Here's a link for this week's challenge
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_126487149f145ad706ab1ca1472c7772&ref=jingo-submo
Here's the ruleset
Lineup:
Summoner: General Sloan
General Sloan buffs all of the ranged attacks on each side here. When I'm choosing a lineup for the light splinter and have a high mana cap available, General Sloan is my first choice.
Tank: Chaos Knight vs Shieldbearer
These are both excellent choices for a tank. When choosing a tank, I want something that can take a hit. I usually prefer something with the Shield ability or the Void ability depending on what I expect to face. The taunt ability on Shieldbearer is also very helpful and makes Shieldbearer probably the most common Tank used in the light splinter.
Because I was expecting to face another lineup from the light splinter and because of the Fog of War ruleset I didn't think that taunt would be as important for this battle.
You can see that my opponent was also expecting to face a lineup from the light splinter, and they were expecting to face Shieldbearer specifically as they chose Portal Spinner to get around it. I was able to cut through my opponent's Shieldbearer before they could handle my Chaos Knight because of that.
Sheildbearer costs 2 less mana which was not necessary in this battle but can sometimes be a significant advantage over Shieldbearer.
Did my strategy work?
Yes, it's always helpful to compare my own strategy to that of my opponent and recognize similarities. The shield ability on Chaos Knight was great for reducing my opponent's ranged damage early on.
What will I try differently next time?
I think that my opponent and I both made some excellent decisions going into this battle. We were both able to put a lot of power into our lineups, and we were able to anticipate some of the decisions that our opponent would make. This was true more for the ruleset than for the opponent's battle history.
It could have been fun to surprise my opponent with a Delwyn lineup and Chaos Dragon to wreck their backline.
Do I like Chaos Knight?
Yes, I think that all of the monsters with the Shield ability are good choices for the tank position, they can also be extremely helpful in the last position under the right rulesets.
@groentje has been working to objectively rank the strength of creatures relative to their counterparts with similar abilities and does an excellent job of comparing monsters with the shield ability here @groentje/calculation-of-shield-monsters-power-crazy-strong-lobstradamus
Thanks for reading and thanks to any who like, follow, repost and read my other content on peakd.