Hi There

It's been a while since my last writing on HIVE Blog. I have been in bad condition recently but ofcourse I won't miss this opportunity to share my Splinterlands story here in weekly based.

In this post I will share a game play, or plan and tactic, or what people like to address as META for playing without real tank. In general this won't work, but sometime we need to play OUT OF THE BOX style in order to win by outsmarting our opponent or making a concrete element of surprise.

So why would we go without a real though tank and going out of the box if there are more better proven rule of thumb we can use to develop a good line up? There are some, but these are the most common cases I often find recently:

1. Let's face it, we don't have the desired cards. There are some situation that we know that the most suitable units or tanks for that position are not in our selection list. So we are going to counter it by going out of the box
2. Lost in Unit Levels. It's not exactly we know about it, but sometime we have a hunch that our opponent coming with higher level so a dog fight head on will definitely lead to a lose. This is a common casual players problem, or maybe we call it as a challenge, because we do not like spending a lot in this game so our deck is only at acceptable to decent quality, not having all at max.
3. Small Mana Cap. I love this case, because the smaller mana cap, the more opportunity to beat our opponent using non regular, anti mainstream or out of the box style. Because the small mana limits flexibility of our choice, so it is easier to guesss what "the best possible lineup" of our opponent then make a unorthodox lineup as the counter.

There are other reasons but those 3 are the most frequently seen. So what will a tank-less formation come in form of? Well in general everything is a bit similar with this condition:

1. You gamble everything in backline units. A tankless formation is very vulnerable against opportunity, snipe and sneak attacks.
2. Your line up must deal a good amount of damage, because no tank = soon your backline units will die too, so you need to kill first before getting killed.

If you combine 2 categories above, one about why people use it, and what kind of formation, we can combine all into this paragraph:

A Tankless Formation can be used if you are sure your opponent won't attack your backline directly, and the mana cap is not big enough so you can make sure your firepower is strong enough to wipe out your opponent in short time.

Easy to say that, but how about the implementation? Ok let's check our battle then

HIGHLIGHTED BATTLE

Ok here is our battle. In a glance my opponent came with higher level of summoner, although in detail their unit levels were not that superior.

with a Wands Out ruleset, we were expecting any opponents with Earth or Death element only. Why no dragon? because it was a 20 mana cap battle, what dragon units you could get into your line up? better pick a summoner that support magic units, Obisidian from Earth element with a buff +1 magic damage, or Thaddius Brood from death element with debuff -1 magic damage.

In this battle my opponent came with a very text book formation, which was using Regal Peryton as the tank. It was not a bad move, but its too obvious and that would be easily countered.

so what was the best tank available for that battle?

It was a simple answer, USUT was the one. But coming with USUT definitely suicidal because I belived both of us were anticipating USUT by having Goblin Psychic in our backline. His Affliction would shut down USUT healing then USUT would become a living Sandbag

with 10 mana requirement for 20 mana cap battle, USUT would definitely ruin the line up, unless the opponent did not have any healing ability.

Actually QUORA TOWERSHEAD was one of the best option too, however I doubt that people came with level 3 Quora Towershead who had Immunity, so bottom line She would end up with the same fate as USUT had.

now let see how this one progresses first before we continue our discussion

• This battle started by both sides buffed their team. Our line up were simiar, the difference was they used Regal Peryton as their tank, and I used two small units in front. so my team had no real tanks there.
• They came with 6 Magic Damage per round.
• My team had 7 magic damage per round.
• So overall this was a text book line up vs out of the box one.

• It only need one blink, and there you go... They got wiped out very fast, leaving only Goblin Psychic alone in their team

• Another blink, faster than you took a sip of your coffee... It's all over on the second round.

This is a funny battle right? They follow exactly how to make a good line up, and between theirs and mine only 1 weak unit difference... and the result was a devastated one for them.

THE HIDDEN GEM

Initially this post was a bout a hidden game called UJURAK ELDER. This card looked so bad, with low damage, low speed, low health and even so selfishly has a camouflage ability... Why would we want that kind of units who can't kill and can't buff to go hide and live until the end.

However in reality I end up using this card very often. This card somehow performs excellently especially during this kind of battle, when we decide to go out of the box, using non text book plan.

One of those out of the box style or non textbook plan was this meta, a non real tank lineup. UJURAK really can fit in well with this line up.

In my last week post, I said this paragraph:

In any battle less than 20 mana, do not expect anything fancy and many meta and counter meta inside it. You can only come with 1 or 2 solid meta, and when it doesn't fit in, then you lose a big advantage there..

In this battle, the biggest gap was created by UJURAK ELDER from his DIVINE SHIELD ability. He got killed by the second attacks and that's more than enough to buy time / opportunity for my backline mages, who had combined 6 magic damage, to wipe their Regal Peryton and Djinn Biljka, leaving their goblin alone.

Ok that's my Splinterlands post today, thanks for coming and have a blast in Splinterlands Game!!

---

Thank you for visiting my Splinterlands post here, don't forget to leave your comments and feedback below. There are credits in this post for these people:

• @splinterlands : for holding Social Media Challenge events
• carrieallen : for ultimate markdown tutorial
• thepeakstudio : for wonderful divider art

Posted Using InLeo Alpha