Splinterlands is a complex game, and it allows for various cards and strategies. Each fight is different as there are various rulesets applied, and this can give specific cards an advantage depending on how you use them. In this post, I talk about a great battle where I won because my guild had the home advantage.
What is home or enemy advantage?
Above is an example of what happens when you submit a battle in a brawl, and I got the above image from the Splinterlands Support Page on Brawls. You can see that on the left, it will show whether or not the arena is your guild's or your opponent's guild. The support page says that the benefits include the ability to win if there is a draw, or the ability to ban specific cards from being played. This does depend on your guild's building levels, though, so it doesn't hurt to upgrade those buildings for your guild.
Rule Set, Battle, and Plan
The rulesets this time are Noxious Fumes, Counterspell, and No Pain, No Gain. This means that all monsters start off poisoned, and they also have the Void and Painforge abilities. There is also 20 mana available, and I can use fire, earth, death, or dragon splinter.
This fight is interesting because gladiators have a huge advantage due to bloodlust. The combination of Noxious Fumes and No Pain, No Gain makes it such that the gladiators will get their damage buffed every single turn. On top of that, magic monsters are not as good due to the void ability. Depending on how you mix your cards around, your gladiators can be doing massive damage when you combine that bloodlust and Painforge.
| Splinter | Mana Cost | Position | Reason |
|---|---|---|---|
| Eternan Brune | 6 | Summoner | -2 Armor |
| Nimbledook Scout | 2 | 1st | Backfire |
| Chimney Wallstop | 10 | 2nd | Reach and Bloodlust |
| Venari Marksrat | 3 | 3rd | Marytr |
| Total Mana: | 21 |
My summoner is Eternan Brune for its -2 armor. My tank is Nimbledook Scout with backfire. The backup tank is Chimney Wallstop with reach and bloodlust. My last monster is Venari Marksrat with martyr.
The focus of this lineup is to try to survive as long as possible. The poison and painforge will be increasing damage, so I don't think trying to avoid poison damage will help. My focus is on Chimney surviving longer due to the bloodlust. It's damage will increase quite a bit, and I choose my current summoner due to the armor reduction because I wanted Chimney to kill off more monsters.
Round 1
At first glance, I think that this match can go either way. My opponent has the level advantage, but I have the damage advantage. If I can get bloodlust off enough times, I can win this match because that armor can effectively reduce Katrelba Gobson's damage. My martyr monster should buff up my Chimney so it shouldn't miss so much after it dies.
Round 5
Both my opponent and I are down to 1 monster left, and we will both die to the poison.
Both of us died, so the battle should have been a draw. However, it was my team's advantage, so I won the match.
Conclusion
The battle this time didn't go exactly as I planned, but I won the match due to the guild's home advantage. I wasn't expecting both me and my opponent to go down at the same time. Both of us were using gladiators to take advantage of that poison and painforge, but my gladiator just had more health. I was lucky enough to not miss any attacks, so I got an extra armor every single turn. This gave me enough leeway to get to that draw.
You can see my entire match here.
What did you think of my match? Was there anything you would have done differently? I think it is quite interesting to see how different players use the same card.