The Brick Hithouse: Friendly Giant aka Weekly Battle Challenge
Recently splinterlands posted a challenge to effectively use Sleeping Giant. I beleive I have done so. Click here to view
First Impressions
My first impession of sleeping giant was that it would in fact be merely a spacer for when there are no melee units available at cost 5. Similar to other cannon fodder such as furious chicken. For a 5 cost it has a good amount of base hp, but all this amiable large fellow can do is take a beating.
My Thoughts on Strategy and Card Placement
As you can see here I have placed the giant in the forward position. To act as a wall before getting to the more sustainable haunted spirit. I additionally think a good use for this card is to absorb sniper shots. As he has no attack he draws the fire from that ability. That isn't displayed here in my particular battle, merely because snipe and many ranged creatures in the backline was not anticipated
Click here to view
as the battle progresses since sleeping giant took the brunt of the initial burst damage from the fire splinter (a classic fire splinter strategy). The lesser turn by turn damage afterwards was able to be absorbed and regenerated by the haunted spirit in second position as seen here. Even though he had to give his life. This was only made possible by sleeping giant, his sacrifice will not be forgotten. A more typical use would be second position, or first position with a good reach character in second position to maximize damage. Keep in mind as far as damage per turn is concerned this set up isn't ideal. However it does counter users aiming to counter first position haunted spirit (the most common death starter for 1rst position in the lower leagues) with a rapid 7 points of burst damage.
Wrap up and Conclusion
Overall the giant is useful, but a more specialized tool as oppose to a versatile front liner. Good both in the front and backline to protect small high damage shredders from attacks. The modes in which I find him to be useful are: No melee, All snipers, and as a low cost meatshield for earthquake and or poison. As in the lower tiers many flying cards are low health.
Keep Summoning and I'll see you in the Splinterlands
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Thanks for sharing! - @ashikstd
I don't think that using the Haunted Spirit at the second position was a nice idea cause it was of no use until the Peaceful Giant died... you could use the Haunted Spirit at the front, then the Giant, and then other monsters. But it's nice to see that your strategy worked after all.
Keep on battling,
I was anticipating 7 points of damage of burst to counter the haunted spirit like I've seen when people glean you're going death for the melee debuff. One of the reasons I tried switching it around was because in one of the previous matches with a similar setup fire went Pyre and very fast low health high damage shredders in the back line to kill the haunted spirit before it could regen or attack. And afterwards even though the slower death cards killed a good portion of the backline. Without the damage and sustain that the haunted spirit would have provided versus their living lava debuffed to 2 damage in the aftermath. It resulted in a loss, this was just switching their positions to see what would happen against fire splinter burst. In this meta I've mostly been using the giant to stop sneakers from hitting the backline, this was mostly an experiment as a very specific counter to a certain strategy. In my post this wasn't necessarily meant to be the best or only strategy. Usually a high damage creature with reach behind the giant works well. All the better if it can tank for a while after the giant falls. Or putting the giant in second position or the back to stop ranged fire etc. Thanks for upvoting me and maintaining the community and curating.