GM:FRENS and Hello hivers,

Another week another new splinterlands post, welcome back to my weekly Splinterlands Social Media Challenge post. As usual every week I post new splinterlands posts as Splinterlands Social Media Challenge entries. This is an event where you can take in participating by posting any topic about Splinterlands, a fun one,or an interesting perspective, or maybe going deep and thoughtful... well as long you are spreading something fun and positive about Splinterlands, you will be welcomed in Splinterlands community.

So what topic should I share today? I want to share about a soulbound cards, you know the one you must play splinterlands in order to get them. It's started when I played bulldog1205 scholarship accounts and I got plenty of this Soulbound monster copies and leveled up her to level 6.

shoten lore: These warriors hail from the watery settlements of the merfolk. Their role is to guard their people and the sea life around them, often swimming out for weeks on end, tracking a route around their territory.

Coastal Sentry is one of the most hard hitters in water element. There is a good reason why she is a common rarity card, because eventhough she is strong, we seldom see her in our or our opponent selection. There are 2 major reasons why she is rarely seen:

1. Her 10 Mana Cost

10 mana is big so it demands plenty of room, however is not the amount that hard to afford. Due to this 10, She is classified as Giant therefore she is vulnerable to Giant Killer ability. let's pick one random giant killer as opponent here:

Wih 4 Magic damage and a Giant Killer Ability, this Djinn Inferni will kill her in one go. What's the point having 10 mana Giant then it gets killed in the first round? There are still other giant killers that can kill her in one go too.

2. Too Many Great Tanks

This is the hard fact, right now we have too many great tanks. Coastal Sentry is great, but she has vulnerability in defense which is easily getting killed.

The other tanks, who are great too, might not offer heavy damaging capability as Coastal Sentry, however they offer other abilities and functionality. For example, Lemell Refugee although doesn't stand out so much, she is more suitable against magic focused opponents. Diemonshark offers more speed and escalate threats when his RAGE is triggered.

There many great tanks too from neutral element. Bottom line, Coastal Sentry who offers strong damage or we should address this as excessive basic mechanics, most likely not preferred in most condition.

How To Exploit Coastal Sentry

I still believe coastal Sentry is great in some way, however its not easy to exploit her is not easy. we need to have these conditions to be fulfilled first:

1. Big mana battle. Let's have atleast 30+ mana battle, so we have spare mana to set some tiny monsters or support monsters to protect Coastal Sentry. The bigger mana cap we have, the better option we get.
2. Because Defense is her major weakness, lets have her on battles with Melee Mayhem ruleset or Super Sneak ruleset. Equal Opportunity should not be a suitable one because opponents might aim at her first.
3. Don't bring her in when you have anti melee ruleset such as Thorn or no armor ruleset. She will be defenseless and easily get killed.

LET SEE THE BATTLE

This won't be a good Splinterland's post if we do not share any related battles about our topic. So here it is, the battle:

~Click The Image Above To See the Full Battle~

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I was playing this battle on Gold League Modern Format using blackkrrsantan, a scholarship account from bulldog1205 guild. We had 3 funny ruleset here, Aimless Ruleset (everyone gets a scattershot ability), Fog of War Ruleset (no sneak, snipe and opportunity attack) and Melee Mayhem Ruleset (all monsters can deliver their melee attack from anywhere). These rulesets were quite suitable for exploiting Coastal Sentry prowess, except I had to be carefull with the aimless one. Luckily they did not have Chaos Dragon or any range and magic monsters with Blast ability.

My Opponent Meta:

It was clear that my opponent using 2 approaches here:

1. 2 heavy weight tanks, Uriel the Purifier and Corsair Bosun. Both were one of the best for their position. This was a famous combination we often saw from Light Element Users
2. 4 Magic monsters, Time Mage + Adelade Brightwing + Spirit Hoarder + Oshuur Constantia. These 4 were quite solid, I preferred to have Djinn Renova over Oshur but hey... everyone had different taste and preference. He would use these 4 to bombard my backline monsters.

My Metta:

My meta was very simple, it's a formation build to support Coastal Sentry, so my team was going to storm straight to their front gate. I was relying on my melee team who were Legionaire Alvar + Diemonshark + Coastal Sentry.

I brought 3 supports here, who were Venari Wavesmith + River Hellondale + Merdalii Guardian. I would rely heavily on Hellondale because she would inspire my melee team so we could kill them faster

Because this is not a Share your battle challenge nor Battle Mage Secret Challenge, I think I should not describe my team in detailed. We are focusing on the Coastal Sentry only here.

ROUND 1

• The battle started with both of us buffing up our team and debuffing our opponents.
• My opponent came with 6 Melee damage and 7 magic damage, combined all became 13 damage per round.
• My team had 17 Melee Damage, and 4 magic damage. A total 21 Damage per round.
• I had a lot more firepower compared to my opponents. This should be an easy win however, we needed to count on my opponent speed. They were faster than my team. So we still had not know how this would go.

luck was on their side, somehow with aimless ruleset, they killed my River Hellondale instantly

this was a major blow for my team.

ROUND 2

• Round 2 started with 6 vs 5 condition, they had more monsters than my team. However with a poke there, their Uriel would be killed instantly

• I did not know what kind of luck he had, his 3 speed Uriel dodged my 5 speed Diemonshark there and he dodged again my Coastal Sentry attack. he dodged 2 attacks worth of 7 Damages there.

ROUND 3

• Round 3 looked the same as round 2, didn't it? Well luck still on their side... Uriel Dodged again my Diemonshark attack.
• My Coastal Sentry took down Uriel, however Adelade Brightwing brought him back to life.

ROUND 4

• At the beginning of round 4th, Things looked ugly on my side. We were a team of wounded monsters, meanwhile opponents looked very healthy. only their Uriel looked half dead.
• My Diemonshark took down Uriel however Uriel got resurrected again by Oshuur Constantia.

ROUND 5

• This started to look funny. Their team looked the same and my team got worse and worse as time progressed. That's the perk of having multiple monsters with resurrect ability.
• Finally my Diemonshark killed their Uriel and they ran out of resurrection.
• Somehow the killing spree started, my team and his team starting to lose more members.

ROUND 6

• Round 6 started with 4 vs 2 conditon, however my side was looked more superior. They had lost their Double Heavyweight Tanks and I had those two, Legionaire Alvar and Coastal Sentry, who were my core from beginning.

ROUND 7

• Round 7 started with 2 vs 2 condition, Coastal Sentry was the only one who was not a Legendary Rarity.

ROUND 8

• This was the end, good battle
  

CLOSURE AND DISCUSSION

That was a close call battle, either side could win. Some of you might think I should have won that easily regarding my team had better levels than theirs. I agreed partially with that, but not in a whole condition. These are my arguments

1. I agree that level does matter, but its not absolute. I played with Metanomy scholarship accounts before, we used bronze cap level deck to play in Gold League. We still could beat gold level decks there. So level are important but the sole thing which decides the outcomes.
2. Rather than level, I believe META is more important. My opponent used speed modifier from Quix and Time mage, and tried to dodge using Uriel The Purifirer FLY ability. FLY gives 15% dodge rate right? Wrong!!! Uriel dodged twice of my Diemonshark attacks who was 2 speed faster. He dodged Coastal Sentry twice with that 15% odds, Dunno what happened there
3. When you had Aimless ruleset, then your opponent got very lucky having all attack aimed and landed on your core monster, killed her in one go... then you know you got F'ed there. It's hard to get back on track when RNG sided with one of the scattershoting team.

So what will you do if in 4 turns, your opponent's scattershot pin point killing your core monsters, and you miss out 4 attacks worth of 14 damages? one word : LOSE!!!

However Thing did not go there, I did not get that LOSE, because I had COASTAL SENTRY who kept Bulldozing her opponents. That's when we can say She becomes UNSTOPPABLE. Even RNG God sided with your opponent, She will take back the WIN for you.

I hope you enjoy this post, and have playing Splinterlands!

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Thank you for visiting my SPLINTERLANDS SOCIAL MEDIA Weekly Challenge, don't forget to leave your comments and feedback below. There are credits in this post for these people:

• @splinterlands : for holding weekly social media challenge events
• carrieallen : for ultimate markdown tutorial
• bulldog1205 : for the Scholarship Account - blackkrrsantan
• thepeakstudio : for wonderful divider art
• Canva : For a free service of graphic designing