Splinterlands Social Media Challenge! Testing new Strategies with RIFTWING

---

Hello guys, this is my entry to the "Splinterlands Social Media Challenge!". If you want to participate and/or read more about the challenge, click here.

We are in the middle of a season and once again we are testing new cards and forming new strategies which will help us in the rest of the season. With this in mind, I used Riftwing to form some strategies. I have been neglecting it for a long time. I know it can be very effective even though it doesn't come with any attacks.

It is a common death unit and comes with a price of 4 mana. What else can it do? Let's talk about its stats in detail.

RIFTWING

CARD
EDITION	CHAOS
RARITY	COMMON
ELEMENT	DEATH
LEVEL	3
MANA COST	4 POINTS
ABILITIES	Flying, Scavenger

Riftwing is a common unit that has no attacks and still costs 4 mana. But why? Well, it justifies this cost with its good speed and two useful abilities.

• Flying: Has an increased chance of evading Melee or Ranged attacks from those monsters who don't have the Flying ability.
• Scavenger: Gains 1 max health each time any monster dies.

Both these abilities make it much harder to kill.

I used a level 3 unit which has 4-speed points and comes with a relatively good amount of health of 6 hp. It is a great choice for a secondary tank and this can keep the opponents busy for a long time.

Now, let's talk about my lineup.

My Lineup

This is my lineup for the battle

Position	Summoner/Monsters	Abilities
Summoner	Thaddius Brood	-1 magic attack -1 health
Position 1	Cursed Windeku	Thorns
Position 2	Riftwing	Flying, Scavenger
Position 3	Corpse Fiend	No ability
Position 4	Life Sapper	Life Leech
Position 5	Ravenhood Warden	Protect
Position 6	Chaos Agent	Dodge

---

It was a only 22-mana battle. There were two rulesets:

• Heavy Hitters: All Monsters have the knock Out ability.
• What Doesn't Kill You: All Monsters have the Enrage ability.

Both of these were not restrictive in any way. Every splinter was active for this battle except Fire and Water. I went with death, of course.

---

I used the Thaddius Brood as my summoner which removed 1 health point and 1 magic damage from all the enemy monsters.

In the first position, I used the Cursed Windeku as my tank. It costs 6 mana but came with a lot of health (10 hp). It dealt a good amount of Melee damage but the best part of it was the thorns ability which deals damage back to melee attackers. I was expecting my opponent to use it as well as they used it in their last 2 attacks.

In the next position, I used the Riftwing. It is a perfect candidate for a secondary tank. However, it doesn't have any attacks yet it was worth having in the lineup to absorb attacks from the enemy attackers while my units take them out.

Corpse Fiend came in the next position. It was a zero mana unit so I placed it here. I wanted to protect my next units in the lineup. I knew it won't attack from this position still I placed it here. I don't want it in the first position which will interfere with my Cursed Windeku attack.

Anyways, in the next position, I placed the Life Sapper, the only mage in my lineup. It dealt 1 magic attack and came with a low amount of health (2 hp). But the most useful was its life leech ability that increases its health each time it deals damage to the enemy monster. This is very powerful, especially when the battles go on for a long time.

Next in line was the Ravenhood Warden, a Ranged attacker who cost 4 mana but doesn't seem to have attacking strength or even good health (just 2 hp). Then why I used it? Because of its protect ability that gave all the friendly monsters extra 2 armour. This was instrumental in my success in this battle. I had to give better armour to all my monsters and this played a huge role.

In the last position, I used the Chaos Agent. I used this to protect the Ravenhood Warden from monsters with sneak abilities that can attack my lineup from the last position. Losing Ravenhood Warden would mean losing 2 extra armour on all my monsters so it had to be protected well.

Now my lineup was all set and it was time for battle.

I will share my battle here, which I have uploaded to YouTube.

My Strategy

I just had 22 mana and my strategy was to invest most of it on good tanks. So, I used the Cursed Windeku and Riftwing as my tanks. Both had good health and can take many heavy blows.

I supplemented all my monsters with extra armour provided by Ravenwood Warden's protect ability. Of course, I had to protect it as well to ensure my armour remains on them.

Since I had two extra armour on all my monsters I used a couple of low mana units which may not have added to the attacking strength but they increased my defensive ability.

Round 1

---

My opponent also used the same summoner and Cursed Windeku as their tank. Round 1 was much better for me as the extra armour from Ravenwood Warden helped and the placement of my Chaos Agent was perfect.

At the end of this round, their Cursed Windeku's health was much lower than mine.

---

Round 2

---

Round 2 saw the demise of their Cursed Windeku while my tank also died along with their powerful Silent Sha-vi. The thorns damage proved to be a great asset in this battle.

Now the Riftwatcher was in the first position and it was not easy to take it down as it now had 8 hp.

---

Round 3 & 4

---

It was not looking good for my opponent with just their Venari Bonesmith attacking my units while I had a couple of attackers and a strong tank in the form of Riftwatcher. It was an impossible task and soon it succumbed to this mammoth task.

This gave me an easy win in the end. Riftwatcher was still standing with more health than it started.

Conclusion

Riftwing is a powerful unit, without even having any attacks it is an excellent tank and can stall the match for long until the units at the back take care of the enemy. And while the more unit dies on the battlefield it gains health which makes it much harder to eliminate.

It cost just 4 mana and it fully justifies this cost by providing a lot of defensive capability to my lineup.

It should be present in every player's deck as it can be used in many compositions.

Thanks for reading...

---

---

Splinterlands is a popular NFT-based play2earn game. If you have not joined the game yet, then you are missing a lot of fun. You can join by using my referal link.

Note:

• Text dividers are from freeztag.
• Card images are from @splinterlands.
• Banner created in Canva (free version).

| SPLINTERLANDS.COM | SPLINTERSHARDS (SPS) | BLOG | DISCORD | TELEGRAM |