The Gorlodon does all the heavy lifting, the Shadowy Presence swoops in for the kill?

If there weren't occasional fun battles, I wouldn't still be playing Splinterlands. But there are fun battles quite frequently actually, and today I want to share one that is particularly entertaining.

I had a high 20s mana ranked battle, without healing and with knockout rules, and all splinters in the game but green. Like so often in the champions league, I suspected that my opponent would go Magic-heavy. But instead of going defensively with Mimosa Nightshade, I thought I'd try something different and do something with Owster Rotwell and our new Epic Untamed friend (or fiend?): The Gorlodon.

Here are the lineups:

I put a Lord of Darkness in charge, just in case my opponent doesn't go the magic route, and then padded it with the Gorlodon. In 3rd place I put a shadowy presence to give more reflectable hit points to my whole lineup and to add some extra punch to my Gorlodon when enraged. I then completed the lineup with two cheap rear attackers and a Tower Griffin to further bolster against non-magic attacks.

Now my opponent clearly had gone in full magic mode, using the most exclusive Beta hero and the ever so strong Ruler of the Seas. A nice twist though is the Coral Wraith in last position, and the Crustacean King right after the tank!

Now in the first round his team goes all guns ablaze and quickly rips apart my Lord of Darkness. The Gorlodon also takes heavy hits and ends the round enraged.... with 11 Attack! The situation may look grim on my side with my tank out, but my rear attackers did dispatch to Coral Wraith and the other Magic Attackers are severely dented by the Magic Reflect action. This is what it looked like:

Now at the end of the first round, something important happened. The Gorlodon attacked with 11 attack against Lord Arianthus. The 11 attack deals 6 damage (halved due to shield but rounded up??), and the thorns of Lord Arianthus dish back a mere 2 points of damage. It is not visible in the screenshot, because The Gorlodon just took out a point of armor, but it confirms once more that the Thorns ability has a clear cap, and also that Shield doesn't always round down?

Anyway, on to round 2 which is equally entertaining. The Pixie starts off damaging my Gorlodon, but dies from Magic Reflect. The Ruler of the Seas is next, hits both my Gorlodon (killing it) and my Shadowy Presence (survives). Remarkably, its the Reflect from the Shadowy Presence that kills the main villain of this battle! But then the Medusa takes out my Presence, leaving my Undead Badger as the resident tank. So, at the start of Round 3 the battle looks like this:

From this point onwards, my Skeleton Assassin quickly takes care of the Medusa, while the others put a dent into Lord Arianthus. At this point the battle is clearly decided.

Though my Badger does bite the dust, the lack of attacking power and lack of healing from the Crustacean King brings a quick end to my opponent.

Closing thoughts

Arguably my opponent made a mistake in playing a Crustacean King in a No Healing battle, but nevertheless I thought this was an entertaining showdown! Certainly I drew a few important lessons from this match, namely:

• Thorns is indeed capped at 2 points of damage, even if you bring in 11 attack ;).
• Magic Reflect works particularly well if you bring the HP-heavy beasties.
• Although 1 damage is reduced to 0 by Shield, it appears that 11 damage gets rounded down to 6, not 5? I wonder whether Shield rounds up in more cases: I've never noticed it before but it's worth checking.
• An Enraged Gorlodon brings in 9 Attack, but an Enraged Gorlodon with a Shadowy Presence brings in a whopping 11 :D.

Now it's quite unusual for me to learn so many new things in a single battle, but since I did I thought I'd share this highlight with all of you out there. I hope you enjoyed the post & good luck with your future battles!