Weekly Battle Challenge: Minotaur Warrior (Silver Level)

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(Edited)

Hello everyone and we are back with our weekly share of battle and analysis of awesome Splinterlands monsters. I hope you all are having a wonderful weekend in this wonderful game. The recent news is certainly worthy of the word "wonderful" and I truly wish that it will lead to more opportunities down the line for this game.

For now though, we will be covering our monster of the week, Minotaur Warrior, at the silver level.


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I will be very straight and honest right away -- Minotaur Warrior is not that good of a card at the silver league (in my view, that is) and I am not even sure if it's too good at max level. I can see some usage for a reach + piercing monster but I think the occasions where you want to use this specific combination is...rare to come up.

And that's not even the biggest reason of them all. The biggest reason, in my opinion, is that there are just too many alternatives with reach that are more useful than him around the mana range.

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These are all the alternatives at their max level for silver rank. I find myself picking Manticore or Orc Sergeant over Minotaur Warrior most of the time. I think flying is a very good skill at the silver league and just dodging 1 attack is enough to equalize the HP gap between Manticore and Minotaur Warrior. Orc Sergeant is 1 mana more and slightly slower, but I find myself running heal often with nature splinter so the 7 HP from sergeant is great. For every 3 HP, the healing threshold is increased by 1, so Orc Sergeant will heal for 3 at 7 HP.

However, this is not to say the Minotaur Warrior has no value. There are two key stats it has a distinct advantage over the alternatives: 4 speed and 1 armor. 4 speed is huge here as there are a lot of 1-3 speed monsters in the silver rank. The ability to outpace them and hit first can sometimes change the outcome of a battle. The armor also has its usage, as it forces the opponent to only do 1 damage on an attack. There are occasions where the higher HP guys will take fewer hits than the Minotaur Warrior if facing against a team with monsters packing very high attack(like 4-5 on a single hit).

Grumpy Dwarf is a weird case as his HP can be too low to truly make use of the enrage skill, so Minotaur Warrior is likely the better choice unless you believe your opponent is running a lot of low attack monsters in a low mana matchup, then Dwarf might have a chance to do some serious work after taking a hit.

Overall, I think Minotaur Warrior is used:

  • In a low-to-mid mana matchup as a value pick at 4 mana
  • You are going with a speedy team and you want a monster at the 2nd slot who can tank a few hits while also possessing decent attacks
  • ...and that's about it.

I usually go into detail on which ruleset this specific monster has an advantage and so on, but Minotaur Warrior is very close to a vanilla monster. "Vanilla" is a gaming term to describe anything that is rather dull with no ability to stand out and Minotaur Warrior just feels like that. It is pretty much a standard melee monster with reach, and you don't use it too different from how you would use any other reach monster. Thus, I see no need to elaborate on a rather typical approach that I see everyone using as well -- like putting it on the second slot and use its reach. I really don't think I need to put extra words on that.



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And this is the battle for the week. I decided to try out Minotaur Warrior here as it is a low mana battle with a budget of 16.

I went with Camila Sungazer because I am trying to play the grindy game for this battle. For a 16 mana battle, the most likely scenario is that the opponent will go wide with 3-4 cheap but efficient creatures. A lot of them will pack 1-2 attacks, so forcing all the melee to hit for 1 is huge here. I also expect a lot more melee and ranged than magic in a setup like this, so betting on melee -1 gives me good odds.

And a good frontliner to play in this kind of grindy strategy in Nature is Flesh Golem, a very popular card among players and the go-to Nature tank to play if you need a sustain tank up front at a fair cost.

Minotaur Warrior at the second slot provides reach melee damage and some tanking if necessary. Ultimately, I just want more damage output for this team and it provides that with solid speed.

The most used fodder of all time. I thought about putting the Chicken in front to take an extra hit at the beginning of the battle, but I think I might miss out on attacks if the opponent is running a slow first monster so I put it on the back. It has not a lot of usage at the moment besides taking an extra hit and giving the backline some extra turns to do damage.

I think another way to use it is to put it on the backline to eat a hit from sneaky monsters. That can actually be a better use of chicken in this specific battle as I don't really have a huge backline to cover from and it's vulnerable from a sneak attack for sure.

Another popular fodder in the lower level. I have Ooze behind the Chicken because sometimes, the speed reduction helps on a new turn, so I want it to live longer than the Chicken.

In the silver rank level, there is more than Wood Nymph for tank heal in Nature and I always see Khmer Princess as a cheaper alternative of Wood Nymph. As this is a low mana battle, having a tank healer that only costs 2 mana is an absolute blessing. Her job is to sustain my frontline for as long as possible while chipping in with 1 magic attack per turn.

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This is not a very fair battle as my opponent is running all level 1. But that's also how it is at the silver level at the moment. I meet a lot of level 1 teams. While not being very fair in level distribution, the opponent certainly has the summoner pick to eat away all my shield right away. Meanwhile, I also cut the biggest threat's attack to 2 so both summoners certainly contributed.

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I did mention that I think putting the chicken at the very back end to prevent sneak attacks could be better, but no actually, cuz the chicken at the middle slot eats up the Snipe shot and let my healer lives on extra time. If my opponent is packing level 3-5 monsters, the heal from Khmer Princess will certainly be useful as the Flesh Golem alone wouldn't heal back up to max HP.

But as my opponent is on all 1, it doesn't really matter by now as he simply doesn't have enough raw attacking power to go through my Golem.

I think it is also worth noting that a reach melee monster is safe from snipe and can attack the frontliner, so reach certainly has its own value. The other two melee abilities are Opportunities and Sneak, and both abilities usually target the backline monsters and not the one on the front. So, if your plan is to go through the opponent from the front, a reach melee monster is the most consistent way of providing melee damage on that plan.

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The rest of the battle is solved, really. A healing tank wins when the opponent runs out of damage.



So, is Minotaur Warrior a good card at silver level? I would say it has its role among all the reach monsters. Is it a monster I will use a lot? Now, that I am not sure. I think I rarely play reach monster with Nature. I have no idea why, but I personally just tend to prioritize picking other monsters. But it is certainly a playable monster.

And that's all from me today. I will see you in the next post...or on the battlefield!

If you are not yet a warrior of the Splinterlands, grab your ticket and join us!



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6 comments
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(Edited)

While I'd hardly call the battle a challenge some nice analysis of reach cards!

@tipu curate

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I wish I have better materials but I am facing a lot of all level 1 out there. All the players with good cards are probably promoting to gold and above for the season ending rewards by now.

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I really appreciated reading your thoughts and analysis on the card itself and why you chose the cards you did for this battle. Great write-up!

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