Summoner's Week: Akane

^{Edited in Canva Pro.}

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^{The tips and possible advises in this article are designed for Silver League, in which I am in right now.}

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^{Edited in Canva Pro.}

While trying out the different Rebellion monsters and summoners, I stumbled on this realy interesting strategy.

I will be honest and say that, to me, this isn't a really strong one like my Zombie Dragon Build before, but it's still interesting and others may improve this in order to be a meta strategy.

^{Edited in Canva Pro.}

Akane is probably the strongest summoner with Summoner Tactics in the Rebellion Series. The reason is with Akane, you can decide to be both aggressive or defensive depending on the situation unlike other Summoners which, although gives you the options, they are both defensive or offensive abilities/stats.

Akane gives you the chance to either protect your team or gets ahead with damage, which gives you the most flexibility on deciding which would be best in the current battle.

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^Abilities:

Lookout (1): One monster on the board gains the Lookout ability. Lookout reduces the opponent's Snipe, Sneak, and Opportunity damage by 1 for the monsters in front and back of it.

Ambush (2): Two monsters on the board gain the Ambush ability. Monsters with Ambush ability are allowed to attack and use their abilities once before the start of the game.

Pros

1. Ambush gives your monsters an extra full turn - By this, I meant that the abilities also activates. If you have Armored Strike, you attack with the armor then a normal attack during Ambush. If you have Life Leech, you would steal health. If you have Double strike, you attack twice and so on.
2. Flexible Lookout - Based on experience, Lookout ability is a hit-miss ability. While it's strong on paper, if it doesn't affect anything, it's useless. But since Akane can apply it after looking at your opponent's team, you are sure that you can apply the Lookout only when necessary.
3. Akane is Dragon Element - Dragon has a very powerful advantage of being able to use any elements. This meant that the combos does not stop with only one element but can also be used with others as long as the components are the same.

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Cons

1. The Armored Strike Build requires a huge mana cap
   - Based on my calculations, the best build needs around 40 mana to to be good.
2. Ambush is only good when combined with certain abilities
   - You can add Ambush ability to a monster with Protect ability and Range damage and they only attack once. Abilities that don't alter attacks seems to be weak when combined with Ambush ability.
3. Ambush can be fatal if misused
   - v

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^{Edited in Canva Pro.}

Rank	Rules of Combat	Description
	Reverse Speed	The effect of Speed is reversed. The higher the speed, the higher the chance they attack last. The higher the speed, the higher the chance they missed: The monsters with Armored Strike abilities have low speed. With Reverse Speed rule of combat, this low speed becomes an advantage since not only it increases their chance to hit he opponent but also increases the chance they move faster.
	Aim True	All attacks never miss: v
	Healed Out	All healing effects and abilities are disabled: The strategy relies on using armor, Protect and Repair abilities. The strategy is not affected by lack of heals but may affect the opponent in a lot of positive ways.

^{Edited in Canva Pro.}

Rank	Rules of Combat	Description
	Unprotected	All armor and abilities that affect armor are disabled: No armor means Armored Strike and Protect abilities does not work. This destroys all the potential of this strategy making it unusable.
	Briar Patch	All monsters have the Thorns ability. Thorns inflict 2 melee damage to any melee monsters that attack this monster: Armored Strike ability is considered a melee attack. This meant that the Thorns ability from Briar Patch is a huge hindrance as it would reduce, not only your armor, but your Armored Strike damage.
	Noxious Fumes	All monsters are poisoned at the start of the round. Monsters are inflicted 2 true damage each round. This damage cannot be reduced but can be removed by Cleanse ability or by being reborn after they die: Most monsters with Protect and Armored Strike abilities has very low health. Since the poison damage passes through health, this can eliminate your strategy in a turn or two.

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^{Edited in Canva Pro.}

Rank	Monsters	Description
	Mantaroth	In my opinion, he's the strongest monster with Armored Strike ability. While there's another monster with higher armor and speed with Armored Strike, he doesn't have the Taunt which may reduce the armor he has before his turn.
	Wailing Wraith	Wailing Wraith is a low-cost monster with both Reach and Armored Strike abilities. This allows you to put two monsters with Armored Strike, accompanied with Akane's Ambush ability.
	Runeseer Sevaya	Runeseer Sevaya is a dragon monster and I find it hard to get a good chance to summon her in Modern Format since the Dragon summoners became weak, except for Akane, in my opinion.

^{Edited in Canva Pro.}

^{Photo is from my Peakmonsters Account.}

This is a very strong lineup. However, you must have a high mana cap in order to play it.

Lineup

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^Akane

Akane's Ambush and Lookout ability are both useful. You can either be aggressive with Ambush or defensive with Lookout. Both works well and is a really good example of what a good Summoner with Summoner Tactics should be.

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^Mantaroth

His high health allows him to survive magic damage which puts the opponent at a disadvantage since your opponents need to attack your armor or else they would get overrun by Armored Strike.

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^{Wailing Wraith}

He both have Reach and Armored Strike which is a really good combination since Armored Strike can only be done in melee range. That means the Reach ability gives him the opportunity to use the Armored Strike ability while being in second position.

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^{Runeseer Sevaya}

While she doesn't have damage, the Protect ability allows her to increase the first two monster's damage via Armored Strike.

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^{Ravenhood Warden}

He has Protect ability while being able to attack while in the back. A really good monster in this scenario.

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^{Arkemis the Bear}

I placed Artemis at the back in order to protect my team against potential Sneak since Ravenhood Warden and Runeseer Sevaya has low health.

^{Edited in Canva Pro.}

This is a good strategy but it lacks speed. I had another game before this, which I lost, because my monsters missed their attacks.

However, in this game, you can see that almost every Armored Strike attack from Mantaroth and Wailing Wraith were fatal and even able to kill almost kill Arkemis the Bear even before the game started.

^{> > Click here to view the full battle < <}

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The distribution of Protect abilities were properly done, which I wasn't expecting. I was expecting at least two monsters with Protect ability on one element but that didn't happen.

However, this also opened up the path for a Dragon-Neutral Protect combo to add two monsters with Protect to any element you want.

This is a really good idea for a fair game especially since Armored Strike has a 1:1 ratio for damage.

While this isn't the best lineup so far, I think this still has a good potential as long as you have the mana to pull it off.

• This post is an entry for Splinterlands Social Media Contest.
• Animated Banners and Dividers are edited in Canva Pro.
• Other sources that I do not own are cited under their respective photos.
• Some of the fonts used are from instafonts.io

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ℋ𝒶𝓋ℯ 𝒶 𝑔ℴℴ𝒹 𝒹𝒶𝓎!