Splinterlands "Share Your Battle" Challenge - Enchanted Defender

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Hello everyone and welcome. In today's Splinterlands “Share Your Battle” challenge, we have been tasked to use the Enchanted Defender in one of our matches. In this post, I will review the strengths and weaknesses of Enchanted Defender, share my battle strategy and lineup, and give my overall impressions of where Enhanted Defender fits into a Splinterands lineup.

Let's start with some basic stats. Enchanted Defender is a neutral monster which means he can fight alongside any summoner. Although Enchanted Defender only costs 4 Mana, he has very strong armor, but this is offset by a weak attack, very slow speed, and low health.

Strategy

This Splinterlands match used the standard ruleset with no modifications, however, it did have a very high Mana cap of 99. Under normal circumstances, I will try to take advantage of the high Mana cap by playing my most powerful monsters since it is (currently) impossible to use all 99 Mana with just six monsters. However, in this situation, I knew that I needed to include Enchanted Defender in my lineup to complete the challenge, so I had to deliberately make what I considered a sub-optimal tactical decisoin to complete the challenge.

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I knew that putting Enchanted Defender in first position would be an extreme risk as he would quickly be eliminated by the rest of the opponent's team. Although he had high armor, I knew that the enemy was likely to play at least one magic monster and that a single magic attack would deal damage directly to his health and take him out of the fight with one hit. At the same time, he is a melee monster that can only attack from first position, so I didn't want to put him at the end of my lineup and waste him.

I ended up deciding to use him as my fifth position monster as a final buffer between my melee monsters and Silver Shield Sheriff who was my only ranged monster in this battle.

Lineup

In first position I chose to use Goblin Mech. Goblin Mech has an amazing attack and the Pierce ability allows him to deal damage to the opponent's underlying health if the attack penetrates the armor. Unless I am fighting with the Fire or Earth Splinter, Goblin Mech is usually my default first position monster.

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Luminous Eagle is one of my favorite monsters to use in second position when fighting with the Life Splinter. It has the flying ability which makes it more likely to dodge attacks from enemies that do not possess the flying ability, and it has reach which allows it to fight from the second position as well as the first position.

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In third position I chose to use Silvershield Knight. I know that putting a melee monster without the sneak, snipe, or opportunity in the third position is “wasting” the possibility to use a ranged or magic monster that could attack from third position. However, I used Silvershield Knight mainly for his ability to provide the +1 Melee boost for the rest of the team.

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In fourth position, I used Sand Worm. Sand Worm has slow speed, but a very powerful attack and I thought that placing him in the middle of the formation would protect him from taking damage while allowing him to slowly grind down the opponent.

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I chose Enchanted Defender for the fifth position because I thought that his high armor could serve as a good buffer to keep Silvershield Sheriff from reaching the front lines. To be fair, I could have easily made a better fifth position choice and placed a ranged or magic monster here, so the choice to place Enchanted Defender here was just trying to find the “best” place for him for the challenge.

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Results

To be fair, I was nervous entering the battle with Enchanted Defender because I knew that I could have made a much better 5th position pick. After everything was said and done, my team carried the victory, but I attribute that more to my opponent's choice of a lineup and the strength of my own team.

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What I mean by that is that my opponent decided to include several low power, low mana cap monsters even though this was a 99 Mana cap match. The Opponent chose to use Elven Cutthroat and Kobold Miner as their fifth and sixth positoin monsters. Taken together, this filled up two slots but only used a total of 5 Mana. Since the match had such a high mana account, they could have easily played other monsters that would have been able to decimate my team. Sometimes unpredictable things can happen in Splinterlands and this was one of them. I was quite surprised when my team carry the victory to say the least.

Enchanted Defender Review

Although the Enchanted Defender did not play much of a role at all in this match, I still think it is a good monster to have on your team. As a low mana cap monster, I think Enchanted Defender would be a great first position monster especially in lower cap matches where his high armor would help him absorb the opponent’s attacks. A reverse speed ruleset would make his slow speed an advantage, and matches where all monsters have equal health would make him a strong first position monster as well. Unfortunately, my match had a very high Mana cap, and Enchanted Defender wasn’t able to perform to his full ability, but I still think it is a good card and look forward to using it in lower cap matches.

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View the full battle replay here or check out my Splinterlands commentary on other sites.

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