Watching great players

If you want to make the most out of your Splinterlands collection, you have to play it yourself and win! That's what's going to make the most bang for your buck. But if you want to win, you have to study the game, otherwise you'll do nothing but waste your time, all while not earning as much as you could.

That's what we're doing in Bronze TOP BATTLES Studies: we analyze three battles from the highest MMR players, learn their strategies and try improving upon them. That's how we're going to become great players that make more money. We begin after our giveaways!

Djinn Oshannus delegation

The most upvoted comment by value in this post wins a regular foil Djinn Oshannus for the rest of the season! This is only valid until my next post is up, so participate as soon as possible.

Random common card giveaway

Additionally, a random comment is awarded a common card, which is sent to your account before my next post is created. This is only valid until my next post is up, so participate as soon as possible.

Winners from my last post

• delegation: @henruc
• common: @marianaemilia

Thank you for participating and I hope you join again!

@bobblobblaw vs @yaiza111 (link)

Every battle an established leaderboard player loses is worth watching. That's clearly the case in this battle. By focusing not on melee strength, but melee retaliation, a Zintar Mortalis team was capable of sending Silvershield Knight back to the enchanted castle it came from.

Focusing on Cursed Windeku's Thorns ability as the means to win this Super Sneak battle, enemies were frustrated 'til death as they tried, in vain, to punch a cursed wall of spikes. Because they weren't hitting hard enough due to Zintar's damage debuff, and because Lorna Shine's frontliners never dealt enough damage to get past Crypt Beetle, Zintar's team lost.

@bobblobblaw's strategy was making the opponent team as underwhelming as possible. It was a great strategy in this game, because Life Splinter is already bad being aggressive, giving Death Splinter an advantage. After all, players could only pick either Life or Death in this battle, according to match rules.

@sevenoh-fiveoh vs @rift-summoner (link)

A 16 mana match. Both players decided to use Llama and Flesh Golem. One of them won. Llama is 7 mana, Flesh Golem is 6 mana. That's 3 wasted mana for the "team" without any other monsters. Yet, they won! I mean, the lonely Flesh Golem won. But, why?

A Flesh Golem with the Last Stand buff heals for 6 health every round. Uraeus along with Flesh Golem without that buff deal 4 damage total, so they never inflict scars that don't heal immediately. Even so, the lonely Flesh Golem can only hit for 3 damage, which is as much as the Flesh Golem with friends can heal.

A battle like this drags on without anything really happening until after round 20, when fatigue damage starts to kick in. That's terrible for the Flesh Golem with friends, because he'll take considerably more damage than he can heal before he finally gets the Last Stand buff.

Despite all of this, none of it actually matters. The Flesh Golem that just got buffed with Last Stand still heals up to full health before fatigue damage becomes dangerous. So, in the end, one of them wins simply because they got to attack first. The entire match ended up relying on nothing but sheer luck.

@nehruu vs @sevenoh-fiveoh (link)

Yodin Zaku got completely countered in this match. This was a nightmare! The worst possible opponent for any Yodin Zaku! @nehruu didn't pick a single non-melee monster, so all attacks were focused on Baby Unicorn, leaving plenty of room for their sneak attackers to take over. And that's saying a lot, because there were four sneak attackers!

Even though Silvershield Knight eventually had to step in as the tank after Baby Unicorn got taken out, most of @sevenoh-fiveoh damage dealers were already dead.

Since Yodin Zaku has always been deemed as a particularly strong legendary summoner, it's nice to see a legendary summoner like Peak Rider, usually seen as the underdog, crush him.

Image sources: https://splinterlands.com/ and https://ecency.com/post/@nane-qts/free-splinterlands-graphic-resources-20