This is truly one of my favourite cards in the game and I have been working on leveling this little darling up for quite some time. Since market prices are at almost their lowest point right now, I took the opportunity to level my Nighmare up to level 9 to give me the highest possible speed in Diamond League.

Nightmare has amazing stats! At gold level, where my feature battle today is being played, it has 3 melee, 6! speed, 12 health and the Blast and Phase abilities. This makes Nightmare a great tank in first position but can also be placed elsewhere. The main objective is to score misses from all attack types and hit back with first strike capability and Blast.

The speed buff that I am, I am always looking to increase the speed of my little darlings further. One of my main tools to do this is the neutral Supply Runner providing Swiftness. There are other monsters with this ability and in the purple deck it is Lira The Dark. Adding these two cards to Nightmare already bumps its speed up to 8 in Gold league and 9 in Diamond league. Furthermore, putting these guys together with the summoners Astral Entity, giving Dodge (+15% miss chance) or Mylor with Flying (also providing an added 15% miss chance), the speed differentials make Nighmare almost impossible to hit.

Other options to increase speed are, for example exploiting the Martyr ability (Venari Marksrat) and the What Doesn't Kill You ruleset (giving Enrage to all monsters) as I am going to show you in this battle:

This epic battle is a high mana fight with two splinters available: Life and Death. The ruleset is What Doesn't Kill you. This is an optimal setting to go for a high speed lineup with Nightmare.

The lineup and battle tactics are as follows: Astral Entity will summon a Death team led by Venary Marksrat. He is at the front to Martyr for Nighmare behind him and hopefully be the one to be resurrected to Martyr for Nighmare a second time. The What Doesn't Kill You will then Enrage Nighmare to make it supersonicfast!

The midfield and backline are manned firstly by Queen of Crows to act as a brick wall, should my strategy fail and Nighmare gets toasted (unlikely lol). The rest of the team is made up of rangers and magic players to hammer the enemy frontline. Supply Runner is at the back to provide even more speed! I could have also brought Lira the Dark but I opted for a magic monster instead, just in case the enemy team is loaded with shielded monsters.

Now that the team is ready to rumble, let's watch the battle:

At first glimpse at the opposition, I am glad I brought a magic monster and my speed calculations look top!

To my surprise the enemy fired first but it helped my cause: Venary Marksrat got wiped out immediately to be resurrected. He gave Nighmare the first Martyr dose :)) My Supply Runner enraged the enemy tank who then took out Venary Marksrat a second time to Martyr for Nighmare again, who now had 9 speed and 14 health! Nighmare then took a rare magic hit to become enraged. Nighmare now had 14 speed!!!! Pelacor Arbalest hence missed twice and the enemy tank went down. Things were going like clockwork!

Nightmare took a solid shot to damage both Djinn Renova and Clockwork Aid followed by 5 consecutive missed by enemy fire!! Djinn Renova and Clockwork Aid then bit the dust to leave only rangers in the enemy team.

Nightmare was missed again (total of 8 misses) and the rest was history.

⚔WATCH BATTLE⚔

What an epic display of speed by my beloved Nighmare!

There is another untamed reward card in the death deck with high speed at higher levels:

PHANTASM

I also love this card! At gold level it has 3 melee, again 6 speed and 9 health. At diamond level it gets the Retaliate ability. It has Flying from bronze level and combined with Astral Entity, Phantasm is also super fast. Flying and Dodge alone provide a 30% miss ratio and the added speed also make this monster very hard to hit. The only bother is magic attack.

Phantasm can be used as a tank, especially in diamond league but it is also a good sneak defender. When I put this card in the last position it usually survives long enough to stage a final showdown when it moves to the first position. Usually there are not many actors left in the arena at that point and Phantasms superior speed often clinches victory in the end.

You have never played Splinterlands? click HERE and get started!

WHAT IS SPLINTERLANDS?

Splinterlands is an autobattle digital card game on the Hive blockchain. The playing cards are NFTs, therefore they belong to you and you can trade, transfer or delegate them as you please. All you need to move cards and other ingame assets around is a Hive Keychain login. There are three types of battles you can play: ranked battles, brawls and tournaments. Every battle you win brings rewards, including SPS and/or loot chests containing cards, potions, packs and merits. The ingame currency is DEC and the governance token is SPS. For gladiator packs you need to earn merits through brawls and loot chests. Tournaments can bring you stacks of SPS if you play well. There are several third party card markets, including Peakmonsters.com and the best places to learn to play are PeakD and YouTube.

I hope you enjoyed this post and I will see you on the battlefield!

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