Centaur Sniper ~ Splinterlands Share Your Battle Challenge

Happy Holidays, Everyone!


This week's Battle Challenge features one of the cards that I often use -- the Centaur. With Christmas right around the corner, I wonder if the next featured card will be somehow related to the holidays... like maybe there is a holiday-themed card in Splinterlands that I wasn't aware of...

Centaur: Sniper Support

I've always been fond of Sniper cards as I would often get lucky wins whenever I use the strategy. And among the snipers, Twisted Jester has been my favorite because of its high attack damage, relatively low mana costs, and very wicked card art.

Whenever I got Jester on the field, I would always aim to place another sniper card as support. The Untamed edition introduced a reliable sniper partner in Death Elemental, but before that, there was Centaur.

Centaur has a decently low mana cost at four and it can be added to any Splinter team because it's neutral. One other good thing about this card is the incredibly cheap rent and purchase prices, making it an easy add-on card to your deck. Just make sure to level it up to at least to four to unlock its two-attack points!

Centaur Lvl 3 with 1 attack	Centaur Lvl 4 with 1 attack

Summoners with Range Attack Boost

I'm battling with Centaur for today's matches and I'm going all out!

I'll be using a summoner with a skill that boosts range attacks. I was a bit surprised to find out there were a lot of summoners belonging to this category since I've only often encountered a few among these.

I picked none of these though.

Just for once, even just for a dozen battles, I'd like to feel how to be on the winning side of a Yodin Zaku massacre, so I'm shelling out 250 DEC to rent a Level 2 Yodin Zaku for one day.

Man, that was my priciest rent ever. But that Splash and +1 attack combo is undeniably epic no matter how overpriced I think the rent rate is. This powerful combo could potentially give a level four Centaur a whopping seven point attack damage towards multiple monsters in one hit. See it in action in the battle demo later in the post.

My Team

I'll start introducing my monster team with the featured card -- Centaur. I got it on level 4 to get a base attack damage of two. And as I've mentioned at the start of the post, I'd like my sniper in teams. So I'm adding Fire Beetle with a base two damage. With Zaku around both of these snipers get their attacks raised to three.

Yodin Zaku takes a lot of mana allocation with its seven-mana requirement. But this match's total mana pool is 46 so there's a lot of room for the summoner and some more other heavyweights.

And the heavyweights with high mana costs:

I placed a hefty tank for the first position, a level 3 Goblin Mech, for its high damage and armor points. Up next on the second position is Naga Fire Wizard. It has a Shield skill that decreases all non-magic damage so it's quite sturdy and can even nullify some physical splash damage. The last high-mana card I got is a level 3 Lava Launcher. Just imagine what Zaku does to a card with a ranged attack with four damage. I placed it at the end to potentially shield my units from physical sneak attacks.

Rounding up my team is Goblin Shaman at level 5. As I have mentioned on my Silver League level maximization post, Goblin Shaman is the only card in the Silvers who has access to both Weaken and Slow debuffs. This debuff combo is unquestionably savage so I often add this card in my lineup whenever possible.

The battle setup

Yodin Zaku feels too overpowered. So much that Splinterbites pokes fun at its OP-ness by suggesting to buy the card then burn it for DEC to "defeat" it lol. I got no screenshot of it though. But if you play Splinterlands a lot and read text on game loading, you'll surely find it.

I'm glad that I got this matchup. Pitting my Zaku team against a different opponent feels less thriliing. But Zaku vs Zaku? Now, that's a much more exciting battle!

The opponent had several decently-leveled gold cards that matches the monsters on my field almost evenly. Note that I'm battling on the Silver League, so monster levels 3, 4, and 5 are quite high for battles.

We also both had the same idea of using multiple sniper cards, so we got two snipers on both sides. Fortunately, I have a slight advantage with having a stronger and faster second sniper in Centaur compared to their Lava Spider.

Here's the playing field after all buffs and debuffs were applied.

The battle result

The battle ended with my overwhelming win with zero casualties. You can watch the entire fight here.

What ultimately gave me the winning edge for this battle is Goblin Shaman. Both sides had heavy hitters so the win came down to who gets to dish out the damage first. Goblin Shaman made sure I drew and fired the guns first by slowing my opponents.

My trump card may have been Goblin Shaman but my battle MVPs are my snipers. Look at how my Centaur dealt the first hit resulting in three damage to my opponent's Lava Launcher and two-point splash damages dealt twice -- a hit for Forgotten One and another for Ettin Spearman. That's a total of seven damage points. Pretty epic for a level 4 common monster, right?

Also, level 4 Fire Beetle echoes the same damage combo.

To End

Is Centaur a good card to play? Yes. I demonstrated how great Centaur can be when powered up with an attack boost and splash. But even without those special buffs, a teamup of snipers can still be a formidable force that can slowly chip away your enemy's backline. Centaur being neutral with a relatively low mana cost is an excellent add-on card that's an easy fit for most plays with multiple snipers.