Splinterlands - Going the Distance ruleset

Hi everyone! While I'm recovering from surgery and can't do much else as besides playing games and stalk you guys out there with my writings, I decided to make another Splinterlands Social Media challenge since we're allowed for 2 upvotes a week. Here you can check out the splinterlands post how to get in to the challenge yourself.

For my 2nd entry, let's talk about one of the new rulesets: Going the Distance, where only archery monsters are allowed.

Various splinters have nice summoners for this:

• Quix the Devious - my preferred summoner for this ruleset, as I have him as a lvl 2, which is the maximum level for silver league. Nerfing the enemy's speed as well as nerfing archery damage -1
• Yodin Zaku - with +1 archery damage AND blast, it makes him one of the best for this ruleset, but he's very expensive, and in my league he's pretty much only used by bots or low skilled players spamming him.
• Lir Deepswimmer - his return fire, extra armor and blind makes him one of the best, but as for Yodin Zaku, expensive and rarely seen in Silver league.
• Fernheart - It's close range ability makes all monsters being able to fire from the first position
• Contessa L'Ament - minus 1 damage, a cheaper and weaker version for Quix the Devious
• General Sloan - with it's +1 damage it might seem nice for this ruleset but the modern Life team really doesn't have any good close range tanks.
• Ilthain - as with Lir Deepswimmer, the return fire ability is OP with this ruleset, making low HP monsters kill themselves

So, without the use of Fernheart you got to have a monster with close range on the first position, and while the neutral Gargoya Devil can be played by any summoner, it's not the best choice for the first position in my opinion, because it will die way too fast.
Depending on what splinters are open, I always pick Quix when the dragon splinter is allowed, and like to combine it with Fire, Water or Death, depending on the combines rulesets and whether they're allowed, because they all have nice close range monsters with good health points to survive a few hits:

For the Fire team, I like to start with Molten Ash Golem, I've got is as a lvl 3 with 2 damage and 10 health points, I like to put the new Venari Marksrat as a 2nd with it's martyr ability, hoping for the enemy to play a sniper so it will boost the 1st and 3rd card, 3rd I'll put Lava Launcher, when the mana pool allows it, my lvl 3 does 4 damage, 5 when the Marksrat is killed, so it's a heavy weight but it's mana expensive too. In the last spot, with any in between depending on the mana cap I like to put Tinderlock, for it's last stand ability with close range, to save the day if needed - Ash Mirage for another -1 archery damage is a preferred card to be played in front of Tinderlock when it fits.

When the Fire splinter can't be chosen, and we don't have the Ferocity ruleset which make monsters do double damage on taunt monsters, I like to play the Water team with Kelya.
On this setup, I put the Venari Marksrat in the first position, sacrificing 3 mana to boost Wave Brood's damage, and put Wave brood in the 2nd position, with it's Close Range and 12 health points it can survive a few hits. Gargoya Devil behind it if he dies, and Axe Master in the last position, this great double strike card is one of my favorite archery cards overall.

My 3rd option is the Death team, to put Queen of Crows in the first position, same tactic, high HP close range, with Venari Marksrat in the 2nd spot hoping for enemy snipers, sometimes I put the marksrat in the first position too.
Nice additions to this team are Dhampir Stalker, Soul Strangler and Lira the Dark. But when playing Lira, you could end up killing the enemy martyr card, but strangely, I don't see this tactic being played very much just yet.

This is my battle with this ruleset together with knockout where my Quix was facing a lvl 4 General Sloan.

As I told before, in my opinion General Sloan isn't a great choice here, yes it does +1 damage to every monster with you can only play Gargoya Devil as a Close Range tank and he has far too low health points, this looks like a bot team - or a poor tactical player.
link to battle

With -2 archery damage to the enemy team, all cards but 1 ended up doing only 1 damage, while my team was doing an average of 2.5 damage per monster so this battle was over very fast, without any kills on my team in only 3 rounds.

Win Streak! and another little bit of SPS, can't have enough of it!

Thank you for reading!!!

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Have a great day!

Posted using Splintertalk