It's Hard To Beat Thorns In A Melee Battle

I've been getting a lot of melee only battles recently and that's got me thinking about the kind of strategy that works when you can't call on your magic or range units. Boosting the shields is one strategy. So too are demoralizing the opponent or raising the attack of your own units.

But the one that I really use most of the time if the Earth Splinter is available is to use Mylor Crowling and give all units the Thorns ability. That makes every enemy attack cost the opponent something. This makes abilities like doublestrike a double edged sword.

Cards With Thorns Ability

There are only 5 cards with the Thorns ability at all level. Mylor is the only summoner and you can see that the Earth splinter is over represented here. Special mention for the Cursed Windeku because it is quite a value play for 6 mana to get such high health and speed as well as Thorns.

Expanding the list, we see there are only 26 cards that have the ability even at the max level. That's really not a lot and it can be quite expensive if you're going the dragon or neutral route. The cheapest route to building a Thorns deck is probably going to be Earth even if you don't use Mylor.

Mylor Inflicting Some Pain

Take a look at this battle here where a Martyr-ed up Grund is looking to inflict some heavy melee damage. Without thorns, I'm pretty sure my opponent would have won.

But instead what happens is that every time it does 6 damage, it takes 2 damage in return. And because Grund has no shield, he becomes vulnerable quickly. Especially since he has to bash through some extra Shield. You can catch a replay of the entire battle here: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_88c8ec363fbcd20ce1908c8025fdecda&ref=charcoalbuffet

If there's one takeaway, it is to pack your thorns in a melee battle. Sprinkle some Shield, Demoralize and Retaliate, and you've got a hard to beat lineup.