Today, I am going to write about what I learned using General Sloan for a while and how it is powerful in low mana battles with plenty of example battles.
[Lore]
Her name is Reega Sloan. She was a renowned healer in the city of Ulundin. She was treating people for free and lived off of donations. However, donations ended and when she asked past patients for money, they denied her. So she decided to go on a journey. She ended up treating wounded chaos legion warriors and while she was doing that, her magic ability grew in a more aggressive way. Her power grew so much that she became a general. She makes the portal spinners so strong with her magic that they can break through any barrier.
[Before General Sloan]
Selenia sky with earth splinter is very popular in low mana matches and they are very powerful. My point here is that General Sloan offers the same buff as Selenia sky, +1 archery. General Sloan requires 4 mana vs Selenia sky is 3 mana. However, Selenia sky is not available in modern format and General Sloan is a lot cheaper than Selenia sky.
I don't own Selenia sky. so I took this battle from the top battles.
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_9271d2e6e5d5e5b59e2031d31d1a1004
This kind of lineup is so popular that both used the same monsters, Selenia sky, failed summoner, Khmer princess, Naga assassin.
[Monster Synergies]
Life has so many low mana monsters that have good synergy with General Sloan. Let's look at those monsters.
Pelacor conjurer is a chaos legion reward card. It has flying from the base level. It gets magic reflect at level 4, silver level. It gets divine shield at level 7, gold league level. It gets phase at level 10, diamond, or champion league level.
- evasive: it often dodges attacks. it can dodge even magic in diamond or above leagues.
- magic reflect: this comes in very handy when opponent uses magic. I often reflect magic attacks from Dr.Blight.
- great tank with only 2 mana!
Venary Crystalsmith is great because it has tank heal ability and it gets decent archery attack which benefits from General Sloan's buff. At the highest level, it gets 4 archery damage!
What's a good counter for archery units? One is speed because archery can miss if it is slow. You can also add armor to protect your monster from archery damage. Time mage is a great counter for archery counter. It slows down the enemy and removes their 2 armor after level 5.
Dax paragon has great synergy with Pelacor conjurer because Dax offers amplify ability at level 2 and above and it increases magic reflect the damage of Pelacor conjurer. Affliction at level 5 or above comes in very handy sometimes when the enemy has self-healing tank like sea monster, Cerberus, Haunted spirit, or Xenith monk.
Herbalist offers cleans at level 3, triage at level 8. Cleanse is useful because Dr.Blight (with poison and affliction) is very popular in low mana matches. Herbalist can remove bad effects like poison and affliction! Also, it gets benefits from General Sloan. It does 3 damage at the highest level with +1 archery buff.
Thunderbird shines after level 4 with Stun. The 4 or 5 speed in higher leagues is decent and stun often times comes in very handy when you're facing big monsters like Kron, Flesh golem, or Hydra because stun can stop their attack and their self-healing for one turn.
Silvershield archers is an old reward card that offers double-strike archery attacks at level 6. The card does 2 archery damage twice in one turn which is 4 damage total. That is amazing damage output with only 2 mana!
Peacebringer doesn't offer any extra ability. However its damage output is amazing. It does 5 damage with 4 mana with +1 archery buff from General Sloan. 5 damage is devastating in low mana matches, oftentimes one-shotting some monsters.
[Case studies]
Let's look at real battles so that you can see how the cards mentioned here play out with General Sloan.
VS Alric Stormbringer, Seamonster, Ruler of the seas
https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_f8cd32f4edc20aa657e72d2442fe3fb5
Seamonster and ruler of the seas are very popular in low mana matches. Ruler of the seas does 5 magic damage with Alric +1 magic buff and 3 blast damage. That is very devastating. However, I have Pelacor Conjurer and Dax paragon combo. It reflected 4 damage back to the ruler of the seas leaving him with only 1 hp!
Dax paragon also afflicted seamonster in round 1. Also, seamonster missed an attack against Pelacor conjurer because of 6 speed (with +1 speed buff from sould fiend) and flying. Round 2, Thunderbird stunned seamonster and Crystalsmith just finished off the seamonster with 4 archery damage. The rest of the game is easy because ruler of the seas has only 1 hp left and after that, the pirate archer can't attack from the front position.
VS Lord of darkness, Corrupted Pegasus
https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_2bf13d5fa90c573df211230c97fc5271
My low mana life team is facing the most powerful combo in the game, lord of darkness (LoD in short) and corrupted pegasus.
Time mage does a great job removing lord of darkness's 2 armor. It helped a lot. Thunderbird stunned LoD first. All of my monster's attack was enough to take down LoD before LoD does anything!
Once LoD is gone, the game gets easier. Time mage was getting damage from Owster's magic reflect. However, the herbalist's triage was healing time mage, so that she can sustain herself.
Round 3, my monsters one-shotted their low hp monsters and I didn't lose a single monster against lord of darkness and corrupted pegasus. Those cards cost well over $1500 each.
From this battle, you can see that the damage output that General Sloan offers with speed can win against the best cards in the game.
VS Scarred Llama Mage & Hydra
https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_653399a6fd482126e949d55fde237947
17 mana matches with no armor rulest. With 17 mana with earth splinter available, you see Llama Kron but this person with the explorer title decided to go with a bunch of meat shields + hydra. Hydra is over $2200 card that offers self-heal, thorns, retaliate, trample and of course, it gets the last stand with Llama.
It was so easy going through meat shields. They didn't get to attack at all. Finally, Hydra gets the last stand, 6 melee attack, 6 speed, 18 health, healing 6 hp per turn! It attacked Pelacor conjurer but did no damage because the conjurer has a divine shield. My monsters do 11 damage per turn. so as long as the conjurer sustains, I easily win, which that's what happened.
People are scared of Llama Kron, Llama Fresh golem, etc but as long as you do much higher damage than 6, you're in a good position.
Low mana, Earthquake match
https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_89901a04bef3c27e3d316211c6889512
I think many people dislike this kind of ruleset, low mana earthquake. However, I want to say life now has a lot of good flying cards that are low mana. Pelacor conjurer, celestial harpy, thunderbird. I also often use tower griffin because it offers protect (+2 armor)
The opponent sacrificed flying and taking damage every turn. Failed summoner is hard to deal with because 10 hp with +1 health buff from wood nymph. My damage output is 7 per turn at max but they're taking earthquake damage and my attackers are not. So this was another easy game. I didn't lose any of my attackers thanks to 2 meat shields in the back.
VS Dr. Blight
https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_9b7e50705aa0d7dab190abda74e402f1
When first Dr. Blight came out in the game, I was losing against Dr.Blight a lot because of the poison and affliction combo and you can't even use sneak or opportunity to kill it. So the only way you can kill Dr.Blight is to kill every monster in the team first.
So the best way that I found to fight against Dr.Blight is having high damage output per turn to kill all the monsters. General Sloan offers just that. The Opponent is the opposite of damage output heavily dependent on monsters' abilities.
Fallen spector reduced archery damage and attacked Pelacor conjurer first but kills itself with magic reflect. Lord Arianthus is very hard to take out but my archers had no problem killing it doing enough damage even with shield.
Dr.Blight had 8 hp by the time it came to the first position. However, 8 hp is not a problem at all because my monsters were doing 9 damage per turn. Also, Dr.Blight hit Pelacor conjurer only once out of 3 chances because the conjurer had 6 speed, flying, and phase. It's a 75% chance to miss!
How to counter General Sloan in low mana?
1.Sneak team
https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_fd111fe8f843002fc31a38ef82f20d93
I had 2 armors from the tower griffin but even with that, 3 sneaks take out my archers in the back. I lost silvershield archer in the first turn. I killed the Xenith monk in the first turn as well but I lost tower griffin in the second turn. They still had 2 sneaks that can kill my archers without armor in no time.
2.Death weaken + redemption
https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_9cef97984ac4887dd7d1198471bf38f6
They had 3 weakens even with summoner without -1 hp. If they had -1 hp summoner like thaddius brood, 3 of my monsters had 1 hp and got killed instantly with redemption from cursed slimeball.
The dealth elemental took down my dax paragon first with 2 snipe damage. After that, cursed slimeball died and did redemption and took out my soul fiend, silvershield archers and Ooze. After that, venari crystal smith got taken down by death elemental in the second round. No attacker left and the game over after the second round.
Conclusion
General Sloan and life monsters can offer high damage output, which is very important in this game. I think people often overlook the damage output because they're so focused on the abilities each monster offers.
Chaos legion and reward cards added great cards that go very well with General Sloan on top of monsters that already existed. General Sloan is one of the cheapest summoners in the game staying around less than $3/bcx. If you don't use General Sloan, I highly recommend trying it out.
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https://splinterlands.com?ref=yukihyakubai
Thank you so much for reading!