Splinterlands - Beginner's Guide

Continuing with my Beginner’s Guide, I wanted to show some more of my favorite strategies that I love to use during combat. In today’s article I want to cover the Magic attack type. In general, this is considered the most effective attack type. As mentioned in previous Guides the magic attack is not hitting the armor (unless there are exceptions). Nevertheless, I think it is important to know how to use it wisely and how to position your monster to get the most benefit from it. If you are enjoying this content or thinking about joining the game, feel free to use the following link:
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Quick Basics

Let’s start with some quick basics. There are several abilities in the game who are influencing the Magic ability. The first one being Void. This ability makes monsters take less magic damage which is very effective in my opinion. That is the reason why you should always be careful if your opponents used these cards in the past. Another good ability against magic is Void Armor. This ability is very similar to void, but instead of taking less damage the monster will first take damage to its armor. Furthermore, there is the Phase ability which allows the monster to dodge magic attacks. Other than that there are Reflect, which allows the monster to fire the magic attack back and Silence which Reduces the Magic attack of all opponent’s monsters. All of these abilities can influence your success with magic. The bright side is that even with all of these abilities in the game it is still very hard to come by a well played magic team.

What Cards To Use?

First we have to select the right summoner for this mission. In the past there are two major builds that are coming to my head. In both builds we are selecting summoners that are boosting our magic attack. This way we can deal the most damage possible. I am talking about the Earth Summoner Obsidian and the Water Summoner Alric Stormbringer. Especially the Water Summoner was very powerful back in the days.

With the summoners out of the way, we now have to focus on the cards that are build defining. My absolute favorites here are the following combos. As we all know the magic monsters are lacking health most of the time. There are a few exceptions but these monsters have their own drawbacks. To counter the health issue we can select monsters that are giving us an extra protection in the form of armor. This is the reason why cards like Queen Mycelia and the Venari Wavesmith are so powerful. Not only are both cards magic attackers but they also provide an additional two armor to every monster on your side!

The other cards that should always be played are the heavy hitters who can also take some hits. Here, I am talking about Djinn Oshannus for the Water Splinter and Regal Peryton for the Earth Splinter. The beauty about these cards is that not only do they deal a good amount of damage and they have a good amount of health, but they also have a abnormal amount of speed which makes the possibility of dodging an attack even higher. These cards are good second position cards who can still protect your back line if the tank gets taken down. Not only that but the Djinn offers us the Void ability which is also a very strong card if your opponent choses to play magic as well.

Strategy & Positioning & Team

Now that we have our main components we can talk about the strategy and the rest of the team. Like mentioned before we would like to protect our magic cards. This is best done with a solid tank. My choice is most of the time either Unicorn Mustang, Grund or Serpent of Eld. All of these tanks are offering unique advantages. For example: The Unicorn is played if your opponent likes to play magic teams as well, where as Grund is used if you know that you need to deal a lot of damage. The Serpent of Eld is a good All-round card which is very tricky to beat if you are only attacking it with melee and ranged attackers.

Last but not least we want to support our tank with some healing units. For the Earth Splinter the Goblin Psychic is the best choice as this card allows you to deal extra magic damage. It comes with a cost of 6 mana but in my opinion this cost is easily justified, especially if you can protect this card well. For the water splinter we have the Merdaali Guardian, who will heal our Serpent of Eld. After that you just fill up your board with magic attackers that can be afforded. It is important to keep a full board as this means dealing more damage.

Example Battles

Last but not least I want to show case some examples. The first battle is a perfect example of the power of the Magic attackers as well as the importance of the protect ability. Because we had two magic attackers, the opponent’s extra armor was quickly ineffective and because we had extra armor, we were able to hold of most of his attacks. The second battle was a tricky one, as our opponent chose a very similar tactic. The reason we won this fight was probably because we had a few more magic attack and a few more health points on our side. The third battle was again the perfect example of the force that is the magic attackers. We were able to eliminate the opponents tank fairly quickly and were able to defend our most vulnerable minions long enough due to the protect ability. The fourth and final battle is supposed to show how powerful the magic attacker actually are. Even though our opponent had quite a good counter against our line up we were still able to come out victorious due to the right positioning of our cards.