My Giant Roc win and Splinterlands battle tip

From far away, a Roc may be mistaken for a normal bird, but once it comes closer its true size can be appreciated. These massive birds never stray from the Burning Lands, most likely due to the warm ground and favorable nesting conditions of the uninhabitable wasteland of The Unknown.

The Giant Roc is an oldie, but a goody that's been around since the Alpha days. Its melee reach ability can cause some damage from behind a tank and even serve as a soft tank if the original dies. Being able to fly helps increase its chances of getting a miss and will stay undamaged during an earthquake.

Even though I've used the Giant Roc thousands of times and it's the very first card on my list, I'm a bit embarrassed to just now notice that it is holding a baby elephant in its huge talons. That's why these weekly Splinterlands battle challenges are worth participating in. You will notice cards that have slipped past your radar and earn some HIVE and SPT along the way.

Battle Tip

One of the biggest mistakes I see both old and new players making is NOT checking your enemy's past lineup. It's a bit harder to do on mobile, but still possible. I think most people are eager to get into the fight and just click away, but knowing your enemy's habits and predicting what they will do next will improve your win rate. If you hover over their past battles and see that they use MAGIC every time, use cards that reflect or aren't hurt by their magic attacks. If they always use strong tanks with shields, then use all magic cards to slip past their shields. This is why pro fighters watch hours and hours of their opponent's footage. On Splinterlands, it only takes a few seconds.

I could tell that @coffeehouserec wasn't much of a magic-user so I could use a strong, but slow tank like the Living Lava to win. The ruleset for this battle was also reverse speed so all slow cards would attack first and fast cards last so the Giant Roc would also be a good choice. I made sure that all of my cards would have a speed of just one or two so we would go first.

My Battle

I have a level 3 summoner, Qid Yuff, but thought that the new Chaos card, Tarsa would be better even though she's a free-to-use level 1 summoner because she increases both life and attack power by one point. I sometimes feel annoyed getting beat by new players using all free-to-use Chaos cards, but am also glad to see the game evolving and adding powerful new cards. If only strong players with expensive old cards always won, then Splinterlands wouldn't grow.

My Giant Roc was able to do some damage and serve as a secondary tank helping to secure this battle victory.

I earned almost 6 DEC and 18 rating points to bring me up to 1971, the same year the wise and honorable President Richard Nixon, who was not a crook, brought America off the gold standard. Thank you for reading about my Splinterlands battle victory today. Get in the game!

Check out my battle:
https://steemmonsters.com?p=battle&id=sl_7c2adc03bf38d87d79dbbe2a8539897c&ref=jeremiahcustis

Participate in this week's challenge:
https://peakd.com/hive-13323/@splinterlands/share-your-battle-weekly-challenge-giantroc