Comeback Battle of the Day: The Golden Two

September 29, 2021: Silver 2 Ranked Battle on the hunt for Daily Rewards. This is the story of an unlikely win with an even unlikelier pair that I like to call The Golden Two.

It was a calm cool evening, a perfect night for a battle. Unfortunately, the summoner who answered the door was a cute little Byzantine Kitty owned by Sasfansoran (unaffilited to any guild). Byzantine Kitty as a summoner is one of those cards that means 90% loss right off the bat for me. Similar to Llama and Yodin... the Kitty is just too much to handle for my silver powered decks and therefore I was prepared for the worst. It was a 38 mana battle and it was a Rise of the Commons ruleset, you can watch the full battle here: https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_d06915178de7cbeb895f9e1d52944431

Cat Power Right out of the gates

From first glance, if it was any other death splinter summoner I would think I had a good shot at winning this game, but Kitty gives the entire team +2 speed and as you can guess, that was not a good thing for my fragile squad. Before I even got a turn, I had already lost two monsters and his squad regained one health each by killing my debuffer. It looked like this was going to be a clean sweep. Here is how the battlefield looked before I even got a turn:

The Big Miss

At this point my only hope was to kill a bunch of his creatures at the end of the round and hope to even the playing field. I managed to pick off his Jester, but basically did no additional damage, especially because the kitty was healing his entire team at the end of the round. Turn 2 comes around and my Sand Worm sandwhich was getting smaller, but if Sand Worm could keep picking off monsters from the back end I may still have a shot. The big turn 2 moment was a swing and a miss and my golden Sand Worm missed the Mantoid, and I went straight to "Skip to Results" yelling "NOOOOOOOO!" Game over.

But wait

The battle results screen popped up and thought there was an error. It said that I had won the battle and was awarded 5 dec for my efforts, but.....how? This must have been a mistake. His Sand Worm was mowing me down with 3 speed and had better self healing bread to his sandwhich. I replayed the match up with fascination.

I once again watch my team get buzzsawed in the first two rounds and I see my sandworm swing and miss the Mantoid another time. Then I proceed to watch my Jester and Gargoyle get picked off with no trouble at all. I am even more convinced that the results must have been wrong. My opponent has 5 monsters at full strength (minus Naga Brute's shield) and I am down to only the Golden Nightmare and my Golden Sand Worm:

His Sand Worm crushed mine for 4 damage, but luckily due to my summoner it was only 4 and not 5, so my Sand Worm was able to kill the Mantoid and get one shot at the faster non-foil Sand Worm, and luckily it hit. It took an additional 6 turns (10 total) with 3 more misses before my Golden Sandworm managed to kill all 6 monsters for a clean sweep with the important assist going to the golden Nightmare who stood in front neighing and shooting flames from its mane the entire battle. It was quite the fire show and quite the comeback for this unlikely tag team of horrors: The Golden Two.

Feel free the watch the replay here: https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_d06915178de7cbeb895f9e1d52944431

Please leave me a comment with your thoughts on the battle.