Splinterlands: Did You Know...

Splinterlands is not as simple as someone might think at first glance.

When a beginner starts learning about the game, he reads about the base posioning and abilities and thinks he understands:

• tank cards are first
• cards with reach go next and attack the tank as well
• snipe cards attack other snipe cards
• sneak cards attack the last card in the lineup
• opportunity cards attack the cards with the lowest heath
• cards with scattershot attack a random card from the opponent lineup

But things are not so easy.

Practically all the above abilities have counters and modifiers. Sometimes there is a counter to a counter, as you will see.

For example, reach, snipe and opportunity are affected by sneak. In a super sneak ruleset all cards having these abilities will attack the last attackable card instead of their normal behaviour.

Why do I say last attackable card? Because I'm sure you've seen in battle cards having the camouflage ability (the most well known being Doctor Blight) and which won't be attacked until they reach first position. Often that means they are also the last standing friendly card, if they are placed in the last position of the lineup.

Rulesets are very important modifiers of the base abilities of monsters. In Equal Opportunity ruleset, every card has the opportunity abililty. In Fog of War, Snipe and Sneak don't work. And as mentioned above, in Super Sneak every card has the Sneak ability. You can consult all rulesets and their common associations on SplinterCards website.

Taunt ability was a very cool ability that came with the Untamed set. It was a way to drive the fight your way, by focusing all enemy fire on the taunting monster, while you took care of his lineup. Sometimes it works, other times it doesn't. But the fact this option exists can ruin the entire strategy of your opponent, which may be based on sneak, opportunity and/or snipe.

Well, now there is a counter to the counter. Scattershot ability is not affected by taunt! I just kicked ass of an opponent today who had taunt and I had scattershot. I didn't know at the time scattershot is not affected by taunt, but that makes it a super-cool ability.

The randomness of this ability makes it hard to defend against, but it is also unpredictable in attack. For now I haven't seen it much used in battles, but I'm sure it'll grow as Chaos Legion decks get developed.

In very high mana games, the Chaos Dragons might become quite an interesting option, despite being the most costly card in the game, with 14 mana:

Scattershot + blast can be a pretty deadly combo. Unless the opponent has multiple magic reflect (or Owster), in which case it's pretty deadly for you.