Splinterlands - SHARE YOUR BATTLE Weekly Challenge - Theme: Giant Roc

Hello Friends,

https://peakd.com/hive-13323/@splinterlands/share-your-battle-weekly-challenge-giantroc

Merry Christmas all the battlers and other Hivians!!!

It's been a pleasant Sunday although bit cold, but that's ok as it's Christmas time :).

There is another weekly challenge and here is my blog with battle details for the same with theme monster for this week is the one from earlier versions i.e. Alpha and Beta versions and it's the Giant Roc from Fire Splinter which gets featured this week!!!

I can surely say Giant Roc has lost it's popularity with the introduction of Fineas Rage, Magma Troll and other reach ability monsters, but this guy is unique in a way that, he can do a trample to attack 2 monsters in successive attack!!!

So, as we see from above screenshot, Giant Roc is a monster from Fire Splinter and belongs to Alpha and Beta version and is of common category monster.

If we see the picture closely, we can see that, it's holding a BIG elephant in it's paws and elephant looks like a doll infront of Giant Roc and I think that is why it's called Giant!!!

Stats:

The Statistics as we can see above for this monster are impressive for a 5 MANA cost monster if we can level it up to level 6 and above.

The *melee attack although starts at just 1, it gets upgraded to to at level 4 and finishes at a maximum of 3 from level 8 onwards.

The speed is good too with level up as it starts at 2 and can go up to 5!!!!

The health part is not bad for 5 MANA cost monster as it starts with 4 health and can be a maximum of 6 t max level i.e. level 10.

This monster has 3 abilities with Reach available from level 1 itself and it's a also a flying monster from level 1.

The other ability it has is the trample which is available from level 6 onwards and needs a minimum of 52 cards to be combined to get the trample ability.

Battle and Lineup:

https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_828a2a4641daf8751412ba1590203c2f&ref=coolguy123

The battle is one of those low MANA cap battles as it just had 19 MANA cap with 2 rule sets in Equal Opportunity (all monsters having opportunity ability) and Holy Protection (Divine shield for all the monsters to give them an opportunity to evade the First attack they receive).

The 19 MANA cost means, it's not that many we can accommodate and I tried my luck with below lineup in this battle.

Lineup:

1. Cerberus:

Cerberus being a self healing monster with nice speed, was a good choice for front position.

It could have been used in any position since this was a Equal Opportunity battle, but we have tendency of using a healing tank at the front due to the expectation that, opponent will also use a healing monster at the front.

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2. Giant Roc:

The theme monster for this week and believe me, it wasn't an easy one for me to win a battle with this monster as I almost have to wait for 5 hours to get a win!!!

The monster is helpful to be a backup front monster and can also trample when it gets rid of a monster.

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3. Goblin Shaman:

The battles like this, where MANA cap is very less, will need to attack early and that requires many speed increasing or monster which can slow down opponent's monsters.

Goblin Shaman is one such monster for me as it can reduce the speed of the opponent's monsters and can also reduce the health of all of opponent's monsters by 1.

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4. Flame Imp:

Another speed increasing monster as this has swift ability and was a good one to win this battle.

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5. Creeping Ooze:

The last speed related monster in my lineup as this reduces speed of opponent's monsters thus giving me more edge in this battle.

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6. Scorch Fiend:

Lastly, I used this Zero MANA cost monster to cover the backend from any Sneak attack, oh hold on, this is being an equal opportunity battle, this monster will anyway will be the early target as it has just 1 health.

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Opponent used Earth Splinter and the monsters were Furious Chicken, Flesh Golem, War Chaang and Earth Elemental.

Battle:

Round 1:

I had 6 monsters where as, opponent came up with just 4 monsters and the battle started with all the monsters I used were getting a chance to attack First before opponent could start the attack.

It was 1:2 as opponent lost 2 monsters in the form of Furious Chicken and Earth Elemental and opponent could take out the Scorch Fiend as that was the monster with lowest health among the monsters I had used.

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Round 2:

The holy shield means, all monsters had that luxury of evading their First attack and that means, none of the monsters got removed in this round!!!

The next target on opponent's lineup was Flesh Golem, but it could heal itself to put War Chaang as target.

On the other side, it was Flame Imp which should have been removed except that, it too had a divine shield.

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Round 3 and 4:

Flesh Golem started off with 4 health then this round started and it couldn't survive to attack again and War Chaang got couple of blows and got removed in the Fourth round to give a good win for me.

Questions and Answers:

Did my strategy work? What will I try differently next time?

I think the usage of swift and slowdown monsters was key to get rid of monsters like Flesh Golem and that shows the strategy was good and if I could have used any other monster, I would have used a Magma Troll which gives same attack for a MANA cost less with better speed as well.

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Do I like the GIANT ROC? Why or why not?

I used to use it a lot before the Untamed version monsters got introduced as I used to use that and Cerberus more and more. But, that is not the case now with many additional monsters getting introduced with each new version, but yes, I do use this whenever there is suitable battle with rule sets.

I particularly find this useful in melee mayhem battle because, it has the trample ability.

That was another one of those short but nice battles as I have been telling in my blogs.

It was a good win considering opponent having monsters like War Chaang, Flesh Golem and Earth Elemental, but, the speed reduction to get early chance to attack, made this win possible for me.

I once again wish you all Merry Christmas and I hope you had a good one to have a break from daily schedule and enjoy with your friends and family to celebrate the festival.

With new year round the corner and Omicron is spreading like the earlier Corona virus, it will not be a pleasant new year for all of us as there will be lots of restrictions to deal with, but lets hope we all will have a safe and good new year celebration.

Thanking you all as usual for the support and feedback :)

Thanks and Have a good Sunday :)

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