Tactics Summoner or what I call, "Summoner Tactics," is a special mechanic available for summoners from Rebellion series. Unlike other summoners, this gives you extra steps during the start of the battle where not only you are allowed to see your opponent's lineup that they would use in the game, but also decide which monster will be granted by your summoner's abilities.
This increases the player input on the game which increases the factors that player skills would be a factor for your win. The downside is that you can only give summoner tactics to selected monsters and not everyone. This, though, can be beneficial (or destructive) depending on who use to to.
Using Tactics Summoners in the Tactics Stage.
Explanation: When you use a summoner with Summoner Tactics, you will gain an extra time at the start of your game to prepare and choose where to apply your Summoner Tactics. These Summoner Tactics are extra abilities that can be applied before and after seeing your opponent's lineup. Usually, Summoners that have this extra mechanic are those summoners that came from Rebellion Set.
Strategy: You can use Summoner Tactics in myriad of ways.
Check opponent's lineup before battling.
Information is key to success in any battles. One of the most valuable ways to use Summoner Tactics is by analyzing your opponent's current lineup for that battle before deciding what to do. For example, if they are using Taunt strategy like The Kraken as their main carry, you can use Rebellion Summoner with like Underboss Fabino giving poisoned status to their Tank Heal monster. Eliminating a key target or key support quickly may win you games that otherwise you would've lost.
Boost your team's offense or boost your team's defense depending on the situation.
Prophet Rosa is a good example for this. Prophet Rosa can either give your range monsters +2 range damage or give Shield ability to them. Depending on circumstances, you may want a higher damage or be more defensive after checking your opponent's team.
Force your opponent's strategy.
Sometimes, there's nothing more annoying than your opponent having multiple strategies applied at once. While someone is attacking your monster on last position, someone is Sniping your supports and abuse the Opportunity to hit your monsters with lowest health. Applying Risqruel Drath's Taunt to your durable monsters like Tusk the Wide might be a good idea for this or maybe reducing a key target's health with Reklah so your opportunity monsters can target them can be viable strategies to help you win.
Force your strategy to your opponent's.
This is an uncommon strategy but may be useful if done correctly. Summoner tactics can be applied not only to your monsters but also to your opponents. Risqruel Drath can give Taunt and Redemption abilities to monsters. You can use these for your own, or maybe use Taunt to a certain key target on your opponent's side so all your monsters can target this monster and eliminate it quickly. Depending on your strategy, this idea can be applied and gives you more options in the future.
Ambush Rounds: How to plan for unexpected attacks.
Explanation: Ambush Rounds can also be called "Round 0." This is a special round where only monsters with Ambush ability can move. Ambush Rounds works like any other rounds. The higher the speed of the monster, the earlier they can act. The hit and evasion chance for melee and range also applies.
Strategy: Ambush Rounds may sound like just a niche addition but it can also be a good strategy. Akane, a dragon summoner, can give Ambush to 2 of your units allowing them to attack before the first round. A good usage of this is applying them to monsters with magic damage to reduce an opponent's health even before the game start. Applying Poison or Affliction at round 0 can also be a good strat depending on your opponent's goal. Whatever it is you aim to do, make sure to combine Ambush with another ability like Life Leech or Expose to make full use of it.
Buffs and Debuffs: Strategies for maximizing advantages and minimizing threats.
Explanation: Like I mentioned, knowledge is power. Splinterlands has 89 abilities currently and knowing how they interact with one another may take time and experience to understand. However, once you got a decent grasp of these abilities, everything will fall into place and you can use this knowledge to your advantage to maximize the advantage or minimize the threats of your opponents.
Strategy:
Use of Summoner Tactics based on your own lineup.
This is the common use of Summoner Tactics. You use them based on your own strategy based on what you think your opponent will do. Adding Prophet Rosa's Shield ability to Djinn Oshannus who has Void ability can be a good way to reduce all incoming damage to your Djinn Oshannus. Avina of the Wolf's Heal ability to Taunt units like Iziar or Shieldbearer can be beneficial for them to survive longer battles. These strategies are simple but effective and you don't need to adjust and predict whatever your opponent will do.
Use of Summoner Tactics based on opponent's lineup.
Like how I said before with Risqruel Drath and Underboss Fabino, some summoner tactics may be better used to your opponents than your team. A weird strategy is to increase your opponent's damage so your Forcefield ability would activate. Forcefield changes all damage to a certain monster to 1 if their damage exceed 4. If you are using Arkemis the Bear as your main tank, applying Prophet Rosa's +2 range damage to an opponent Dhampir Stalker may be more helpful than applying it to your team. Dhampir Stalker has 3 base range damage at level 1. He has True Strike ability so his attacks never miss. Adding 2 to this puts it to 5 range damage and since Arkemis the Bear has Forcefield, this basically change the 3 damage (now 5 because of +2 range damage) to 1 due to Forcefield ability.
Use of Summoner Tactics based on rules of combat.
Amother way to use summoner tactics is to base them on the rules of combat. Eternal Tofu's Scavenger ability can be really strong when applied during Born Again rules of combat since each monster revives after death. Since Scavenger applies per death, this means any monster with Scavenger can get max health up to 22 instead of the usual 11 if only the Scavenger monster remains alive in the end. Lorkus's Life Leech also has weird interactions that I personally abuse. In Healed Out rules of combat, since Heals, Tank Heals and any other form of health restoration is disabled, Life Leech can still be applied. This is because it's not a healing ability but it increases your own max health creating a pseudo-heal ability for your monsters granted with Life Leech ability.
Counters: How to respond effectively to popular Tactics Summoners.
Explanation: Since you can use Summoner Tactics, you should also expect your opponents to do the same. While, in this context, it's a battle of who has the better player skill, there's still a few things you can do to reduce your opponent's choices on the matter to affect the outcome of the battle.
Strategy:
Cover all tracks and prepare counters for any possible moves as much as possible.
This means not relying on your main tank on the 1st position to be the only tank. Your opponents can always do Sneak or Opportunity or Snipe. Maybe adding Taunt at the back or Shield ability on your last position monster can help eliminating such threats. Summoners with both offensive and defensive abilities like Prophet Rosa or Lorkus can be reliable during these situations as you can either increase your offense or defense as needed.
Predict Opponent's moves.
This is the hardest but most reliable way to play this game in my opinion. Rules of combat usually affects how your opponents would play. If there's rules of combat like Super Sneak or Target Practice, I usually prepare a counter for when my opponents try to abuse them and this often leads to wins. Cryptic is a great anti-melee summoner that I use in Super Sneak or Melee Mayhem if possible. Cryptic giving Expose ability to my highest speed monster can be a great way to remove the opponent's Shield ability as quickest as possible while having Retaliate on my melee Taunt monster can be an amazing way to punish those who build a full melee team.
I think I gave enough information on everything above so I will do a little tangent and maybe a few message to the devs of this game. I really like the Summoner tactics. I've said it the first time it was launched and I will always say it. The more players can affect the outcome of the game, the better. Because of this mechanic, Splinterlands is now becoming less and less of a manager simulator disguised as a card game but more on a legit, on its own, TCG with its own twist and mechanic. So, very good job on applying this.
They also fixed one of the biggest problems at initial launch which is Rebellion summoners don't give as much benefit as Chaos Legion summoners because their Summoner Tactics abilities can only support selected monsters and not all. Again, another W for the devs for fixing this and really great job on the balancing.
Lastly, a wish. I hope the devs can abuse the Debilitation mechanic. I explained this before when I talked about the Mimic ability and how it was a lost treasure that monsters with Mimic ability cannot copy debilitation abilities. This would balance that broken ability in a sense that it may copy a negative ability that may impair their team, which is debilitation. It's like using debilitation as a trap for monsters with Mimic ability.
Going back to the Summoner Tactics, I wish the devs can invent or add a summoner that can give debilitations to the opponent. It's the same idea as Underboss Fabino's poisoned status but crueler. Adding an Incendiary debilitation in the middle of your opponent's team can be a funny tactic. To balance this, maybe an ability that can take advantage of debilitations instead. A situational ability that add or multiplies their damage based on the number of debilitations on their team. This can be a viable double edged sword strategy that can be both amusing and frustrating to both the user and the opponent.
Overall, a job well done on recent updates and I hope to see more. I will be playing this game until the devs exerted all the posibilities and enjoy creating ingenious strategies (like the Electrified x Enrage combo) that is not only refreshing, fun but also strong.
- This post is an entry for Splinterlands Social Media Contest.
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