Damage Reflect Build - learn from top players -

Hi everyone. Today, I'm talking about Splinterlands game strategy that I learned from Top champion-level players who were on the leaderboard. I believe this strategy is also very effective in the gold league as well.

What is Damage Reflect build?

There are 3 days to attack in this game, Melee, Archery, Magic. You can reflect those attacks with thorns, return fire, magic reflect. There's a skill called amplify, which increases Magic Reflect, Return Fire, and Thorns damage to all enemy monsters by 1.

What I call damage reflect build is a build that uses thorns, return fire, magic reflect with amplify as one of the main damage output. Let's dive into example battles.

Special thanks

Special thank you to Zeakio, Zeakio3, Zeakio6 who were on the champion, diamond leaderboard. I'm sorry to research your matches. However, I think it's important to learn from one of the best players in the game. It seems that this player or these players play from bronze all the way to champion by renting cards for one day at the end of the season to get on the leaderboard. That's smart! From the battle history, they are fighting against other non-bot champion players.

Example battles

vs OLDMANQT

https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_115f08764f6e6d0a52f73f651ae873b5

16 mana, Weak magic, divine protection ruleset

Oldmanqt is a content creator and a great player! I like his videos and I learn a lot from him.
In this match, oldman picks life melee team with summoner +1 shield. I think oldman's team is a strong tream. His sneak, opportunity attackers attack fungus fiend but they don't even manage to kill a fiend because of multiple triage and repair. Thorns + amplify just kills their attackers in a few turns.

The key monsters are

• Queen mycelia: triage & amplify
• Epona: repair & +1 hp
• Khmer princess: triage & tank heal
• Failed summoner: +1 hp & demoralize

vs Prince Renynn

https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_013fedcf62664fa82ee612e38efc31e6

23 mana, stampede ruleset

Zeakio is using a similar team but this time using Almo Cambio, it has return fire and magic reflect. Mylor gives it thorns, so almo cambio reflects every single attack!!

Both players picked similar monsters, both have failed summoner, queen mycelia, khmer princess, dr.blight. The difference is that Zeakio picked Mylor and Almo, while PTREKK picked prince rennyin +1 archery, +1 speed, +1 hp.

PTREKK's earth elemental and grenadier are great archery monsters. Grenadier does double damage to failed summoner and almo cambio. Earth elemental has self heal. Eventually both earth elemental dies. The difference is that almo cambio has a lot more hp than earth elemental, has immunity so dr.blight can't stop healing or poison, and all the damage reflect, while earth elemental can't attack from the first position, its healing stops because of dr.blight. Grenadier is really good but dies from almo's return fire.
so Zeakio wins this battle.

vs Death weaken + redemption

https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_f78fb268ae2d4b86cdcb4ba843088964

14 mana, weak magic ruleset

In low mana battles, death weaken + redemption is really really strong. It is almost cheating because it wins most of the time and the battle ends so fast.

However, the damage reflect build has 2 strength, epona and failed summoner. The death team does -3 hp but zeakio6 has +2 hp. In the end, death team only does -1 hp and that's not enough to win the game.

vs Waka, Lord of darkness, corrupted pegasus

https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_29748c6d598c5ffb8f3146a98506e9c3

28 mana, target practice, melee mayhem

Melee monsters are popular in melee mayhem. The bottom team has dark Ha'on, lord of darkness, corrupted pegasus. Especially lord of darkness is really strong because of high attack, enrage, stun, shield, retaliate. I heard Waka is strong in this ruleset in mav chat. so it makes sense that the bottom has those monsters.

Zeakio6 has again, pretty similar monsters as battles we looked at previously. The difference is Spirit of forrest, another great support card with protect and tank heal with flying and high speed, hp.

The bottom team manages to kill failed summoner with their melee attacks but that means they get thorns damage as well. Also, failed summoner's demoralize -1 melee attack helps a lot here. The bottom team dies mostly from thorns. The last monster was lord of darkness but ironically, it dies from dr. blight's poison.

vs Valnamor, Kraken

https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_1c341ed28e5adc830abfcaa35e49de4f

36 mana, spread fury ruleset

At first glance, some people might say Valnamor wins because Kraken is so strong and so much magic damage coming in from the bottom team.

Zeakio6 got 2 magic reflect and amplify + tank heal. The lord Arienthus's magic reflect kills ice pixie and rulet of the seas in the first turn. Almo cambio with huge hitpoints reflect all the damage back to medusa, elven mystic, and kraken.

The last monster was crustacean king but it's game over at that point. Magic reflect, thorns, amplify, and tank heal is simply enough to take down the strong magic team.

How to counter this build

I didn't find many counters to this build because Zeakio wins most of the time. Especially when he uses almo cambio, it's really hard to beat. Here's a few ways to counter this build that I found.

• Run the similar team.

• High Archery damage + Armors to protect from return fire
  It's harder to have multiple return fire than magic reflect because failed summoner, lord arienthus is more popular than onyx sentinel (who has return fire). However, if archery is expected because of the ruleset, this probably doesn't work.

• Attack backline with magic or archery
  This build puts damage reflect monsters in front most of the time. That's why sneak is perfect if we didn't see Mylor. So the perfect way to attack is magic or archery sneak.
  This build can have multiple triages and a repair (a lot of resiliency), so you most likely need the same level of resiliency as well + magic, archery sneak to win.

Don't make Mylor smile!!

Conclusion

This build was eye-opening to me because I never thought this team would win a lot of battles. I had an experience that I tend to lose more if I try to sustain rather being aggressive with a lot of damage output. I learned that this is not always the case with this build. Most of the monsters are expensive, so I will rent them and try it out!
Thank you so much for reading!

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