Countering a Level 4 Alric Stormbringer with a Level 1 Owster Rotwell!

Introduction to the Underdog Mini-series

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Grabbing Wins Here and There

This mini-series is aimed to be a fun one that will hopefully inspire players on a budget. Playing myself with mostly low-level cards in Gold, even though I have now a reliable Life Splinter, stealing wins against much stronger decks is always satisfying.

An Apple-to-Orange Comparison

My Win Rate hovers only around the 50% range, which is far from others who might be between 70% to 90%. Part of it is certainly a lack of skills for sure. That being said, I believe, we also have to take into consideration the tools each of us can rely on. In the end, the goal is to simply do our best with what we have available.

GAME #1: LEARNING FROM DEFEAT

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Owster Rotwell Level 1 VS Levels 4 Alric Stormbringer

Rulesets: Spreading Fury + Broken Arrows
Mana Cap: 21
League: Gold III

I actually lost this (first) game.
But, feeling that I wasn’t too far away from pulling that off, I tried to fiddle a little bit with my lineup on Splintertools.io.

A 2% to 15% Win-Rate

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To begin with, I was surprised to see that my win rate wasn’t 0%. Better, it turned out that by making minor adjustments, I could have guaranteed a win in this battle (100% Win-Rate)!

Of course, hindsight is 20/20.
Nevertheless, this was a fantastic opportunity to learn that a Level 1 Summoner, used in the right context, could win for sure against much stronger Summoners.

My Initial Strategy

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As I felt that a Magic spam with the dreaded Ruler Of The Seas was coming, my thinking was simply to contain the Magic spam as well as I could while trying to take over the opposition from the backline.

To do so, I was counting on Silent Sha-vi and Uraeus’ Sneak attacks.

SILENT SHA-VI	URAEUS

My First Mistake

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Choosing Uraeus over the Undead Badger was a mistake.

I forgot that my Owster Rotwell was at base-level (Level 1), which consequently couldn’t make use of my Uraeus second attack.

My Second Mistake

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This choice had another disastrous implication.

At first, I wanted to go with Riftwing behind the 0 Mana cost monsters. Its Scavenge ability would have allowed me to maximize the Magic Reflect of Owster.

However, because I was too stubborn with using Uraeus, this left me one mana cost short of cramming all of them into the lineup.

For this reason, I ended up betting on Life Sapper’s Life Leech instead of Riftwing’s Scavenge.

LIFE SAPPER	RIFTWING

This mistake cost me the match.

Small Tweak, Big Difference

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What’s interesting nonetheless was that a slightly different lineup would have bumped up my odds of winning this match up to 100%.

This gave me hope as the gap in levels between our summoners and monsters was quite substantial. I told myself that this would help me do better next time.

The Defeat (links):

On Mobile:
https://m.splinterlands.io/#/battle/game/process/sl_cea5a3e597c42bf5aaae00234a2cf7a8

On Desktop:
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_cea5a3e597c42bf5aaae00234a2cf7a8&ref=tt88

Splintertools:
https://splintertools.io/battle?player=tt88&battleId=sl_cea5a3e597c42bf5aaae00234a2cf7a8

GAME #2: EXECUTING FOR VICTORY

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Owster Rotwell Level 1 VS Levels 4 Alric Stormbringer

Ruleset: Even Stevens
Mana Cap: 21
League: Gold III

Battle Repeat

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A few weeks later, I finally got into a similar situation where the probabilities of facing an Alric Stormbringer’s Magic spam were fairly high.

Funny enough, even though the rulesets were completely different this time around, my opponent’s team build turned out to be identical:

1. Furious Chicken
2. Ice Pixie
3. Ruler Of The Seas
4. Elven Mystic
5. Spirit Miner

My Improved Lineup

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Having learned from my previous mistakes, I made sure to select Rifting this time. And sure enough, this was the right play as my team successfully pulled that off!

100% Win Rate

The Victory (links):

On Mobile:
https://m.splinterlands.io/#/battle/game/process/sl_7899feda9210ad09cbbbcced281b1c82

On Desktop:
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_7899feda9210ad09cbbbcced281b1c82&ref=tt88

Splintertools:
https://splintertools.io/battle?player=tt88&battleId=sl_7899feda9210ad09cbbbcced281b1c82&cards=258,366,342,131,354,341,364

In Conclusion

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Even though I have been playing Splinterlands for over 6 months, I still keep on learning new things from the battles I lose. This is in part why I enjoy this game so much. The battles are not only short and varied, but they also offer a surprisingly high level of depth and complexity.

I hope you’ve learned something, or at least, got entertained.
See you in the next post!

Thomas

For new players interested in joining this amazing game, you can support me by using the following referral link (at no extra cost to you!):

https://splinterlands.com?ref=tt88

Thank you.