Splinterlands, the obvious, not so obvious, part 7...

Did you read my Battle Mage Secrets post of this week?

Hi everyone! Time for another explainer for Splinterlands, because it's a great game but with a steep learning curve, but then again... most good games have the same.
In the splinterlands collaboration with the Wasder app, we made a new guild to support and guide new players, and I started writing explainers to refer to, because it's just too much to simply tell people in our discord server.

Are you a new player who wants a nice team to work with and get some advice and support where needed? Feel free to join our Discord server.

In my explainer series I made some posts before:

Getting started in Splinterlands.

Explaining Brawls

The importance of speed.

Battle basics, rulesets and card placement.

Explainer how to buy cards, where and how to compare.

Guide how to beat overpowered cards.

Last months, I made the first posts in my 'The obvious, not so obvious series'
You can find part 1 here.
You can find part 2 here.
You can find part 3 here.
You can find part 4 here.
You can find part 5 here.
You can find part 6 here.

For us Splinter junkies some things are so obvious, while they are not at all for players starting and learning the ropes, so I want to talk about some basics and strategies I'm using in different rulesets to help you guys get some guidance because there's just too much to remember. In my country we have a saying, literally translated it goes: you can no longer see the wood because of the trees 😅

In my own gameplay doing ranked battles, brawls and sometimes a tournament I'll try and write down tips I can talk about here, I'll try to make 2 or 3 tips in every edition, depending on how long my post is because no one wants to read for 15 minutes right?

After the bot ban in Modern a lot has changed for lower level players, for example my alt account with a level 2 rare summoner deck now has a win rate below 50% and can't compete in Silver anymore. The SPS rewards are a lot better but it's harder now to get a lot of daily chests, and for bronze, the chance to get legendary cards is very low.
To compete in silver you need rare level 4 summoners in my opinion, not cheap, but I do think it's a good time to buy now we are still in the bear market, with the $ I make with blogging about this game I further build my deck, just two days ago, I got Lorna Shine up to level 3 and I bought some other cards too and I'll keep doing this to maximize my wins and help my guild in the Guild Brawls we do.

So.. enough talking, let's get on with the tips!

#1. With some rulesets, don't focus on attacking, but just build a team to outlast your opponent.

When you start a battle, you see the ruleset, just take a moment to THINK about it before you click anywhere, what options do you have for choosing the available splinters, what teams do your opponent plays the most and does he spam certain cards a lot so you can counter them, and boy we get nasty rulesets sometimes!

I saved one for this tip, a melee only / briar patch ruleset with only fire available 😅 great, right!? So, with thorns all melee monsters take 2 damage themselves when they attack, so I made my team just to mitigate the damage taken by selecting all cards I own with the shield ability, I brought disintegrator to nerf the opponents damage and not focus on attacking at all, but just let the opponent attack me and kill himself with the thorns damage, winning by outlasting him.

My Line-Up:

• Summoner: Tarsa - reason: +1 melee damage
• First position: Living Lava - reason: Shield, good damage.
• Second position: Disinegrator - reason: Demoralize
• Third position: Venator Kinjo - reason: this was the last card I picked and just a filler, it's reflection shield protects him against thorns.
• Fourth position: Ant Miners - reason: Scavenge, when it doesn't get hit by opportunity it will have nice HP when it gets to position 1.
• Fifth position: Mycelic Infantry - reason: Shield, cheap in mana.
• Sixth position: Dumacke Orc - reason: Shield, good damage, retaliate so I put him in the back against sneakers.

You can watch the battle unfold for yourself here.

#2. Try to anticipate what your opponent is going to play and make use of the rulesets.

So again, before selecting your own team, take a moment to see what your opponent plays, many players play the same cards a lot, and they all have a counter or other way to make the best use of it, for example when you see your opponent plays one or more strong opportunity monsters, you can make use of this by putting martyr cards in between your team to boost your own cards, when you see he plays a lot of magic, play anti magic or when the cards are low health, magic reflect so they kill themselves.
Does he play thorns with Djinn Chwala or Mylor, go magic with archers behind it to kill him, every ability has its counter, just a few:

Thorns - use Magic / Range or a melee attacker with Reflection Shield
Heavy on Magic - Use Void, Void Armor or Spell Reflect (or a combination)
Healing tanks - Use Affliction to stop heal, like Quora, she's allergic to affliction 😁
Heavy on Melee attackers - Use Shield, Thorns and Demoralize
Heavy on Ranged damage - Use a summoner with -1 ranged damage like Quix or Contessa, Return Fire or Headwinds.

#3. It's good to make a cheat sheet!

With all the abilities, rulesets and so many different cards and strategies I just forget them sometimes, so make a cheat sheet with things you want to remember during you team selection.

This text is beside my screen where I do my battles (I play on PC as I don't like the battles on my phone). It has some rulesets with reminders what I need to focus at and some basic things what ability goes first.

Born Again: Void Armor, Martyr, Scavenge, Bloodlust.
Noxious Fumes: Martyr, Cleanse, Immunity (surround Forgotten One with martyrs)
Unprotected: Cursed Windeku, Drybone Barbarian, Unicorn Mustang, Grund.
Target Practice: Put Martyr on 2nd position.
Up Close and Personal: Caution! Quora is allowed!!
Opportunity: Martyr, Speed, Armor, Double Strike, Bloodlust
Going the Distance: use Quix / Fire, martyr with close rangers Molten Ash Golem and Lava Launcher
Weak Magic: Shatter, Repair, Resurrect
Wands Out: Caution! Quora is allowed!!
Reversed Speed: don't use Bloodlust or slow.

Supersneak goes first with Reach / Opportunity ability

Opportunity and Sneak goes first with Melee Mayhem

That's it for this week, I'll hope to see you all again next week in my posts 😊.

Thank you for reading!!!

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Have a great day!