Share Your Battle - David vs Goliath

The theme for the current "Share Your Battle" challenge is Venari Knifer, but I thought of sharing an interesting battle encounter while I was climbing up the ranks in the latest ranked rewards system.

I have been grinding Silver chests in the Silver league, using my Level 1 summoners and Level 1 cards. As most of you would realise by now, the Silver league players are mostly using semi or max levelled decks based on the cap, and only about 10% of the players are still using Level 1 summoners (based on the sample of my opponents). While I have rented more cards to increase my options for different strategies, it can be difficult to do well sometimes. But with the right practice and strategy, I believe it is still possible get a decent win rate and a good amount of chests while keeping rental costs manageable (which is quite important).

As the result would speak for itself, here's my current tally 5 days into the season. 101 wins out of 166 battles, which works out to be about 61% win rate, bearing in mind I am using only Level 1 cards. Have worked my way from a rating of 900 after reset all the way to 2242.

I had many David vs Goliath encounters and I think it's really fun when you seeing your cards outperforming and unexpectedly win a strong lineup on the opposite end.

So let me share one below!

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Battle Type & Team Lineup

Position	Card	Notes
Summoner	Tarsa	It was a Fire daily focus for that day so I tried to find a strategy to play Tarsa. Fire definitely is very strong in Melee and suits the Super Sneak battle modifier.
1	Living Lava	Living Lava is 90% my go-to tank for Fire because of its Shield ability and having 4 damage after Tarsa's boost. The only weakness is its low speed.
2	Disintegrator	It's a 50-50 situation to use Disintegrator for me, because it's a 7 mana card that will be sitting the lineup not doing any active damage. That said, giving the likelihood of Melee heroes for this battle, it's worth a try.
3	Serpentine Spy	Serpentine Spy is also a frequent feature for Fire lineup because of its high damage but it is very squishy and vulnerable to Opportunity cards. Sometimes I would opt for Uraeus, which has 1 shield for extra protection.
4	Antoid Platoon	I would usually put a Thorns card at the end for Super Sneak battles but since it's Fire, the best card would be one with the Shield ability.

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• Pre Battle: Was once again seeing a string of Gold Foil cards on the opposing side and this time it was a full level 3 deck. I didn't have much hope since Fire wasn't one of my stronger elements and so I just let it rumble and see what would happen.
  

• Round 1: Disintegrator reduced the Melee damage of 2 opposing cards to effectively 0 when they sneaked up on Antoid Platoon. However, all my Melee cards in the backline missed their hits this round.
  

• Round 2: Living Lava was having difficulty hitting Serpent of Eld due to its slow speed, which was expected. Fortunately, all 3 Melee cards in the backline scored their hits and took 2 cards out, just as Living Lava was about to fall.
  

• Round 3: Disintegrator stepped up to face Serpent of Eld, while Antoid Platoon continued to protect the backline, courtesy of Disintegrator's Demoralise ability.
  

• Round 4: The difference in damage output showed as my team was dealing 8 (3+3+2) versus 4 (3+1+0). 3 big hits from Disintegrator, Serpentine Spy and Antoid Platoon and they were down to bare bones.
  

• Round 5: Another round of 8 damage was enough to secure the victory!
  

If you are interested to watch the battle, you can find it here.

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Post Battle

Did my strategy work? I think my strategy to pair Disintegrator with Living Lava and Antoid Platoon worked wonders. The tricky part I guess is it is sometimes not easy to put up the best lineup within a time limit of 3 minutes, because there are so many factors to consider during card selection. Therefore I think it comes with practice and I think I have gotten more practice over the last few days!

Final thoughts? The new format is working out fine for me so far, but let's see what the chest rewards give out eventually for end of season!

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So that's all I have! What are your takeaways from this battle? Feel free to comment below, as I am always keen to learn and improve!

As always, thanks for reading and have a pleasant day ahead!

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If you are interested to sign up to play Splinterlands, my referral link is here.