Hi everyone, welcome back to my Splinterlands Post. As usual, I make new splinterlands post on weekend, precisely on Sunday Night because I am very busy during weekdays.

This time I like to talk about why we should stick on our plan, regardless there are Stronger Summoner and Monsters available on selection. Splinterlands is a tactical TCG which we need to have a solid deck with better meta and formation against our opponents. It's useless bringing in expensive cards, a limited edition card, or super strong monsters if in the end you end up losing.

Anyway I am picking this topic because of the above tournament. I am participating in Silvershield Academy Beginner Training, as what it says, this should be a tournament for beginners or so so players like me. I rate myself as a decent participant regarding I do not have strong deck at max level, and I only have a limited selection.

However I keep finding participants with a lousy formation and I beat them badly although they cards are actually better and stronger. The main reason is simple, they pick strong monsters over weak monsters who can strengthen their meta / formation.

I will pick 2 battles as example for what I have said above.

BATTLE #1 TARSA VS CONQUEROR JACEK TEAM

~CLICK ON THE IMAGE ABOVE FOR SEEING THE FULL BATTLE REPLAY~

This is a battle of fire element which I have TARSA to lead my team against my opponent who uses a stronger Summoner, Conqueror Jacek. Above the paper, I lose everything here. They have higher level and stronger summoner. However I win because I have a better plan / strategy which as follow:

Position	Card	Ability	Plan and Strategy
Summoner		+1 melee and +1 Health	I need tarsa due to the FOG OF WAR ruleset. She will add +1 health and that is the most important one. I have to win the first 2 monsters battle, the main tank and the reach melee behind it
Main Tank		Bloodlust, Void, Void Armor	My main carry card. He will be the core of this formation. Boodlust ability will make him strong as the round progress by killing his foes. The rest of my team are here to support him
Second		Reach	My secondary tank, one of the cheapest reach-melee monster. With tarsa +1 melee, he will have 4 melee damage. That's a great attacking power for a 5 mana monsters
Third		Close Range	My third and last tank. Lava Launcher is one of my favorite, because it has a vast range of versatility. He can be a tank due to his armor, he can be your main damage dealer due to range damage and fast speed, and he can be the backline wall
Fourth		Fly, Close Range	Weaker version of Lava Launcher. Both Gargoya Devil and Lava Launcher has one single job, make sure to heavily damage opponent tanks in order to give Grum Flameblade opportunity to kill them and gain Bloodlust buff.
Fifth		Opportunity, Camouflage	My second Carry card. Incase I meet something that make my main plan fail, she will help out by killing opponent backline using her Opportunity Ability
Last		none	The last party member. not a special one, but he will definitely effective in reducing opponent armor or damaging opponent tanks.

Let see how my 2 carry cards, Grum Flameblade and Countess Sinash carry my team to victory.

Round 1 started by both party buffed their team and debuffed their opponent. Overall my opponent came with a lot superiority, higher level, higher damage, and higher speed. However there were 2 things that from the beginning made me confident I would win this battle:

1. I saw their scavo hireling, my opponent was smart but bad luck on him because I had Countess Sinash in my line up.
2. I wanted to laugh seeing him using Jacek. It's like he was on sure win condition and decided to put him t o 50:50 again due to that scatter shot ability. I got massive boost chance to kill his Grum First.

As expected, Round 2 started with massive advantage on my side. My Grum killed His Grum first. I couldn't see ay chance he could come back again.

Round 3 things were even worse for him. I would like to say it's over, good game.

At least his Lava Launcher managed to steal a kill, took down my Gargoya Devil.

BATTLE #2 TARSA VS YODIN ZAKU

~CLICK ON THE IMAGE ABOVE FOR SEEING THE FULL BATTLE REPLAY~

This time I win over Yodin Zaku on a reverse speed ruleset. He uses Level 2 Yodin Zaku, not just a level 1. Initially I want to use Earth Element Magic Team, but I feel I have high confidence in my Fire Team due to high win rate. I use same basic plan, having Grum Flameblade-Radiated Brute combination. So here is my plan.

Position	Card	Ability	Plan and Strategy
Summoner		+1 melee and +1 Health	I need tarsa due buff up my slow melee monsters.. She will add +1 health and that is the most important one.
Main Tank		Bloodlust, Void, Void Armor	My main carry card. He will be the core of this formation. Boodlust ability will make him strong as the round progress by killing his foes. The rest of my team are here to support him
Second		Reach	My secondary tank, one of the cheapest reach-melee monster. With tarsa +1 melee, he will have 4 melee damage. That's a great attacking power for a 5 mana monsters
Third		Sneak	Tenyii Striker is one of my frequent used monsters due to his sneak ability. He is good due too his all rounder attribute, however I am not sure that having him is a good choice, regarding we have reverse speed ruleset.
Fourth		Triage, Cleanse	Same as Tenyii Striker, I am not sure if he is a good choce. His speed is right, 1, which makes him move first. However he has only 1 magic damage and I could not predict which who be healed by his Triage ability.
Fifth		Sneak	Small, Weak, but deadly, that's how I describe Uraeus. He will be super annoying for my opponent due to his 2 melee damage onto opponent backline.
Last		none	He is my second carry card, so this battle is about my Grum storming opponent main gate, and Sandworm sneak behind.

This is a battle of Fire Element again, well that's why I put Tarsa in my front thumb image. My opponent cards were great, level 4 Elven Mystic, Dr Blight, and Pyromancer. Only his Molten Ash Golem which is cheap, else are expensive. However I spotted one big mistake in his gameplan, which was lack of attacking damage.

Round 2 started with Pyromancer gone from his team. My Sandworm took him down. My Radiated Brute should have been dead, Luckily I have Spirit Hoarder in my lineup.

My Radiated Brute could not join the round 3. He was out due to blast damage. However things looked ugly on their side

This battle ended on Round 4. 2 of my carry cards destroyed the whole of my opponent line up.

We hould build a team with a good meta in offense and defense. Easy to say this but it's hard to do this for some people. I keep seeing people bringing strong monsters, a carry card / game changer one, however the team doesn't work properly.

The first battle showed how eager my opponent to use Jacek. His line up was great, however Jacek ruined it all. If he used Tarsa, he might have won that battle comfortably. So that's our first point here

1. Your Summoner Should Support Your Team, Not Your Team Support Him/Her

From the second battle, we knew that my opponent made a big mistake by bringing in a team which lack of fire power. That's our second point here

2. Offense and Defense Should Be Measureable. Estimate Your Attack Damage Per Turn

Ok now two more points from my point of view:

3. Trust Your Common-Rare Monsters.

There are many good common-rare monsters, they will be with you all the time. During no Legendary or Rise of Commons ruleset, they are the only ones you can rely. Legendary cards are strong however I believe most of the time Commons and Rares are actually the one who fight for the team.

4. Certain Ruleset Makes Certain Monsters OP.

On the second battle, there is a Reverse Speed Ruleset. This ruleset makes the like of GRUM FLAMEBLADE become OVER POWERED, but that's not implied to all 1 speed monsters or slow monsters. Molten Ash Golem and Dr Blight become stronger but not at the level of GRUM.

This is not a fix rule and there is no exact formula, we need to get our own experience to choose which monsters for which rulesets, how much they get powered up during certain ruleset and much more.

So that's for today Splinterlands post. I hope you enjoy this post, and for you who still learning to play Splinterlands, don't just randomly put Strong Monsters into your line up. It won't work well.

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• @splinterlands : for holding weekly social media challenge events
• carrieallen : for ultimate markdown tutorial
• thepeakstudio : for wonderful divider arts