Hello everyone! Pozdrav svima!

This week I'm going to show you how to deal with Equal Opportunity ruleset. What to look for, what are benefits of this ruleset and which cards go well with it.

~~ RULESET ~~

First of all lets see what this ruleset is all about. How to counter it or how to take advantage of it.

Monsters with the Opportunity ability may attack from any position and will target the enemy Monster with the lowest health.

~~ How to counter Equal Opportunity ~~

There are a couple of ways to counter this ruleset. One of the simplest ways is to use a monster with Taunt ability. This way all the monsters in the opponent's team will attack that one monster of yours, buying the rest of your team time to deal damage to enemies.

~ Redirect attacks ~

Most popular choices of monsters with Taunt ability are usually the ones that have some way of mitigating damage or evading the attacks. (on this link you can find the list of all monsters with Taunt ability)

A few come to my mind, but every splinter have their own combination. So the choice is up to you and what type of attack you expect from the opponent.

	Agor Longtail	Coeurl Lurker	Mycelic Slipspawn	Wave Brood
Set	Riftwatchers	Riftwatchers	Chaos Legion	Chaos Legion
Rarity	Legendary	Legendary	Rare	Epic
Splinter	Dragon	Neutral	Earth	Water

As you can see, all of these monsters have some way of mitigating the damage or evading it, so be on the lookout for these abilities when choosing your Taunt tank. Those abilities are also useful on other members of your team

~ Mitigate Damage ~

If you want to mitigate the damage when facing Melee or Ranged attacks you can do it with Shield or Forcefield (if attackers have 5 or more attack power) ability, or if you're facing Magic attacks use Void or Void Armor.

Shield	Forcefield	Void	Void Armor
Reduced damage from Melee and Ranged attacks (damage gets halved, except attack 1 which deals 0 damage)	This Monster takes only 1 damage from attacks with power 5	Reduced damage from Magic attacks (damage gets halved, except attack 1 which deals 0 damage)	Magic attacks hit this Monster's armor before its Health
List of monsters with Shield ability	List of monsters with Forcefield ability	List of monsters with Void ability	List of monsters with Void Armor ability

There are also summoners that provide abilities for damage mitigation to the whole team.

	Immortalis	Mimosa Nightshade	Grandmaster Rathe
Set	Chaos Legion	Untamed	Chaos Legion
Rarity	Legendary	Legendary	Legendary
Splinter	Earth	Death	Life

~ Avoid Damage ~

If you wish to have a greater chance to avoid getting damaged from Melee or Ranged attacks use monsters with Flying or Dodge ability, or if you're up against Magic attack use Phase ability.

Flying	Dodge	Phase
Increases the chance (by 25%) of evading Melee or Ranged attacks from Monsters who do not have the Flying ability	Increases the chance (by 25%) of evading Melee or Ranged attacks	Magic attack can miss this Monster (using the same hit/miss calculation as for Melee and Ranged attacks)
List of monsters with Flying ability	List of monsters with Dodge ability	List of monsters with Phase ability

There are also summoners that provide those abilities to the whole team.

	Brighton Bloom	Astral Entity	Sthispa
Set	Dice	Chaos Legion	Riftwatchers
Rarity	Rare	Legendary	Epic
Splinter	Dragon	Death	Dragon

~~ How to take advantage of Equal Opportunity ~~

There are several ways to take advantage of Equal Opportunity ruleset, either by making your opponent attack the monsters YOU want, or by overriding Opportunity with different attack ability.

~ Override the Opportunity ~

But what if your opponent is thinking the same, what if he's luring you to attack weaker monsters first, keeping his more stronger ones in the back? Your other strategy can be to override the Opportunity ability with other abilities that have precedence (Opportunity < Snipe < Sneak < Scatter). (image below was taken from Splinterlands official discord)

If you filled your team with Sneak monsters this would surprise your opponent leaving his back line exposed and vulnerable to your attacks.

~ Ride the Opportunity ~

Strategy that makes Opportunity go your way is to make opponent hit the weaker, less important monsters first, keeping the damage dealers alive longer. You do that by placing the lower health monsters in first couple of positions, because Opportunity ability targets them first.

But now with the introduction of monsters with Martyr ability we can take this strategy to another level. What we do is place low HP Martyr monster next to some strong, high attack (or even better - Double Strike monster) or high survivability monster (preferably the one that has Heal), and when it gets killed it will buff that strong monster making it even stronger and hopefully too strong for the enemy team. (you can find a list of monsters with Martyr ability on this link)

There are now quite a few monsters with this amazing ability, I will point out a few that work well with this ruleset (all of them are soulbound reward cards with exception of Vruz).

	Venari Marksrat	Firecaller	Fungus Flinger	Vruz
Set	Chaos Legion	Chaos Legion	Chaos Legion	Chaos Legion (Promo)
Rarity	Rare	Common	Common	Epic
Splinter	Neutral	Fire	Earth	Dragon

~~ BATTLE REPORT ~~

For my battle I chose the strategy that was combination of damage mitigation and "riding the opportunity".

If you want you can see the whole battle, play by play - click 👉 HERE 👈

~~ RULESET ~~

Ruleset in this battle was just perfect for a nice showcase of what a strong monster can do when buffed with couple of Martyr monsters.

I will try to explain each part of the ruleset, so you get the better understanding what was I thinking when I picked my line-up.

~~ STRATEGY REVIEW ~~

When I saw the ruleset with Opportunity, Gladiator cards and Earth splinter available I had no doubt on what I'm going to play - Quora surrounded with Martyr monsters. My only doubt was the choice of of the summoner. My guess was that my opponent was going to use Magic attack team, and that's why I used Immortalis summoner. In the end it turned out to be the wrong decision since my opponent only used 2 Magic attack monsters, so if I went with Obsidian my Quora would be even more powerful in the end.
Fortunately that didn't matter much as my opponent totally ignored the Gladiator cards and went with pretty common setup, Kelya Frendul summoner with Taunt monster in the back and mix of all types of attack. His main problem was that after the Taunt monster died, next in line was his main damage dealer Axemaster who died in the next round. After that everything was going my way and he stood no chance.

~~ LINE-UP ~~

You can see the line-up from both teams in battle screenshot right after this section. I will go through my line-up and explain why was each card picked and put in that spot.

SUMMONER

IMMORTALIS Earth splinter legendary summoner that reduces 1 health from all enemy monsters and gives all friendly monsters Void and Shatter ability. I chose this summoner because I assumed my opponent will play mostly Magic attack monsters and I wanted to play my Quora Towershead.

1st POSITION ("TANK")

MYCELIC INFANTRY Earth splinter rare tank card. Costs 8 mana and has nice defensive stats and 4 melee attack. Shield - Reduced damage from Melee and Ranged attacks. I picked this monster as a tank because I have damage mitigation from all attack types (its Shield and summoner's Void).

2nd POSITION

GRUND Earth splinter epic melee attack card that costs 10 mana. Double Strike - Monster attacks twice each round. I picked this monster to deal great amount of damage, since it gets Opportunity and Double Strike allows it to attack twice.

3rd POSITION

FUNGUS FLINGER Earth splinter common soulbound reward card. Costs 3 mana, has 1 ranged attack. Martyr - When this Monster dies, adjacent Monsters get +1 to all stats. I picked this monster because it will get targeted by Opportunity attack (since it has lowest HP in the team) and die first, buffing Quora and Grund, my main damage dealers.

4th POSITION

QUORA TOWERSHEAD Earth splinter epic Gladiator card. Costs 10 mana, has Magic and Melee attack. Bloodlust - Every time it defeats an opponent, it gets +1 to all stats. Heal - Restores a portion of the Monster's health each round (1/3 of total HP). I picked this monster because she has two attacks, plus Bloodlust and Heal, and when she get's buffed from Martyr ability and then Bloodlust she becomes unstoppable.

5th POSITION

VENARI MARKSTRAT Neutral rare soulbound card. Costs 3 mana, has ranged attack. Martyr - When this Monster dies, adjacent Monsters get +1 to all stats. I picked this monster because it will get targeted by Opportunity attack (after Fungus Flingers dies) and after it dies it will buff Quora (and Queen Mycelia), my main damage dealer.

6th POSITION

QUEEN MYCELIA Earth splinter legendary support card. Costs 4 mana and has magic attack. Protect - All friendly Monsters gain +2 Armor. Amplify - Increases Magic Reflect, Return Fire, and Thorns damage to all enemy monsters by 1. Triage - Heals the friendly back-line Monster that has taken the most damage. I picked this monster to (as his name says) wreak chaos with his Scatter Shot and Blast damage. I put him in last position to be protected, as he's the main damage dealer.

~~ THE BATTLE ~~

This was a fast paced battle, with a lot going on on both sides. Let us see how it went exactly...

Round 1

Since my opponent had speed advantage his monsters attacked first and killed my first Martyr monster buffing my Quora and Grund. That just helped me kill their Taunt monster in the last position faster.

Round 2

In round they killed my second Martyr monster, buffing Quora and Queen Mycelia. Quora used that and made a kill for herself taking out their main damage dealer (Axemaster) and getting buffed one more time by her Bloodlust.

Round 3

In round three my opponent manages to kill my Queen Mycelia but Grund and Quora take out another 2 monsters (Quora gets buffed AGAIN) leaving my opponent to last 2 monsters.

Round 4

Easy kill for Quora on defenceless Baakjira (buffed again - for 5th time already), leaving Dr. Blight all alone at mercy of my 3 remaining monsters.

Round 5

Dr. Blight left alone with 2 health - easy task for Quora.

You can watch the video of this battle on 3speak.tv.

~~ RESULT ~~

This was a one way fight from the start. It was fun to watch Quora wracking the opponent's team.

If only my opponent used monster with Dispel ability, it would be a totally different story, because it would remove all those buffs from Quora. But then again, maybe that monster wouldn't even have a chance to hit Quora...

Link to the battle itself can be found 👉 HERE 👈

If you still haven't tried Splinterlands try it out 👉 HERE 👈

Thank you for your time, and please vote if you like this post. 👍

Credits

Special thanks to:

@carrieallen for ultimate markdown tutorial.
@rqr4 for text dividers used in this post.
@splinterlands for images used in this post and for making this great game.
splintercards.com for ability and ruleset descriptions, as well as card price history.