SPLINTERLANDS | How to counter Opportunity + Trample + Stampede combination

Introduction

Hey guys, have you ever wondered what will happen when you combine Opportunity ability with Trample ability with Stampede rule. To be honest, having a monster with Opportunity and Trample ability combine with Stampede as ruleset is really overpowered, so that's why I will be explaining how to fully utilize this very specific scenario and how to possible counter them.

Before we start, let's have a recall first of what these abilities and ruleset means.

• Opportunity : Monsters with Opportunity ability may attack from any position and will target the enemy monster with the lowest health.
• Trample : When a monster with Trample hits and kills its target, it will perform another attack on the next monster on the enemy team.
• Stampede : The Trample ability can trigger multiple times per attack if the trampled monster is killed.

Countering Opportunity with Taunt

• As you can see above, our Desert Dragon attacked Mycelic Slipspawn even though Khmer Princess has the lowest HP. With Taunt, the Opportunity ability is negated as all attacks will be on the monster with Taunt ability.

Countering Trample + Stampede

The basic counter for Stampede rule is to not allow enemy monster triggered their Trample ability. With that in mind, we need to counter Trample ability by itself. As we recalled earlier, Trample ability will trigger if it kills the target monsters, and this will loop continously loop with the Stampede rule. So what we need to do is basically stop the series of murder.

As of now, only melee attack monster have this Trample ability. In order to counter it, it's better to have monsters with armor to tanked the melee damage. All the damage will be absorb by the armor. So expect also that they may use Piercing ability to counter this strategy. A level 2 Desert Dragon will have both the Trample and Piercing ability. With Fire splinter, you can combine Magnor with Trample and Qid Yuff as the summoner to provide Piercing ability.

Another basic counter is to use high HP monster in the front, with low HP monster at the back.

Going back with this clip:

After Desert Dragon killed Mycelic Slipspawn, why did it attacked Goblin Psychic (with 5 HP) instead of Khmer Princess (with 2 HP)? Given the Opportunity ability, it should attack the monster with the lowest HP which is Khmer Princess? Is this a bug?

• The answer is NO, this is not a bug. If you will notice, the Trample ability was triggered after killing Mycelic Splispawn. This means that the next attack will follow the mechanism of Trample, which is to attack the next monster on the enemy line-up, which in this case was Pyschic Goblin. At first I thought Desert Dragon should attack Khmer Princess because it has the Opportunity ability, but since the attack is triggered by Trample ability, this will not be the case. I mean, this is too OP if Opportunity ability will overide the Trample ability in selecting the next target.
  

Here is the next clip from the same battle that will show you that the Trample ability, when triggered will attack the next monster in the line-up. As you will see, after killing the Goblin Psychic (with 1HP), the Trample ability triggered, then the Desert Dragon attacked the Khmer Princess.

We have the Stampede rule in place, it means once the trampled monster was killed, it will attack again. But why did the Desert Dragon stopped attacking after killing Khmer Princess? Is this a bug or not?

• The answer is still NO, this is not a bug. Remember, with Trample ability, once the trampled monster was killed, the attacking monster will attack the enemy monster next in line. In this case, there were no monster at the back of Khmer Princess, so the Trample loop will end.

Summary:

Combining what we discussed earlier, the best strategy to counter the Opportunity + Trample + Stampede is to use the Taunt ability placed at the last position. With this, even if the monster with Trample ability killed the mosnter with Taunt ability, it will not trigger the Trample ability since technically there will be no monster next with the trampled monster.

Additionally, since we have the Opportunity in placed, we should put the lowest HP monster at the back as well.

There may be other possible ways to counter this one, feel free to explore and suggest as well if you know better tactics.

Here is the link of my battle. Check this out if you want to see the full battle replay.
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_790722be05da0279ff0c1df72b261cf6&ref=jpleron

If you want to know more about the game, you can visit their website at https://splinterlands.com?ref=jpleron

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