Splinterlands Share Your Battle Challenge - Lone Boatman

In this week's Splinterlands Share Your Battle Challenge, we have been tasked to complete a match using the Lone Boatman. Lone Boatman is a relatively strong ranged monster that has decent health, a little bit of armor, and only costs 5 Mana. In this post, I will discuss my strategy for employing Lone Boatman, the results of the match, and my overall impressions of him as a monster. As a bonus feature, I will also be revealing my end-of-season rewards from the previous season.

As with every match in the Splinterlands, you never know what the rules will be or how much Mana you will have available to summon monsters until the match starts. For this match, I had a Mana cap of 24 with no modifications to the standard ruleset.
The Match Overview

Since there were no modifications to the standard ruleset, my primary goal of this match was to place Lone Boatman at the end of the formation and try to protect him from moving into the first position. My goal focused on incorporating a lot of monsters with high health and high armor at the beginning of my formation so that Lone Boatman could continue dealing damage from the rear as long as possible without having to move in the first position where his ranged attack would be ineffective.

Choosing My Team
With this in mind, I chose Goblin Mech as my first position monster. In my opinion, the Life Splinter simply doesn't have a very strong first position monster. Perhaps a better way of saying that is that I don't currently own a strong first position monster within the Life Splinter, so I generally prefer to use Goblin Mech. Goblin Mech's hi-health, strong attack, armor, and "Pierce" ability make it a very strong first position monster.

In second position, I chose to use Luminous Eagle. It has an attack of two with decent speed, but more importantly, it has the "Reach" ability which allows it to attack from the second position as well as continuing to fight if it moves into the first position. Additionally, the "Flying" ability gives it a slightly higher chance of dodging attacks from monsters that are not able to fly which helps it stay in the fight longer.

In the third position I placed Furious Chicken. If you remember from last week's share your battle challenge, Furious Chicken is always a great monster to have on your team because it can be used as a buffer without consuming any Mana.

In last position, we have the star of this match, the Lone Boatman himself. Lone Boatman has a decent attack and mediocre speed but really stands out because he has armor that forces the enemy to waste their first-round attack depleting his armor instead of attacking his health directly. On top of that, he has the "Snipe" ability which allows him to target monsters with ranged or magic attacks that are not in the first position.

Results

Once the battle started, I realized my opponent had chosen a very strong team. They had a great strategy putting Furious Chicken in the first position to absorb my first round attack, and with Unicorn Mustang in the second position I knew that I was fighting a very strong team. At the end of the day, however, we were able to carry the victory.

I think this was due in large part due having Lorna Shine as my Summoner. She is one Of my favorite Summoners because her Divine Shield ability means that the first time that one of my monsters is damaged, that damage is completely ignored. By combining the Divine Shield ability with armor, that meant that my opponent was wasting at least two separate attacks on each monster before they were able to actually start affecting the health of my team.

So, what's my final evaluation of Lone Boatman? In my opinion, he's a good monster. He's not exceptionally great, but he's also not a bad choice. In some matches, I find that it's helpful to use him because of his armor in combination with health, but, for other matches, there are other monsters available for 5 or less Mana that I prefer. For example, I can play the combination of Light Elemental and Creeping Ooze for the same Mana cost of Lone Boatman. Or, I can play Goblin Chariot which doesn't have armor, but has slightly higher speed.

At the end of the day, I think Lone Boatman is a very good monster to have in your lineup. There are certain times when playing him will be the right strategic move and some times when a different monster or combination of different monsters might prove to be a better option. At the end of the day, winning a match in Splinterlands comes down to a variety of factors including the ruleset, the Mana count, and even what team your opponent chooses to field.

Win, Lose, or Draw, it's always fun to take part in these challenges, try out a new strategy, and be a part of the community, so if you haven't played Splinterlands before I'd encourage you to check it out.
End of Season Rewards

Not only was it fun to take part in this challenge, but I also saved opening up my end-of-season rewards so that I can share them here in this post. Overall, I have to say that I am incredibly blown away as this was probably one of the best end-of-season rewards that I've ever had.

I started off getting 40 Dark Energy crystals which is pretty good, then my second pick was Demented Shark which has high health, a bit of armor, and the “inspire” ability which raises the attack of all friendly melee monsters. I consider him to be the "Silvershield Knight" equivalent of the Water Splinter.

After that, I was completely blown away to open up a gold foil edition Fineas Rage. Fineas Rage is already one of my favorite monsters due to the high health, incredibly fast speed, and reach ability which allows him to attack from second position, but the possibility of having this card in a gold foil edition that also increases my DEC rewards per game is absolutely phenomenal. After that, I got a rather mediocre string of a few potions.

Don't get me wrong, a potion can be powerful, but only if you are using them to open booster packs or dice. For someone that doesn't really invest a lot into the game, the potions don't really do a lot. Just when I was getting tired of opening up potions, I got another Gold Edition card with Nightmare. Nightmare has incredibly high health, a decent attack, and most importantly has the "Blast" ability which allows its attacks to damage adjacent monsters as well. Overall, this was definitely one of my best end-of-season rewards and really makes it worthwhile to slug through all the daily challenges and raise my rating so that I can finish in as high of a league as possible for more rewards.

As always, it's incredibly fun to take part in the challenges, and I like being able to share my end-of-season rewards with everyone. As always, thanks for reading.

Link to battle here

Also shared on

YouTube

read.cash

All images belong to Splinterlands