Check out that thumbnail!
Here's a link for this battle
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_279801ba6a45ffeec839fe87a6b600ac&ref=jingo-submo
Here's the ruleset
The most actionable item for this ruleset is the Earthquake. Earthquake means Brighton Bloom, or does it?
Early on while building your collection Brighton Bloom feels like an auto win for the Earthquake ruleset, but there are a lot of other flying monsters and other approaches to managing earthquake damage.
My opponent illustrates more approaches to mitigating Earthquake damage than I do.
Chaos Knight has the shield ability which reduces earthquake damage to 1 per turn instead of 2.
Luminous Eagle and Celestial Harpy both have the Flying ability without Brighton Bloom.
Truthspeaker has the Protect ability which adds 2 armor to the whole team. The added armor is great for soaking up damage from the opposing team and/or earthquake damage, whichever comes first.
Pelacor Arbalest has kind of a fragile body to be using in this ruleset, but this monster can deal a ton of damage in a hurry which can never be discounted. If all goes well, they could get 12 damage out of their arbalest thanks to the armor from Truthspeaker.
My opponent's inclusion of Time Mage makes me wonder if they were preparing a Weekly Battle Challenge submission too.
Enough about the loser of this match, let's get on with my lineup.
Summoner: Delwyn Dragonscale
Delwyn buffs all of my magic attacks and is the only summoner that I have leveled up. Brighton Bloom would be my choice for summoner in the earthquake ruleset if the mana cap were lower, but some of the monsters (dragons) that I frequently use with Delwyn already have flying anyways.
Tank: Pelacor Mercenary
I came into this match thinking about using Void Dragon near the front until I realized that I had a gold Mercenary. At level 3 those stats are pretty awesome.
1st and 2nd position: Fiend and Chicken
On the bright side these soak up hits for free if my opponent gets past my Mercenary or happens to have something with opportunity.
Like this Celestial Harpy.
There are potential downsides to including these. If I had faced a team with Riftwing, it would get 2 extra life pretty much free.
3rd position: Queen Mycelia
With the Protect ability this has a good chance of doing 6 magic damage before the earthquake is done with it and soaking up tons of extra damage to my other monsters from the opponent's team.
Rear tank: Chaos Dragon
Magic damage with the Scattershot ability and the Blast ability ruined my opponent's plans taking out their Arbalest and Truthspeaker with the first shot.
It comes with the Flying ability too, not that it needed to fly this time, but I put a premium on it for the Earthquake ruleset.
Did my strategy work?
Yes, another great lopsided victory with Chaos Dragon. Queen Mycelia was great too. My gold level 3 Mercenary also shone.
Do I like Queen Mycelia?
Yes, the Protect ability is so strong and if you can get the Queen leveled up, it gets better at every level. There's a reason this stayed over $20 for so long and it will go back over $20 within the year.
What will I try differently next time?
You can't really go wrong with Brighton Bloom in an earthquake ruleset? Brighton or Delwyn would have both paired well with the life splinter here too.