Salvaged by the plague and a tank

When I get into a Splinterlands battle, I'm fairly confident in my ability to oust my opponent if things remotely go in my favour, so I generally have a positive/attack-minded approach. Once I see the ruleset, I instantly start tinkering and moving pieces around mentally even before seeing my deck.

Edition: REWARD
Rarity: RARE
Element: WATER
ATTACK: MAGIC
ABILITIES: Affliction at level 1; Oppress at level 5

In every situation, the goal is to dominate but every now and then, situations arise where you really just want to squeeze out anything but a loss from the battle. It might be a narrow win or sometimes, like the battle below, you just manage to eke out a draw in an uncertain situation.

The Battle

link to battle

This is one of those battles that in hindsight, you think to yourself, had I known, I would have done differently. I went into this battle with the following rules in mind

Total Mana: 23

Keep your distance:

The Lineup

These are the monsters I threw into battle and the rationale behind picking them. My choice is largely based on my overdependency issue and it is something that I really need to tweak in my choices.

Summoner

Naturally, the first decision one has to make is the summoner and for this battle, I went with Alric Stormbringer for two main reasons;

• He's 2 Mana cheaper than my preferred option Delwyn
• He's also a magic booster and the fact that he's a level 4 doesn't matter in this battle because of the monsters I want to use

At level 4, Alric brings out the best possible trait for my monsters, and one monster in particular that needed to be at his best today was mine and thousands of players' favourite tank called Mr Arianthus but you might know him as a Lord

The Tank

As far as I can tell, Lord Arianthus has proven to be the ultimate tank. He's sturdy to every type of damage and then with mine at level 2, he also has the extra effect of reflecting magic.

In this battle, I added him to do these tasks and boy did he do them well. His shield and magic protection kept him in battle and fighting until the end of the battle. In some way, we can say his sturdiness was the reason I could squeeze out something from this battle. It wasn't a one man show and saying it was just him won't be fair to other monsters of course, because this result was actually a team effort and one wrong move would have resulted in a loss

The Sacrifice

It was a straight choice between this kelp dude and the ice pixie. I opted for having a sacrificial piece with zero attack. I figured my opponent might have some monster with snipe or blast, so the plan was to absorb as many hits as possible. It is a pretty straight forward tactic that I employ in these battles where melee monsters aren't available and I don't have to worry about Sneak.

The idea is to keep this dude in between my opponent's attacks and my primary damage dealers for as long as possible. It played its role to the best of its ability but sadly couldn't do anything to stop Prismatic Energy's magic protection and reflection that ravaged my backline.

The Plague

The first of my two primary damagers was the Captain's Ghost and the main event of this week's share your battle initiative. Mine is a level two monster that of course dealss two damage in battle and then also has that wicked plague ability.

The plague ability basically cuts of healing or should I say, it ensures that whoever is hit by a monster with the plague ability can no longer be healed either by itself or by others.

In this case, the monster to get hit was the said Prismatic energy and also worth noting is that it got hit in the first round, thus reducing the amount of damage that it could do to my backline. It wasn't enough to take down the marauding reflector with magic resistance but at least it made sure that it wasn't getting healed because if it were, the battle would have been lost.

So, in some way, we can say that Captain's Ghost and the influence of Arianthus were the key reasons why the battle wasn't lost.

Explosive Power

The last and surprisingly the least effective on the day was Ruler of the sea or the blaster in this battle. The blast ability user was put in place to increase the amount of damage dealt with my opponent's backline from the front.

His strong magic attack sadly couldn't be of much impact because, first of all, the Prismatic energy from my opponent's team did equal damage with reflection and secondly, the mermaid healer at the backline was always healing the monster that took damage from his blast.

At the end of the day, the monster that I thought would be my trump card, turned out to be the least effective on the day and in hindsight, having this monster in the line up is one change that I certainly would make.

Lessons Learned

Draws aren't very common in battle but Splinterlands, just like chess has taught me that when the best outcome isn't available, you have to hope for the second-best. In this case, I was on my way to certain defeat but thanks to that one hit in the first round, which in reality was also early enough thanks to the speed-boosting of Ruler of the Sea, I was eventually able to bring down Prismatic Energy.

I also learnt that my over-dependency on Magic isn't doing me any favours. If I had used a ranged monster in place of Ruler of the sea, for example, I would have won this battle easily.

Perhaps a monster like Water elemental shown above, placed right behind Lord Arianthus. I could also take out the kelp initiate and replace it with the Halfing Prince, and this battle would have been dead on arrival.

Instead, I paid for my over-dependency on magic by losing my heavy hitters at the back. This battle showed me the importance of having at least one ranged monster in these situations.

Get In The Game

If you enjoyed this battle and would like to join the game, you can join with my affiliate link below and we'd both stand the chance of getting a gold foiled legendary monster that could be worth like $100

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