Hello, battle mages!
It's not like a nuclear warhead is missing but things are certainly heating up in the land of splinters. Today I encountered an opponent with an interesting line-up and instead of focusing on my team, I'm going to try to analyze their strategy.
This week's Splinterlands Battle Mage Secrets challenge is all about the Broken Arrows ruleset. This simply means that the Ranged attack monsters are excluded from the battle.
Entering The Arena
When scouting my opponent I noticed that they have been playing a lot with the Life splinter and just like me, they seem to favor General Sloan who provides +1 to ranged attacks. Since the general's buff has no effect in this battle I thought they wouldn't go with Life but instead with Earth and I was to counter that with Water and magic.
It turned out that they had an ace in their sleeve and chose the Life Splinter after all but with completely different monsters!
Besides Lorna and Uraeus, this team is formed out of Beta edition monsters. Let's take a closer look at their team.
Opponent Team
There is something about LORNA SHINE. Something similar to Owster Rotwell - there's this overwhelming feeling of disappointment I get when I find out I'm up against one or another.
Perhaps it has something to do with Lorna's buff which gives the Divine Shield to all her monsters. This is like an extra one-time armor.
Lorna Shine is also pretty cheap when it comes to mana costing only 3 points leaving an extra point for monsters if compared to General Sloan.
The Tank and the sidekick. These two may not look that impressive at first sight but there's clearly a good idea in why they were chosen in the front line.
SILVERSHIELD PALADIN is a cheap tank unit with 1 armor and 5 health. His greatest ability is Shield allowing him to take reduced damage from melee and ranged attacks. His offensive power(1) ain't nothing much to shout about but that leads us to his sidekick.
SIVELRSHIELD KNIGTH has almost identical stats to Paladin but instead of Shield, his ability is Inspire. This will provide a +1 attack to all friendly melee monsters. So all of a sudden Paladin got stronger too.
Great duo. If Paladin should fall the Knight would act as a good secondary tank unit with similar stats.
FERAL SPIRIT and ELVEN CUTTHROAT are up next.
These two are also almost identical cards when it comes to stats. Both of these low-mana monsters also share the same ability - Sneak. This means they will attack the last monster in my line-up causing it additional damage because of Silvershield Knight's Inspire ability.
Both of these would be somewhat easy picks for a monster with Opportunity but because of Lorna's buff, they get a "second chance" to deal that increased melee damage.
I'm beginning to see a lot of logic in this strategy - all abilities and buffs support one another nicely.
Enough with the Sneak monsters...oh, never mind.
SIVERSHIELD ASSASSIN is a nasty piece of work. Not only does she have the Sneak, but she will also perform two attacks straight up in a round using her Double Strike ability.
Finally a more familiar face, URAEUS also has, you guessed it, Sneak ability. This means my Creeping Oozes final moments are not gonna be happy. In addition to the divine shield provided by Lorna, Uraeus has regular armor too, and is wisely placed in the last spot in case I would have Sneak monsters of my own.
These two will also benefit from Silvershield Knights Inspire ability as long as he is still standing.
In my opinion, this is a well thought and balanced team for a Broken Arrows battle. However, their offensive strength relies heavily on the Inspire ability and if I'm able to take down the Knight they could be in trouble.
My Team
Just recently I rented a level 2 ALRIC STORMBRINGER to get the most out of my upgraded monsters(Swamp Spitter, Coastal Sentry, and Venari Wavesmith).
However, at the time of this battle my focus was on healing so I was getting a bonus for using units with Tank Heal and Cleanse for example. This is why I replaced Swamp Spitter with MERDAALI GUARDIAN and RIVER NYMPH in this battle.
Here's my team, stats, and their abilities:
 |  |  |  |  | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Djinn Oshannus | 3 | 5 | 2 | 10 |  |
| Venari Wavesmith | 2 | 2 | 2 | 4 |  |
| Riverboat Captain | 3 | 1 | 2 | 4 |  |
| Merdaali Guardian | 2 | 2 | 3 |  | |
| River Nymph | 2 | 2 | 2 | 3 |  |
| Creeping Ooze | 1 | 2 | 1 |  |
In retrospective, VENARI WAVESMITH was obviously a good choice with Protect against a team with such a strong emphasis on Sneak. Then again, if I'd knew I was up against such a team(and this wasn't a Broken Arrows battle) I would have probably chosen Swamp Spitter whose Repair would have been handy in this kinda battle.
I'm a little embarrassed to say this but compared to my opponent's team I have a super simple strategy to play Broken Arrows - make my magic strong and give them hell.
The Battle
You can watch how it all went down by clicking the YouTube link below or by clicking here or/and continue to read the highlights!
ROUND 1
As I suspected, it wasn't going to be easy for the poor Creeping Ooze. Even though it managed to slow them down a bit, this team with four Sneak monsters made some pretty devastating attacks early in the first round. Besides the Ooze, River Nymph was also listed as KIA.
Meanwhile, my strong magic units got rid of their tank. One thing that is worth mentioning is Riverboat Captain's Blast ability which is really good against Divine Shield.
He destroyed the Silvershield Paladin with a direct hit and the ricochet took out the shield of the next unit, Sivershield Knight, now offering him on a plate to my other magic units.
ROUND 2
Indeed, the Knight took quite a hit at the beginning of this round while the opponent's sneak army continued their attacks defeating my tank healer, Merdaali Guardian.
After this, we took out the Knight, and their job was now a lot harder since they lost the benefit of Inspire. At the end of the round Riverboat Captain did his trick again removing the divine shield from the Feral Spirit and Elven Cutthroat.
It was starting to look good for me since they were now very vulnerable with their low amount of health and also cos the pressure my back-line monsters were getting is now lowered.
ROUND 3
The two monsters mentioned above got quickly removed but unfortunately so did the well served Riverboat Captain. With the Inspire Silvershield Assassin wasn't that dangerous anymore and after missing an attack, she too was out of the game leaving Uraeus no chance at all against Djinn Oshannus and Venari Wavesmith. Game over.
Conclusion
Even though I won I must give credit to my opponent's strategy of trying to quickly take out the back-line monsters and that way work their way to the tank unit. Pretty good tactics when playing Broken Arrows' ruleset.
This intrigued me to find out how much a line-up like this would cost and here are the prices at the moment of writing this:
| $ | DEC | |
|---|---|---|
| Lorna Shine | 3.99 | 4,328 |
| Silvershield Paladin | 1.05 | 1,139 |
| Silvershield Knight | 0.77 | 834 |
| Feral Spirit | 0.98 | 1,063 |
| Elven Cuttroath | 1.25 | 1,356 |
| Silvershield Assassin | 1.32 | 1,432 |
| Uraeus | 0.19 | 210 |
| TOTAL | 9.55 | 10,362 |
It's actually less than I thought. We have to keep in mind that most of these are Beta cards and therefore cost a bit more but they also could be great investments while at the same time very useful in lower leagues.
One other thing I learned from this battle was to start using Blast against Lorna and her Divine Shield. Riverboat Captain is such a great monster and I can't wait to get him upgraded to the next level.
In conclusion, I'd say the biggest takeaway from this challenge was to learn that there are other ways than just magic to tackle the Broken Arrows ruleset.
Thank you for reading!
Credits:
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Other pictures are screenshots from Splinterlands
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