A CLUTCH Shatter - Cover Final.jpg

Shatter & Low-Speed Monsters

This post features a card that gathered dust since the day I bought it.

To provide a quick context, I had probably been playing Splinterlands for about a month or so before this purchase. With not so much DEC in my account and the Chaos Legion set yet to be launched, I was trying to find ways to expand my deck beyond the reward cards I was collecting.

As I’ve described in my post on How to build a VERSATILE LEVEL 1 deck, I was focusing on finding Monsters that could offer me at least one ability at base-level. I see abilities in this game as an arsenal of weapons I can choose from. The more I have, the more flexibility I get.

FLAMESMITH

During the screening process, I stumbled upon Flamesmith from the Dice edition. I wasn’t too aware of the Speed issue at the time thus, being able to entirely get rid of my opponent’s armor in one single hit sounded great. Only later did I discover that Shatter on a slow monster wasn’t as good of a fit.

As @bulldog1205 has mentioned in one of his game mechanic videos, the purpose of Shatter is to remove the opponent tank’s armors before our other monsters attack it. However, when finally comes the turn of our low-speed monster, the opponent tank’s armor has often already been heavily damaged, making consequently Shatter unnecessary.

The perfect setting to make it work!

A CLUTCH Shatter - Rulesets.png

Rulesets: Earthquake + Reverse Speed
Mana Cap: 52
Tournament: Summoner Lab Launch Party

Months later, I still don’t use Flamesmith that often. Yet, I am sure this card can be very handy once it gets Repair at level 6, but well, that’s not gonna happen anytime soon in my situation. Its low speed being the main issue, a high mana cap “Reverse Speed” battle was an excellent setup to give it another shot.

Combined with Grum Flameblade (Thank you @Pinkoboe once again!), this duo actually did a great job. However, when Carnage Titan reached the frontline in the middle of Round 5, I wasn’t very confident about the outcome of the game. This was before a clutch Shatter that I didn't see coming!

Triggering Shatter - All about timing!

CARNAGE TITAN

To be honest, I didn’t plan for the Flamesmith’s Shatter to trigger just at the right time to hit and completely destroy Carnage Titan’s bulky armor. It simply happened to be a lucky accident. So, because luck and timing are involved in making this ability effective, it is often quite difficult to base a whole strategy around it.

A CLUTCH Shatter - Battle.jpg