Another week, another few more exciting battles on #splinterlands
So it seems that Splinterlands have officially cut ties with Twitter, and now they are running a new series of weekly challenge. Good for them. They don't need Twitter, and there are other options to make their game known with the amazing community they have been building over the years.
Sadly, I won't be able to participate in the new challenge. One weekly is more than enough for me, and with the new online summer courses at college coming, I won't have as much free time (I'm doing the teaching by the way).
Before we get to the challenge, I want to say thanks to #marcuswahl at 
We return to monster theme this week, which highlights Sand Worm. I don't know how they have been doing their retaliation, but it seems that Splinterlands now want to launch some sneaky strikes at Twitter.
Jokes aside, Sand Worm is a great backline nuke, though costly with a huge amount of mana of 9. His biggest weakness is not high cost though, but rather his speed. With only 1 speed, he could be taken out even before doing any damage. In many battles where his opponents have high speed, he could miss his targets every time and waste all that damage potential and mana. For that reason, I only use this card with speed enhancing summoners or when the hit-guarantee rule applies, or in battles with 99 mana cap where you want to slap your most costly cards in your opponents' face.
For some reasons, I haven't used Sand Worm a lot lately, so it took me a while to find a match where Sand Worm was viable. This battle is my entry for this week.
This was a 99 mana cap match, so I was free to abuse my most costly monsters and use my favorite Byzantine Kitty, who would buff Sand Worm speed a bit. Every monster in this battle was the best one I could afford. My opponents, a bot, also did the same, with the only exception was that his summoner was inferior to mine, which was lucky for me. I don't have much luck dealing with bots usually. Also, the Equalizer rule applied, so I would want to fill every slot for this battle.
I put Sand Worm in the middle because I didn't want him to expose to the frontline so soon or get sniped by enemy backline attackers. I had Unicorn Mustang with Void as my tank and Centauri Mage right behind him to reflect some range attack. Hopefully, with Kitty healing, they could stall the enemy long enough for the worm to do his job.
Although my opponent only brought four attackers, his frontline was pretty solid with Warrior of Peace and Lord Arianthus who both stalled me a long while. His level three Sand Worm was no joke either, pretty deadly with 2 speed. Good thing I had Diamond Dragon to slow him down. You can see that with only 1 speed left, the opposing Sand Worm kept missing my Mitica Headhunter, giving her (him?) more time to deal damage.
Sometimes I feel bad for winning battle because I have more high cost cards and can make the most out of the mana cap. It feels like I win not due to strategies but to better cards. But again, I have been crushed time and time again by players with higher lever cards, so I guess that just a part of this game.