Introduction to the Underdog Mini-series

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Grabbing a few Wins Here and There

This mini-series is aimed to be a fun one that will hopefully inspire players on a budget. Playing myself with mostly low-level cards in Gold, even though I have now a reliable Life Splinter, stealing wins against much stronger decks is always satisfying.

An Apple-to-Orange Comparison

My Win Rate hovers only around the 50% range, which is far from others who might be between 70% to 90%. Part of it is certainly a lack of skills for sure. That being said, I believe, we also have to take into consideration the tools each of us can rely on. In the end, the goal is to simply do our best with what we have available.

(Qid Yuff) Level 1 VS Level 4 (Kelya Frendul)

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The Thinking Process

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Rulesets: Armor Up + Spreading Fury
Mana Cap: 24
League: Gold III

In this battle, I wanted to take advantage of both rulesets; (1) the additional armor and (2) the potential Enrage ability.

Armored Up

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Having the additional armor was helpful in many ways.

Firstly, after skimming through my opponent's latest battles, I knew I wouldn't be able to compete in terms of Speed. So, having these extra armors would help me absorb the first waves of hits.

Secondly, I wanted to count on Flamesmith's Shatter ability to hopefully destroy the opposition's potential heavy armor while repairing mine with Scavo Hireling. Moreover, Qid Yuff could also help pierce through the armors if necessary.

FLAMESMITH	SCAVO HIRELING

Thirdly, the extra armors were going to be beneficial to Grum Flameblade no matter what types of monsters were in the opposition. Its Void Armor combined with the Repair of Scavo Hireling could possibly make Grum a very resilient tank.

Finally, the Fire Splinter's monsters profited greatly from the Armored Up ruleset compared to the Water Splinter of Kelya Frendul. Getting from 0 to 2 armors was much more beneficial than adding 2 armors on top of Kelya’s +1 Armor buff.

The Battle

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Right off the bat, Flamesmith successfully shattered Diemonshark's 9 armors even though it had a 40% chance of missing.

Then, Grum's equally low Speed started to be highly frustrating as it missed its first three hits! Fortunately enough, Scavo Hireling was able to repair Grum's armor before the Enraged Diemonshark could hit him for 5.

The fourth hit came and, eventually, it was the good one!

Having gotten Enraged in the meantime, Grum successfully went through Diemonshark in one shot, which also kicked in the Bloodlust ability.

At that time, Pelacor Bandit had already taken down Flamesmith from the backline and, was soon going to take down Scavo Hireling as well.

It didn't look great as Grum missed again its fifth attack.

But crazy enough, Grum managed to successfully land its sixth and seventh hits back-to-back, which helped him get rid of Djinn Oshannus. The seventh hit was immensely clutch as it not only had a mere 30% chance of landing but also built up Bloodlust once more.

The Furious Chicken resisted just long enough to avoid Grum being annoyed by the Pelacor Bandit. Once Grum's attack got to 9, the Piercing ability bestowed by Qid Yuff allowed it to easily clear away the opposite monsters one at a time.

In the end, even though Grum missed 4 of its 5 first attacks, he ended up carrying the team to a surprising win!

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On Mobile:
https://m.splinterlands.io/#/battle/game/process/sl_09d287d131f7a54d91af8345dc2b17fd

On Desktop:
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_09d287d131f7a54d91af8345dc2b17fd&ref=tt88

Splintertools (A decent 40% Win Rate):
https://splintertools.io/battle?player=tt88&battleId=sl_09d287d131f7a54d91af8345dc2b17fd&cards=260,408,447,131,424,266

I hope you’ve enjoyed this battle as I did.
See you in the next one!

Thomas

For new players interested in joining this amazing game, you can support me by using the following referral link (at no extra cost to you!):

https://splinterlands.com?ref=tt88

Thank you.