The Iziar Healing Strategy

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Greetings, Splinter fans!

Today I'm going to share a brand new strategy with you guys and by 'brand new', I mean it's new to me!

If you have been playing Splinterlands for a longer time I'm sure you are familiar with Iziar of the Life Splinter and more specifically, Iziars Taunt ability. This is an ability I have been overlooking for quite some time but about a couple of weeks ago I happened to be lucky enough to pull a Soulbound Iziar card from a chest and just had to try it out with different combinations.

I quickly learned that Taunt can be a real game-changer but the key to success lies in the support units that are placed behind Iziar. Since Taunt kinda forces the opponent's monsters to attack Iziar, it also makes the rest of the team to be safe and do what they do best.

Even though Iziar cannot be bought from the market, the rest of the team can be and with some pretty cheap prices too. Let's take a look at my team!

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Key Factors of My Strategy

There are 3 key points that will not only make this play successful but in many cases, almost unbeatable.

1.) Iziar The Tank

As mentioned, IZIAR is clearly a tank unit and even though it doesn't have armour, it does come with a huge amount of health. This is indeed needed as Iziar will be under a hell of a pressure when everyone is targeting it.

However, Iziar does have one additional protection and that is the Void ability. Still, even with that, Iziar's 12 hit points will go to zero very fast unless we provide some extra protection.

2.) Two Healers

Tank Healer is a good option for almost every battle but it's a crucial element when using a Taunt unit as a tank. My first Iziar experiments were done with VENARI CRYSTALSMITH but I quickly noticed that her healing just wasn't enough and Iziar was pretty much in a round or two.

While I was scrolling through my Life & Neutral trying to find another tank healer I suddenly remembered that little mouse I had come across on the battlefield a few times. MERIPUT MAGICIAN has pretty similar stats to the Crystalsmith but instead of being a Ranged unit, she is a magic monster.

Together these two will now heal 2/3 of Iziar's max health in a single round. This can be enough in most cases but neither one of these monsters aren't that good offensively so we need to add one more ingredient to be able to win the battle.

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3.) Striking Power

The idea of this strategy isn't necessarily to keep Iziar alive forever but instead to extend its life span as long as we can. In the meantime, we need to strike and we need to strike hard.

The last piece of the puzzle is therefore the PELACOR ARBALEST, a ranged unit with a double strike ability.

Since I've chosen General Sloan as a summoner, this Pelacors attack strength will increase from 2 to 3 so it will deal a total amount of 6 damage in a round if it's accurate enough. This will hopefully be enough to reduce the opponent's tank's armour and health and with the help of other guys, we should be able to get rid of their monsters one by one.

Remember, once the first opponent unit is out of the game, it already lowers the pressure on Iziar.

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The Battle

If you have read this far, I think it's time to watch the actual battle so you get to witness how effective this strategy can be. You can check it out HERE.

The first 5 rounds were very repetitive and this probably wasn't the most exciting battle I have ever witnessed. Still, the main thing was that I was able to create a loop of Iziars health not going below four and it was also healed back to max health in each round.

Meanwhile, the opponent Djinn Oshannus was struggling even though they also had a healer and a Repair unit too. In fact, this was the decisive round as their Oshannus went down and we could start focusing on the other units.

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How To Battle Against This Strategy?

If this kind of healing loop is created and tested in a few rounds, it's then too late to dream of a victory but you can be better prepared the next time you come across an Iziar double healing team. Here are a few tips:

• Use monster with Fury (does double damage against Taunt units)

• Use Giant Killer ability (does double damage against units that cost 10 or more mana)

• Use Blast - this ability might help you to eventually get to the healers if time is on your side.

There are other ways to win against teams with this strategy but it ain't easy since very few abilities help you to get to the back-line monsters. To make things even more difficult, I have variations of the Help Iziar Live Forever strategy.

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Variations

An even nastier and probably more effective version of this one is to choose a Soulbound summoner who will allow me to use one Gladiator unit. I would then choose the lovely CAPTAIN KATIE who has 2 excellent abilities to be used in this kind of battle.

Instead of focusing on the enemy tank, Katie will use her Snipe ability to target units(magic, ranged) that are not in the first spot. Monster that are positioned there are usually weaker units which is just fine by Katie because she has a powerful magic attack(+3, ignoring armour) and most of all, she has the dreaded Bloodlust ability.

This means that if we have put Katie somewhere in the back, she has potentially grown extra powerful after each victim and if our tank should fall, they wouldn't be able to stop Katie anymore.

A Soulbound Life summoner named Franz Ruffmane will add one extra armour to each of our units - including Iziar. To make our opponent's life even more frustrating, we can always add a unit with Repair.

If our enemy is using mostly Melee or/and Ranged units, repairing Iziar armour in addition to constantly healing it will add a fun extra level of frustration!

If you have a lot of mana in use, a great choice would then be ADELADE BRIGHTWING. She will do the repair job but will also deal magic damage of 2 points.

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Conclusion

If you've been lucky enough to receive Iziar, building and even upgrading the rest of the team seen in my example battle is very cheap:

• Meriput Magician - $0.20
• Venari Crystalsmith - $0.03
• Pelacor Arbalest - $0.07

Before applying these strategies myself, I had struggled a lot against Iziar-led teams in the past. I've noticed that the best Splinterlands tactics are often born from sheer despair and frustration. With a little bit of tweaking, we can then make those fit into our decks and make them our own.

I am also very aware that in the Modern league there are crazy good combinations and monsters that beat this but I've certainly managed to surprise some of my opponents in Wild pretty well.

I'd be very interested to know how you would play against these kind of teams so please, leave a comment below.

Thank you for reading!

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Also Playing:

Overline
Terracore
Rising Star

Disclaimers:

Thumbnail background image made with Canva
Other pictures are screenshots from Splinterlands

Posted Using InLeo Alpha