Share Your Battle Challenge - Silvershield Bard

In this week's Splinterlands "Share Your Battle Challenge", we have been tasked to fight a match using Silvershield Bard. This is a 1 Mana point monster that belongs to the Life Splinter, and although it has no attack of its own, it does have the "Cleanse" ability which helps remove negative side effects from the first position monster. In this post, I will try out Silvershield Bard, share my battle lineup, and give my general impressions of the card.

The Lineup

This match was played with a 19 Mana point allocation and no modifications to the standard ruleset. In first position, I placed Silvershield Knight. Silvershield Knight has high speed and good armor, but makes up for a weak attack with the "Inspire" ability which raises the melee attack of all friendly monsters. My hope was that by placing Silvershield Knight in first position, he could use his high speed to get in a first round attack before the enemy could damage him.

In the second spot, I placed Luminous Eagle. Luminous Eagle has the "Reach" ability which allows it to attack from both second and first position. When combined with the "Inspire" ability from Silvershield Knight, Luminous Eagle has an attack of 3 which is quite strong, and the flying ability gives it an improved chance of dodging attacks from non-flying monsters.

In third spot, I placed Furious Chicken. Due to the low Mana cap of the match, I wanted to use Furious Chicken as a buffer monster. Furious Chicken costs zero Mana to play, so if I have an open spot, its a no-brainer to play him and let the enemy waste one of their attacks on him instead of one of my "real" monsters.

I knew that I needed to reserve 1 Mana to play Silvershield Bard which gave me 3 Mana to spend. After considering the situation, I decided to play Truthspeaker so that all of my friendly monsters could receive an armor buff.

In last position, I put Silvershield Bard. Although I could have placed this monster anywhere, it doesn't have any attack, and has relatively low health, so I wanted to place it at the rear of the formation so it could use its "Cleanse" ability for as long as possible before moving to the first spot where it would be quickly eliminated.

The Battle
Unfortunately, this battle didn't go as I had hoped. As soon as the match started, I saw that my opponent had played a very strong team that included Frozen Soldier in first position. Frozen Soldier has the "Shield" ability which significantly reduces the damage it takes from melee attacks. Even with the "Inspire" ability from Silvershield Bard, I knew that it would be difficult for my melee attacks to do much damage to Frozen Soldier.

On top of that, my opponent had 3 magic monsters which were able to attack from all positions meaning that my monsters were taking damage from four enemy monsters each round while I was only dealing damage output with two monsters. At the end of the day, my opponent simply played a much stronger team, and walked away as the victor.

Review of Silvershield Bard
Although I didn't win this match, I still want to present an impartial review of Silvershield Bard, however, I simply don't see it as a very powerful card (at least at level 1). As a level one card, it costs 1 Mana to play and has no attack which limits its usefulness. True, it does have the "Cleanse" ability that removes negative effects from first position monsters, but in my experience, it is relatively rare for a friendly monster to need to be cleansed, so playing Silvershield Bard means that you are playing a card that has a very specific niche role. By contrast, Creeping Ooze costs 1 mana but ALWAYS de-buffs the enemy's speed every time, every match. This isn't to say that Silvershield Bard is necessarily a "bad" card, just that it has a very specific niche that I believe makes it risky to play....at least in the lower tier matches.

As Silver Shield Bard is leveled up, however, it becomes a much better card. It gains an attack of its own at level 2 and the "Swiftness" ability at level 5 which gives a speed buff to the entire friendly team. So, my final opinion of Silvershield Bard is mixed. As a level 1 card, I'm not a huge fan, but I do think it can be a great "force multiplier" when played as a higher level card.

Summary
In summary, its always great to try out new strategies and cards in the "Share Your Battle" challenges. Although I didn't win this match, it was still nice to get out of the comfort zone and try a new card and new battle strategy. As always, I'd like to thank you for reading and encourage you to try Splinterlands for yourself or watch my battle replay to get a feel for the game.

All images belong to Spinterlands