In Splinterlands, it is absolutely essential to be prepared for every conceivable situation; even more so than your opponent, the specific conditions of the Battleground can determine your ultimate victory or defeat. By "Battleground conditions," I am referring to the Mana Cap and—most importantly—the Rule Sets. If you can grasp the nature of these Rule Sets and prepare your strategy accordingly, consider half the battle already won. For instance, in my battle today, the Mana Cap was 50. A higher Mana Cap translates to greater freedom in selecting the cards of your choice. Furthermore, the match featured two specific Rule Sets. The first was "Briar Patch," which grants the "Thorns" ability to every card on the Battleground; this implies that you should place a greater reliance on Magic or Ranged Attack cards. The second Rule Set was "Brute Force"—a recent addition to the game—which grants cards with the highest attack power the privilege of attacking first. In other words, under this Rule Set, the attack order is determined by your card's raw attack power rather than its Speed stat. It was precisely this combination of factors that led me to select Legendary Captain Bravetofu for this particular battle.🔥
Why? Because, as you know, Captain Bravetofu grants the "Inspire" ability to the cards within his supportive bloodline—an ability that boosts the attack power of every melee card on the team by +1. However, this specific battle featured an additional ruleset that deals 2 points of damage—via "Thorns"—specifically to melee attackers. Yet, fully aware of this risk, I chose to fill the tank and second-line defensive positions in this battle with melee cards; my lineup ultimately consisted of five cards from Bravetofu's supportive bloodline, each possessing varying attack powers. The strategy was simple: all five cards, empowered by the "Inspire" ability, would collectively grant the team's melee attackers a boost of +5 to their melee attack power. Furthermore, these cards would retain their own inherent attack values. Consequently, the attack power of my two primary melee cards soared to 9 and 8—figures, representing a truly formidable offensive force. According to my strategy, even if the enemy's "Thorns" ability inflicted 2 points of retaliatory damage following such a massive melee strike, the resulting loss would be negligible; conversely, there was a high probability that that very single attack would knock the enemy out.🔥
That is precisely what I actually observed. So, you might be wondering why I didn't simply fill the entire team with melee attack cards. Well, the answer is that within Bravetofu's supportive bloodline, melee cards typically lack high health points. Consequently, even if you were to include these powerful—yet fragile—cards, they would run a significant risk of getting knocked out very quickly; for this reason, I chose to minimise my reliance on melee cards. Furthermore, due to the "Briar Patch" ruleset, I wanted to incorporate a variety of different card types into the team. Since ranged cards are unable to launch attacks from the frontline, I positioned a single ranged attacker at the very end of the lineup, while allocating the two middle slots to magic cards. This strategy allowed me to strike an excellent balance of offensive capabilities while simultaneously ensuring that my frontline melee cards benefited from the maximum possible melee attack power—the impact of which you can clearly witness in the screenshots.
I devised this strategy by carefully analysing the rulesets. Upon first glance at the "Briar Patch" modifier, the immediate instinct is to steer clear of melee cards entirely in this battle; my opponent likely assembled their team with precisely this assumption in mind. However, the threat posed by "Thorns" remains a genuine danger only as long as your attacks are not two or three times greater in magnitude than the impact of the Thorns, or if your own health is low. If you can boost the attack power of your healthy melee cards—and you have Brute Force on your side—then the enemy might not even survive long enough to launch a counterattack. That was precisely my line of thought, and winning this battle became incredibly easy.
Note:
English is not my first language. So sometimes I use 'Google Translate'. Please don't think that anything I have written in this blog has been copied from somewhere or is AI-generated.
Paragraph Dividers and all the photos are from #Splinterlands.
All the other content images and words are mine unless otherwise stated.
Have a Happy and Blessed day!
