Splinterlands is a pretty complicated game with interesting battles with all the options available. This is a part of the weekly social media challenge for Splinterlands. This week is about a ruleset, and how to battle against this ruleset. I will explore the Earthquake rulesets, and the different strategies that you can employ against your opponent to give yourself an advantage.
Featured Ruleset
Above is the ruleset that I will be discussing, and the picture above can be found here. In this
ruleset, flying monsters have an advantage as they do not take extra damage per turn. The damage can be reduced by half if they have the shield ability, and the damage will hit armor first since it is physical damage. If a flying monster is snared, then it will lose its flying ability and take damage per turn.
Strategies
There are a few different strategies you can use in this ruleset, and I will lay out some of the options below. You can mix these 3 three together if you want.
Flying Monsters
First off is the use of flying monsters because they can negate the extra damage every single turn. This can be a valid strategy to keep your monsters alive. This can increase your damage per turn if your attacks stay alive, and keeping your tanks alive can help the rest of your backline survive a bit longer. At the same time, flying monsters also have an increased chance of dodging melee or ranged attacks.
Support Abilities
Another way to stay alive longer is to have support abilities such as healers, repair, or protect. These abilities can help your lineup survive longer. The last ability to consider would be martyr, and placing it between your stronger monsters or flying monsters to buff their stats when they die.
Other abilities, such as slow, swiftness, weaken, rust, and strengthen, help out as they buff your team or debuff your opponent.
Offensive Abilities
The last thing to consider is the snare ability, because it removes the flying ability and wingbreak which targets flying monsters first and deals 2 extra damage.
Example Battle
You can find my example battle here. This was a battle from my a recent modern fight that I had. In this fight, I used my summoner to increase the melee damage on my flying monsters. I only had 3 different monsters, but I was able to outlast my opponent and win the match because I had flying monsters. In the end, my opponent lost to the earthquake damage. I was worried when my opponent started killing off my monsters due to the speed and damage advantage after including the inspire.
My opponent was focused on killing me before he died. His summoner increased his armor by 2, and this negates one round of earthquake damage. I am just lucky that my opponent's first monster also damages his 2nd monster due to the reckless ability. My opponent missed quite a few attacks, and I believe that was due to the flying ability on my monsters. This ultimately allowed me to win the match. The choice to increase the melee damage on my flying monsters was the right choice, as they were the monsters that survived the longest, and it allowed me to deal enough damage for my opponent to die to earthquake.
Conclusion
Earthquake is an interesting ruleset to deal with, but there are ways to improve your chances. I did so in my fight by employing flying monsters. It's always good to consider how you can get the advantage over your opponent, and this allowed me to win the match.
What do you think about my strategies for the Earthquake, or my match? Was there anything you would have done differently?