Monsters lose all abilities - it's not ALL about the Peaceful Giant! (Splinterlands Challenge of the Week)
This week's Splinterlands Challenge of the Week was to showcase the Neutral Peaceful Giant.
As Splinterlands cards go this is about as basic as they come! No buffs, slow as you like but massive health.
You hardly ever see this card played, except in the 'monsters loose all abilities' rule set, with his very high health for the five mana cost making him real value for mana as a tank.
Because of this extremely niche use case I decided to not level up my PG, but in the spirit of where you usually see him played I below share a low mana 'monsters loose all abilities' rule set featuring an alternative line up!
My opponent chooses a similar strategy to me from the same Splinter but with higher powered cards, and I still won, which was NICE!
The Rule Set and Line Up
- 14 mana
- monsters loose all abilities
- Enrage
Summoner - Lianna - Plus one health!
- Failed Summoner - eight health for two mana, nice!
- The chicken - in second, in the hope that he'll get an attack in if the summoner dies late in R1
- Khmer princes - low damage but also decent health and low mana
- Magi - the main attack card - four for four, awesome
- Highland Archer - comes in surprisingly handy in this no abilities rule set!
Did my strategy work?
Beautifully, to see it in action click here!
- Round 1 - I take out his Cocatrice, but I lose my failed summoner and Chicken
- Round 2 - I take out his Brownie and Chicken, i lost my Khmer Princess
- Round 3 - crucially the Magi, now in first goes first and takes out his Goblin and then his Earth Elemental misses the Magi!
- Round four - meaning my combined seven damage now takes out his swamp thing
- And round five I just polish of the Elemental!
Analysis - why did I win this battle?
My archer didn't miss the Cocatrice for starters, which often happens, but with his dodge and fly gone because of the rule set, there's much more chance to hit! And once enraged, I was onto magic attacks which don't miss.
If anything the order of play was even - his Swamp Thing took out my Chicken before the later could get in an attack for example, but then I got first dibs later in round 3 with the Magi taking out the Goblin.
I had thought about playing the Earth Elemental myself, but decided not too because it is slow - and low and behold, my opponent's missed towards to the end of the battle - giving me the victory!
At the end of the day my opponent picked ranged cards which were too slow, just the odds - speed 1 and 2 against my higher speeds yielded my the expected and necessary misses - and you can't enrage a Ranged cards with a speed boost until it's a tank and can't attack with this rule set!
It's also a rare case of where five cards trumps six, usually I would max out my spaces. But here I think the low mana options were too low in speed!
Turns out I was right!
Final Thoughts on Monsters Loose all Abilities - do you REALLY need a Peaceful Giant?
Possibly an easier option rather than both of us putting in low mana tanks would have been to just blow five mana on a maxed PG with 15 health, you could have probably just about scraped together six damage behind that with 14 mana.
However, I don't think this would have worked for either of us - We've both got 8 active damage going and sufficient 'treble tank' action to soak up 6 damage, by which time a PG would be dead plus probably the next two monsters.
So in this low mana battle scenario, you don't really need a PG!
In slightly higher mana battles, where you have more than 20 mana to play with he probably would come in useful, but you can kind of get around not having one by putting a cube in first place for only one mana more, and the cube has so much more utility.
If you get REALLY high mana matches, you'd be better off with the new Camino thingy, pricey, but that's on my list as a 'buy at some point' anyway.
So the PG - it probably is worth it for mid mana loose all abilities matches, but that's so niche, I'm gonna carry on without him!
If you don't yet play Splinterlands, why not give it a go?
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agree
but the peaceful giant is also very useful in rise of the commons, specially when it'ss combined with reverse speed,
or armored up.
I would have thought the cube would be more useful for one more mana!
Having said that, they're all useful, but most of us ordinary folks have to make choices because of our budgets!
sometimes you just can't spare that 1 mana. in a low mana battle, that's the difference from being able to kill the enemy backline and losing to a cube. also a cube starts with a lot less hp, so some strategies simply can't work with it. there's also the healed out ruleset preventing heals
the number one factor in rise of the commons is, monsters just don't have that much damage. get a peaceful giant, a healer and debuff the enemy's attack. you are likely going to win.
ie: bortus / zintar / contessa, peaceful giant, snipers, debuffers (silence, headwinds, demoralize)
I think cube is better at the 20 mana range, while giant is better at ~16
but I do agree cube is a better choice more often than not. it's just very vulnerable against opponents who use a melee and a non-snipe ranged attacker
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Thanks for sharing! - @yonilkar
This little one is the big little one hahaha, high level battles are awesome.