This is my submission to the Splinterlands Weekly Battle Challenge. This time it is featuring the "Stonesplitter Orc".

About the Card

The Stonesplitter Orc is a good but not mandatory-to-own card from the Beta collection. While it comes with a strong 5-point attack, its health is a bit on the low side for a tank. It makes up for that with its 2 armor points but those won't be much use if he's in for a fight with a magic team.

While researching the card a bit to do this battle challenge, I found that the there are some considerably cheap 1 BCX versions of the card up for sale at just 0.13 USD. For an out-of-print card of the early-adopter-edition (Beta) this seems a reasonable buy. While I didn't have much DEC at hand, I used the little I got to buy 8 more copies of the card. Now I'm at 30/54 for maxing out my Orc at which level it would gain a much needed health point.

Card Use-Cases

As mentioned above, the card is a classical tank. It's a melee monster without opportunity, sneak or reach, so it won't be much use in other positions. However, as there are higher-health alternatives that will be able to take more magic attacks, I rarely see the card used in that position.

When I use it, it usually is as a backline defendant. As the card comes with Retaliate it is nice to pair it up with an opponent's sneak monsters. You have to take a bit of a gamble, though. If you were to use Thorns in this position, you would be guaranteed dealing damage to your opponent's sneaker. With Retaliate, there is luck involved. But when it does trigger the high Orc's high attack strength starts to shine, single-blow-killing most sneak monsters with their low-health and no armor.

This week's match

Click on the video ^ to play or view the original match on Splinterlands.

This week's match was an armored up ruleset. I expected my opponent to use magic to get through the armor, so I did not use the Orc as a tank.

As I am the lucky owner of a Wizard of Eastwood, this took the rulesets armor away from my opponent and cleared the way for melee monsters like the Orc as well as some ranged attackers.

This week's line up:

1. Flesh Golem: When I said there were better tank choices for an Earth team in the Beta set, I was mainly referring to the Flesh Golem. Its Void ability comes in very handy for a tank and its Healing powers combined with its high HP make it frustratingly difficult to kill.

2. Khmer Princess: I love pairing a Healing tank with a Tank Healer in the back row. If things play out as intended the tank will restore all HP lost in a round in the next one.

3. Wood Nymph: The Khmer Princess is basically the Untamed-clone of the Wood Nymph. Both are magic attackers and both have the Tank Heal ability. When used together your opponent needs to kill these before getting at your tank. If he doesn't have Opportunity monsters to do that job, things look dark for them.

4. Halfing Alchemist: A great card for its 2-mana cost. The Halfing Alchemist is weak as an attacker but can help protect your tank with its Halfing ability that reduces your opponent's monster's attack strength. Should the Alchemist get killed your opponent is in for a round of Redemption damage.

5. Swamp Thing: One of my favorite cards from the Beta set. It comes with 2 ranged attack points, reduces the health of all your opponents monsters, slows them down, so that you might be able to strike first and in addition to that has considerably high HP for a 2-mana monster. I use this card even in high-mana matches, that's how strong it is.

6. Stonesplitter Orc: And here we have the card of the week. Placed neatly in the back of the team buffering all sneak attacks and possibly returning them with Retaliation.

Conclusion

This match showed two things:
Firstly, the Retaliation ability in the back can be very powerful. It triggered immediately when the opponent hit me with their Skeleton Assassin and wiped it out with one single blow.
Secondly, this strategy comes at the cost of risking the complete waste of a monster slot.
After my Orc took out the Assassin, it was just sitting there, doing nothing until the match was over. It worked great against the sneak-monster but I wonder if using a strong (5 or 6 mana) ranged monster would not have been even more effective achieving higher total damage dealt.

In the end, I'm glad my Triple-Heal strategy worked out this well. My opponent must have been cursing that Flesh Golem.

Want to join the fight?

Create an account at the Splinterlands today and fight me in next week's battle challenge!