This week's battle challenge involves Dragons! Dragons are special because they can be paired with any other available Splinter! This allows you to create some really unique lineups that can throw your opponent off their game!

My post this week will be a little bit different. Instead of showing how I use the Dragon Splinter, I'll be showing a battle where I attempt to COUNTER a Dragon Lineup! In this case, it is a Delwyn Dragonscale paired with the Earth Splinter.

Delwyn Dragonscale Highlights

Delwyn Dragonscale is a BEAST. It hard to imagine why this card is a common card since it gives +1 Magic Damage to all friendly enemies. Essentially Obsidian/Alric but with the options of boosting ANY Splinter.

You can get very creative and come up with so many different lineups such as the Life Leeching pair of Venari Bonesmith and Lifesapper or how a GIANT Giant Killing Djinn Inferni.

Delwyn is slightly balanced by the 5 mana that is required in order to play it compared to 3 for Alric and 4 for Obsidian.

So how do I counter Delwyn?

• Reflect, Void, and Void Armor are your friends. Bonus points if you pair it with Amplify.
• Thaddius Brood or monsters with the Silence ability are great here
• Armor isn't useful against Magic (except in Weak Magic rulesets or if you have Void Armor) BUT can still be useful against tanks

This Week's Featured Battle

In this week's featured battle, we have Delwyn Dragonscale facing off against Tyrus Paladium in Dragon+Earth vs Life!

Battle Ruleset

	Target Practice	All Ranged and Magic attack Monsters have the Snipe ability
	Rise of the Commons	Only Common and Rare Monsters may be used in battles
	25 Mana	This is considered a medium mana battle
	Active Splinters	All splinters except Water are available

• Target Practice
  • Use Snipe to bait your opponent into Magic Reflect, Return Fire, or Backfire
  • Be strategic with your backline placement to protect yourself against Snipe!
• Rise of the Commons
  • Look at what your opponent likes to play and think about what is now off limits to them
  • Without Legendries and Epics, a lot of my opponent's Dragon cards are off the table
• 25 Mana
  • This is a medium Mana battle so expect to see a full lineup of monsters with one "big boy"

When considering lineups, I like to first think about who the ruleset is advantageous to. In this case, ALL Magic and Ranged will be targeting other non-melee cards in the backline before focusing on the tank.

This rule is tricky because most backline attackers will have Snipe unless they are melee attackers with Sneak or Opportunity. Since my opponent likes to play Delwyn, I imagine most of their attackers will do Magic damage to take advantage of the Summoner buff.

Because of this, I want to play Magic Reflect in POSITION 2 with Amplify. My tank does not need to worry about Magic damage (at least initially) so it's very important that my tank can go toe to toe with their tank. This could fall apart if my opponent decided to go with a Magic tank but hopefully my Tank Heal will help keep it alive.

The Lineup

Position	Card Image	Card Name	Notes
Summoner		Tyrus Paladium	Life Summoner that grants +1 Armor to all Friendly Monsters
Pos 1 (tank)		Chaos Knight	I assumed my opponent would go with a melee tank so I chose something with the Shield ability
Pos 2 (secondary tank/reflector)		Pelacor Conjurer	Excellent Chaos Legion card that reflects Magic damage back to the attackers. Key component of this lineup
Pos 3 (support)		Armorsmith	Although it can't attack from here, it is critical for my lineup. The repair ability keeps my tank alive
Pos 4 (attacker)		Stitch Leech	With Sneak and Life Leech, this monster can take out the enemy backline while gaining health. It then becomes a secondary (tertiary?) tank if the frontline goes down
Pos 5 (attacker/support)		Venari Spellsmith	Amplify is critical for this lineup to work. Dispel is an added bonus as well as the Magic damage to help take out backline healers (if present)
Pos 6 (attacker/support)		Venari Crystalsmith	The main purpose of this monster is to tank heal. The added bonus of being able to attack makes it very powerful

Let's Battle!

• My opponent went with a big Melee tank and supporting Magic attackers.
• Placing the Pelacor Conjurer in the 2nd position allowed my Magic Reflect to become the target of their Magic attacks. With Amplify I was dishing back 2 Magic damage which was enough to take them out both out in Round 1.
• Using the Chaos Knight with Tank Heal and Repair helped keep the tank alive
• I suspect that my opponent forgot about the Target Practice ruleset since their first "Snipe Target" is a low health, low speed Magic monster. It would've been better to place the Chaos Agent in the 3rd spot to absorb some Snipe attacks (or dodge)

Did it work?

Yes! Magic Reflect worked out perfectly and allowed me to make quick work of their backline.

I analyzed the battle with Splintertools and was given a 100% chance of winning the battle. That is always great to see!

Final Thoughts

Dragon Summoners are difficult to counter since they can use any available splinter. This unlocks abilities that you may not see very often paired together. You really need to put yourself in your opponent's shoes to help understand what may be coming in order to come up with a great counter.

Thanks for reading! I hoped you enjoyed it!

Referral link : https://splinterlands.com?ref=at.bui89

If you decide to use my referral link, I'll happily send you a few cards to help you get started!