Sneaky Sneaky Worm Friend - Splinterlands Share Your Battle

I did not have this week's challenge card, the Sand Worm, in my collection, so I had to head to the market to grab a copy. Oh no! Woe is me, having to go get cool new cards with which to crush my foes... (any excuse to get more cards, lol)

The Sand Worm is an expensive monster for a low mana battle like the one I'm sharing. But at level 1 it has the Sneak ability, allowing it to hit the last monster in the opponent's lineup and attack the rear. And with 5 Melee Attack, it hits hard. At higher levels it only gets more formidable adding in Snare at level 6, and Piercing level 10 allowing it to handle flying and armored opponents handily.

Anyway, I love these weekly @splinterlands challenges because they prompt me to step out of my usual strategy a bit and try something new. And since my daily quest was also to win 5 battles with the Life splinter (I hate playing Life), it was a fantastic opportunity to try lots of new things.

The rule-set for this particular battle was "Broken Arrows". In other words, no ranged attack monsters allowed. This gave me the perfect opportunity to take advantage of Sand Worm's sneak ability, allowing me to place it deeper in my formation, and still have it be useful as an attacker as my tanks got picked off it if found it's way to the front position.

Here's my lineup and strategy.

I chose Mother Kahla as my summoner. Without Ranged attacks being an option, I expected some magic from my opponent. So added armor wouldn't help. The +1 Health that Mother Kahla provided should help my team with some survivability.

For my tank, I chose the clay golem. For only 6 mana it offered a decent amount of front position attack and health. With void to help it take reduced damage from magic attacks, I figured it would help mitigate incoming magic even further.

The sand worm took a lot of the available mana for this battle. And since it hits so hard I didn't want it to be taken out quickly. So I placed the chicken behind the worm to soak an attack from the rear, and with 2 mana remaining I placed my only 2 mana card, the Cocatrice, between the golem and the worm to soak some damage should the golem fall. This could have been any card, but the Cocatrice is what I had.

Did it work?

My opponent must have been anticipating magic attacks as well, since they chose Bortus as their summoner for a -1 magic debuff to me. Since I had no magic attackers, that debuff didn't have any impact on the game.

I was a little worried about their Sea Monster's heal ability. I figured this battle would be close, and healing would possibly give them just enough longevity to win.

They only had one magic attacker to worry about. But, even though their Captain's Ghost had a fair amount of health, it was easily taken out with a couple good hits from the sand worm. After that, it was just a matter of dealing with the Sea Monster.

Fortunately I had just enough damage output thanks to Sand Worm's 5 melee attack to outpace Sea Monster's healing.

Here's a link to the full battle: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=a9e93b41a51fff16d544055916b11b0f8bc06c7a&ref=starbork

Reflections

I'm glad the Sand Worm is a neutral monster. I really like how it played in this battle and will definitely make use of its positional versatility in higher mana battles with splinters I typically play like Earth, Fire, and Death.