SplinterWeekly Challenge: Counterspell!

RULESET: Counterspell

For this week, we are talking about the ruleset: Counterspell. In another words, all monsters will get magic reflection. So naturally, this ruleset will strongly discourage opponent from using magic attack monsters.

Battle URL:

https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_65b1b361728d19f3b43ba0eda7402111&ref=namelessnameless

Match Rules:

1. Counterspell: All monsters have the magic reflect ability.
2. Equal Opportunity: All monsters have the opportunity ability.
3. Aim True: Attacks always hit their target
4. 56 mana with Life or Death

Strategy

I am debating whether to choose taunt or bloodlust. Opportunity is excellent for Jared Scar where it can be almost certain to 1 shot all the weaker monsters and bloodlust can make it into a super scary monster at the end. On the other hand, I only have death taunt. Taunt is important to protect the weaker monsters, hoping to use one one taunt monster in exchange for their several weak monsters. Eventually I chose death, hoping to use taunt and double swiftness Supply Runner + Lira speedy combo.

Lineup

Position	Name	Remark
1st	Arkemis The bear	One of the best tanker with forcefield and Protect and Halving
2nd	Atachine Thug	For only 6 mana, good amount of armor and hp. Trample can change the tide
3rd	RavenHood Warden	Mainly for the Protect with just 4 mana
4th	Lira The Dark	Mainly for the Swiftness
5th	DryBone Raider	Double strike with double attack!
6th	Dark Haon	Taunt with scavenger

I ended up giving up my double swiftness combo in order to place Drybone Raider!

Round 1

Opponent MVP

I realised Dumacke Orce can be powerful "taunt" with Rathe and resurrect. With only 1 hp, all of my attack will go towards their Dumacke Orc.
With only 6 mana and at lv6, it already can tank like
6 armor + 1hp + (after resurrect) 6 armor + 1hp = at least 14hp.
Basically that is almost as tanky as my 10 mana Dark Hoan at only lv6. Its shield can grow even more as it further level up.

What is even more scary is that it has shield skill. So counterspell already make people avoid choosing magic monsters. So basically each shield and hp can take up to double attack amounts since all of my attacks are melee or range! When I saw my attack hardly damage Dumacke Orc and he even attack me back, I thought I am gonna lose already.

My team MVP

However, things took a huge turn around when my Drybone Raider start to attack on Dumacke. Even though it is going to deal only 1 damage due to Dumacke shield, its 4 attack went like this
1st attack(range): remove all the shield due to shatter skill
2nd attack(melee): kill Dumacke with 1 hp and activate their resurrect skill
3rd attack(range): remove all the shield 6 shields
4th attack(melee): kill the 1hp shieldless Orc.

It all happened so fast and the huge threat that was scaring me a second ago was suddenly gone.

Back to round 1

Despite that I removed their Dumacke, i realised that Chaos Knight with giant killer skill and Jared Scar with empowered by Inspire skill, both can easily take down my Dark Hoan. I become scared again as now Jared Scar is having 9 attack and it is going to get even stronger from there.

End of Round 2

As expected, Jared Scare continued to grow into a 10 melee attack scarier monster. What is small achievement but impactful is that Thug manage to kill adelade which reduce their team speed and also trample and removed War Pegasus armor. With another opponent monster with shield skill, Drybone once again not just shatter all the 8 armor(effectively can tank at least 16 melee+range damage) of this huge threat and also reducing its hp to only 2, even though all its attack only effectively deal 1 damage to Chaos Knight.

End of Round 3

Despite Jared Scar continued to grow, what was surprising to see if how fast Drybone can take down Jared Scar. Thug attacked first on Jared Scar but it hardly make a dent. While by the end of round 3, Jared scar is only left with 1 shield and 3 hp even after getting a killed. Having the thug and Drybone both at 8hp, they will attack thug first since it is at 2nd position. So despite Jared scar will get another kill to grow stronger, my Drybone seems like still able to kill it. I also hope that my bear will take a few damage and drop to 7hp or less so that it will be the next target after thug died. This will make the scary jared scar to be useless as bear's forcefield will make jared scar damage into 1.

End of Round 4

By the end of round 4, it is quite obvious who is the winner. His bear is only left with 3 hp and my drybone will deal multiple damages to them with my bear still able to tank a few rounds more with its insane speed of 8.

Overall

I am really surprised on how this game turned out. I was super depressed initially as I didnt realise about the important of shield skill in this match since we are avoiding magic monsters. With the rathe + shield skill + resurrect combo, I was already resigning in my heart. Really thanks to the MVP Drybone for its shatter skill that turn the tide around.
Shatter skill is often an underrated skill, but when it works, it works dangerously well. That is why sometime I chose immortalis summoner over rathe for its shatter aura.