Run Over by Supply Runner

This is my entry to the Splinterlands Share Your Battle featuring the SUPPLY RUNNER. If you want to join in this challenge, you can check this link. Alright, let's start first with the monster's lore, then deep dive into its compatible summoners, monster's stats & abilities, and the highlighted battle.

SUPPLY RUNNER

"Every army should have them, every artisan should hire them, and every noble should own one. If you need absolutely anything, then a supply runner will get it for you. For their size they can carry vast amounts, they’re incredibly fast and they’ll even defend your deliveries with exuberant relish. Not only that but their expertise with the catapult they carry is renowned across the land. Countless confrontations have been recorded in the history books of these hired hands coming to the aid of convoys beset by bandits or roaming patrols attacked by the enemy. They have swarmed the foe, firing their shot down upon them and running havoc amongst their ranks with their incredible speed. Most of these forays have ended with the enemy fleeing, but those that did remain and fight didn’t last for long.

Gnomes have lived throughout Praetoria ever since the land was inhabited and are stalwart characters indeed. It is unsure as to whether they are native to this continent or not, but what is clear is that they didn’t originate or come from any of the other known Splinters. Talon and Gorst are the agency that hire them out and this organisation has always been crystal clear in the first and most important clause of their contracts, ‘These creatures are not to leave the shores of Praetoria, ever!’ Whether they are simply unwilling to share these efficient people with the rest of the world or there is some darker more sinister note that prevents them travelling is unknown, but the Praetorians don’t really care seeing as they have the exclusivity rights.

Usually, Gnomes have a natural resistance to magic, but the creeping plague seems to have afflicted some of them in a most curious way. You may get lucky and find one that has picked up the odd abilities that are incredibly useful when working with others, but on the other hand, some side effects have led to manic behaviour, an affinity to ale, mischievous use of their catapults, and downright murderous conduct. Needless to say, reliability can now be a bit hit and miss. You are strongly advised to read your contract of employment carefully, or you may find yourself in an unpleasant situation."

- from official Splinterlands monster lore

SUPPLY RUNNER is one of my favorite neutral monster from the Chaos Legion edition. This monster is very versatile and can fit a lot of line-up combinations. As a proof of this, I am 16 over 38 BCX in maxing out gold foil SUPPLY RUNNER

STATS and ABILITIES

At its initial level, it has a 2 melee attack, 3 speed, and 4 HP with no ability.
It gains its first ability SWIFTNESS at level 5.

At level 10, it gains another ability, STRENGTHEN. This provides additional Health to all friendly monsters. Its max stats are 3 Ranged damage, 5 Speed and 5 Health.

Abilities:

SWIFTNESS All friendly Monsters have increased Speed. The additional Speed may not seem noticeable but in higher leagues, even a Speed difference of one has a big impact. As you now, you gain 10% chance to evade physical attacks for every 1 Speed difference between the attacking monster and the target monster. Swiftness ability can stack and can also be combine with Slow ability, which reduces the Speed of enemy monsters. And combine it with abilities like Flying, Dodge, and Blind to further increase your evasion rate.

STRENGTHEN All friendly Monsters have increased Strengthen. Same as Speed, an additional Health has also a big impact. An additional Health can increase the effect of healing abilities like Tank Heal, Heal, and Triage. The effect of healing abilities is dependent on the max HP of the monster. This is equivalent to 1/3 of max HP (round down). An additional Health to increase max HP may push your monster to increase their regenaration from healing abilities

SUMMONER COMPATIBILITY

Chaos Legion	Summoner
	General Sloan is one of the most compatible Summoner for Supply Runner because of the additional damage it can provide to Ranged Monsters. Supply Runner will fit perfectly in Life Splinter's deadly Ranged line-up.
	Kelya Frendul from Water Splinter specialized in Speed fights. The new Water Splinter from Chaos Legion is well known for its high speed monsters. Kelya Frendul not only provides Speed but also an additional Armor to all monsters. This Speed buff combines with the Speed buff from Supply Runner can be deadly most of the time. This line-up can killed enemy monsters before it even attacks.
Legendary	Summoners
	Prince Rennyn is one of the oldest legendary Summoners which provides additional Ranged damage, Speed, and Health. In terms of the buffs, I would say it is the equivalent Summoner for Supply Runner as it both provides additional Speed and Health, the same buff provided by Supply Runner.
	Yodin Zaku provides additional Ranged damage, Health and Blast ability to all Monsters. In terms of enhancing the attack capability of Ranged Monsters, Yodin Zaku is the one that can turn Ranged Monsters to a higly offensive line-up.
	Selena Sky is a 3 mana Summoner which provides additional Ranged damage and access to Dragon Splinter. For low mana battles, Selenia Sky is even better than General Sloan. With Dragon Summoner, you also gain larger monster pool to finalized your line-up
	Archmage Arius is a Dragon Summoner which provides additional damage to all types of attacks. Whether be it Ranged, Melee or Magic damage.

SUMMONER TO COUNTER SUPPLY RUNNER

There are other Summoners that can counter Supply Runner in terms of reducing the damage from Ranged Monsters, or even returning damage from Ranged monsters.

Chaos Legion	Summoner
	Quix the Devious is a Dragon Summoner from Chaos Legion that reduces the damage of Ranged Monsters and reduces the Speed of all enemy Monsters. Not only it reduces the damage of Supply Runner, it also counters the Supply Runner ability, Swiftness.
Other	Summoners
	Contessa L'ament is a 3 mana Death Summoner that reduces the Ranged damage of all enemy monsters.
	Mimosa Nightshade is a 7 mana Death Summoner that reduces the Ranged damage of all enemy monsters, debuff enemy monsters with Affliction status, abd provides all friendly monsters with Void ability reducing Magic damage received.
	Mimosa Nightshade is a 7 mana Water Summoner that provides friendly Monsters with Return Fire ability which returns a portion of damage received from Ranged attacks back to attacker. This is one of the most effective counter against Ranged Monsters. Aside from Return Fire, this Summoner also provides additional +2 Armor to all friendly Monsters and giving enemy monsters Blind status which increases the chance to miss attacks
	The Peakrider reduces the ranged damage of enemy Monsters and also provides friendly Monsters with 3 additional Armors.

FEATURED BATTLE

https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_55a4b6cd0c91d128dcbfa43093516e75&ref=jpleron

Battle Condition
Rule #1	Heavy Hitters: All Monsters have the Knock Out ability.
Rule #2	Even Stevens: Only Monsters with even Mana costs may be used in battles.
Mana Cap	42
Allowed Splinter	Fire, Life, and Earth

MY LINE-UP

CARDS	Description
	General Sloan provides plus 1 Ranged damage to all your monsters. The +1 Range damage will be crucial since most of our monsters has ranged attacks.
	Chaos Knight is our main Tank with Shield ability and Giant Killer. The Shield ability allows it to reduce the damage it received from both melee and ranged damage while Giant Killer allows it to deal double the damage against monsters with 10 or more mana.
	Luminous Eagle is a melee monster with Reach ability allowing it to attack even at the 2nd position. It also has the Flying ability.
	Supply Runner, our featured monster, at level 5 has the Swiftness ability that provides additional Speed to all friendly monsters. The added Speed it provides allows our Monsters to attack first and dealing damage not allowing enemy monsters to attack
	Mantoid a 6 mana Ranged monster with Snipe ability.
	Pelacor Arbalest is a Ranged monster with Double Strike ability. This ability allows this monster to attack twice. The added ranged damage from General Sloan effect was also double since this monster attack twice.
	Prismologist is a Ranged monster with Blast ability. Blast allows the damage to spread to the adjacent side of the target monster. The added ranged damage increases also the spread damage from Blast.

ROUND 1

At the end of round 1, we were able to eliminate two monsters from enemy side, Failed Summoner and Khmer Princess, and dealt a lot of damage to Unicorn Mustang and Goblin Thief. On the otherhand, our Supply Runner was also eliminated by the Snipe attacks from both enemy's Mantoid and Centaur.

ROUND 2

At the end of round 2, we eliminated Unicorn Mustang, Goblin Thief and Mantoid. We even managed to end this round, unfortunately Pelacor Arbalest missed its second attack against enemy Centaur.

ROUND 3

This was the end of the matched. Centaur cannot survived the barage of ranged attacks from our monsters.

Check this link to watch the full battle replay:
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_55a4b6cd0c91d128dcbfa43093516e75&ref=jpleron

SUMMARY

Did your strategy work?

• YES!!! With only 3 splinter to choose from (Fire, Life and Earth), I decided to go with Life Splinter with a combination of Melee and Ranged Monsters. Both Fire Splinter's Melee lineup and Earth Splinter's Magic lineup has the weakness of having low speed (most but not all as some has high speed like Regal Peryton from Earth. I used the Speed buff from Supply Runner to gain advantage in terms of attack order while focusing my attacks to enemy frontline.

What will you try differently next time?

• Given the same battle ruleset, I will replace Chaos Knight (6 mana) and Luminous Eagle (6 mana) with Shieldbearer (8 mana) and Venari Crystalsmith (4 mana). This will protect our backline monsters from being attack since Shieldbearer has the Taunt ability. Then Venari Wavesmith will be the one to support our main tank by healing its HP.

VERDICT | Is SUPPLY RUNNER a good card?

• SUPERB!!! SUPPLY RUNNER is one of my favorite monsters from Neutral. It can fit perfectly in any line-up and in any Splinter as well. The Speed and Health buff are very helpful in most scenario.

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