2 damage when attacked by a Meele monster) or a monster with retaliate skill so that when attacked there is a 50% chance it will strike back.

Postscript :
In this battle mana cap 44 is a high mana battle so we can guess that the enemy will use monsters with large mana costs that have great damage, other stat/skills to consider:

• Speed, in the melee vs melee battle where the big mana monster can be used, in my opinion not too important because the difference in speed between monsters is usually not too much. I will prioritize damage, damage skills (poison or Retaliate skills), armor and defense skills (Fly, Dodge, Blind, Shield, Demoralize). Maybe if the enemy brings Coeurl Lurker monster with a skill taunt that depends on their evade skill, speed becomes important, cause if we don't have high speed can't hit the Coeurl Lurker. I'm not saying that speed is completely unimportant, but there are other things that need to be prioritized.
• Heal, if there is, of course, it's good but we still prioritize damage and defense skills.

Of course, it's impossible to get a monster that can fulfill all of the strategies above. So we have to make a choice.

Here I finally decided to use Dragon Element with the help of the Earth element. Because melee Dragon monsters have big damage, big armor, and also defense skills.

My strategy is to attack and kill the enemy front monster with as much damage as possible and the rear/back tanker monsters try to survive as long as possible, these monsters in the rear have retaliate skills. Just in case the enemy brings lots of monsters with sneak skills.

There is 1 monster from the Earth element that has good stat and skills to defend against sneak attacks. It is Pelacor Mercenary, when meet a Sand Worm/Mordeus who has great damage but slow speed or other sneak monsters, maybe can avoid several attacks and survive long enough, giving our main attack monsters the opportunity to kill the enemy at the front.
With 7 Mana left I decided to use 2 sneak monsters, Uraeus with 3 mana cost and Dhampir Inflitrator with 4 mana cost.

Let's talk more about the Lineup :

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The summoner

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My summoner Quix the Devious from Chaos Legion Card, Decreases all enemy monster range damage and speed by 1. Speed decrease is good but range damage decreases are not useful in this battle. But I have only this Dragon summoner in my card, so I used it.

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First Position Monster - Attacker and Tanker

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Strength :

• Has a large Armor and HP. The attack is pretty big too.
• This monster cannot miss when attacking enemies.
• Melee monsters that attack him will receive 2 counterattacks damage.
• Skill Enrage, When an enemy monster attack reduces its HP it will activate the enrage skill and make Djinn Chwala's damage and speed increase.

Weakness :

• Decent speed at basic, but will increase when the enrage skill active.

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Second Position Monster - Attacker and Tanker

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Strength :

• can attack from the second position
• Double strike skills make the damage increase 2 times, with a base damage of 4 will increase to 8 each round.
• The shield will reduce melee and range enemy damage by half
• Have big armor and good damage and HP.

Weakness

• Decent Speed.

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Third Position Monster - Attacker

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Sneak monster, I choose him because of his poison skills. For 3 mana it's a very good monster, has good damage and speed, and has armor too.

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Fourth Position Monster - Attacker

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Another sneak monster I brought beside Uraeus. Have a double strike skill so the damage becomes 4 each round. Cripple skill will make the enemy monster keep losing the max HP. If hit the enemy with armor will decrease the HP by 1.

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Fifth Position Monster - Attacker and Tanker

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As the second tanker for the back, he has several skills but for this battle, I chose to use this monster mainly because of the demoralize skill which can reduce the damage of all melee enemies by 1, and also the retaliate skill.
The biggest weakness is slow speed.

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Sixth Position Monster - Attacker and Tanker

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The ultimate tanker to deal with sneak attacks from enemy monsters. Too bad he couldn't attack from behind. Pretty good damage and speed, coupled with the skills Fly, Heal and retaliate will make it difficult for enemy sneak monsters to kill it. An armor 1 and large HP will surely help Pelacor Mercenary survive longer.

The Battle

Round 1:
The battle begins with buffs and debuffs from both sides. Here we can see that the damage from all the enemy melee is greater than ours because of the inspire skill from Tusk the Wide which increases the damage of all melee by 1.
Our side :

• The Dhampir Infiltrator died from attacking the Forgotten One which activated its retaliate skill resulting in the Dhampir Infiltrator receiving a counterattack.
• Uraeus who attacked Forgotten was fortunate enough not to activate his retaliate skill.
• The Mercenary Retaliate activated and counterattacked Uraeus, also managed to dodge the Dhampir Inflitrator's attack.
• Djinn Chwala also took a lot of damage from Carnage Titan and Tusk the Wide, Thorn skill from Djinn Chwala keep decreasing enemy Armor and HP, and staying alive this round and activating his enrage skills resulted in increased damage and speed.

Enemy Side :

• Tusk the Wide, who only has speed 1, can not evade any attack. Besides being hit by Thorn's effect, he also takes a lot of attacks from Djinn Chwala and Carnage Titan. At the end of the round, he only has 3 HP left.
  
  

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Round 2:

Our Side:

• Uraeus who attacks the Forgotten One dies from a counterattack.
• The Pelacor Mercenary reactivated her retaliate skill and attacked the Dhampir Inflitrator, and most of Uraeus and Dhampir Infiltrator's attacks were dodged.
• The enemy's Carnage Titan who has a shield skill reduce damage from melee attack by half and also reduces the thorn effect by half. This skill makes it difficult for our Djin Chwala and Carnage Titan to kill him.

Enemy Side : no monsters die

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Round 3:

Our side :

• Djinn Chwala dies in this round, as a tanker he has done his job very well, dealing damage from a thorn to the Carnage titan and with the enrage skill causing the damage to be 6, so it can reduce the HP of the Carnage Titan quite a lot.

Enemy side:

• The Dhampir Inflitrator died from the Retaliate skill of the Pelacor Mercenary.
• The Carnage Titan finally dies after receiving many attacks from our Djinn Chwala and the Carnage Titan.
  
  

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Round 4 :

Our side : no monsters die.

Enemy side:

• Uraeus dies in this round after being hit by a double strike from the Carnage Titan.
  
  

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Round 5:
Carnage Titan VS Disintegrator with skill retaliate, no other monsters can attack, all monsters are waiting for their turn to come forward so they can attack.

Our side :

• Carnage Titan received a lot of attacks and counterattacks from the Disintegrator. Luckily, Carnage Titan has a shield skill, so the attack from the Disintegrator only deals 1 damage.

Enemy Side : no monsters die

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Round 6:
Not much happened in this round, only the enemy's Disintegrator activated his retaliate skill. No monsters die in this round.

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Round 7 :

Our Side: no monster die

Enemy Side :

• Disintegrator dies killed by Carnage Titan.

We can see that the enemy Disintegrator is no match for our Carnage Titan. With the death of this monster, our monster's attack increases by 1. Because The Disintegrator has Demoralize skill, the skill effect disappears after the Disintegrator's death.

The damage from enemy Forgotten One is very big, he activated the retaliate skill and attacked the Carnage Titan, even though the Carnage titan has a shield skill, it still decreases a lot.

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Our Side :

• Carnage Titan died because the Forgotten One reactivated his retaliate skill.
• The Disintegrator receives an attack from the Forgotten One and counterattacks using retaliate skill and manages to kill the Forgotten One, before dying the Forgotten One activates its retaliate skill and manages to kill the Disintegrator.

With the death of the Forgotten One and our Pelacor Mercenary still alive. Victory is on our side.

Did your strategy work?

Actually, the enemy uses a strategy similar to what I use, except that he prioritizes damage by bringing the inspire skill, and that becomes his weakness because monsters that have this inspire skill are weak against melee attacks.
After the battle, I just realized that he is the same Balthazar scholar as me 😀.

My strategy is going well, the monster with retaliate skill that I bring activated the retaliate skill many times helping to kill enemy monsters who have sneak skills, Djinn Chwala with thorn skill, makes the armor and HP of the enemy keep decreasing while attacking this monster. Pelacor Mercenary who is expected to be able to avoid several enemy attacks also does their job well.

Unexpectedly, the Forgotten One, an enemy that only has speed 1, easily kills our monster that has speed 3 by activating the retaliate skill without giving it a chance to dodge.

What will you try differently next time?

I will replace the Dhampir Inflitrator with Venari Scout who has dodge and opportunity skills (attacks from any position the monster with the lowest HP), so if the enemy carries the skill retaliate / thorn on the back, Venari Scout will attack other monsters.

Thank you so much for reading to the end. What do you think about my battle review ? If i make mistake please let me know and leave your comment, i really appreciate it.

If you are new and want to play this game can use my referrals code https://splinterlands.com?ref=poplar-22.

Credit

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