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Ant Miners overview
Ant miners is a 2 mana melee card for the fire-type decks. At level 1, it has scavenger, an ability which makes it so that every time a minion dies, this card gains 1 health.
At level one, the ant miners have 1 melee attack point, 2 speed, and start out with 1 hp, with the possibility of gaining more due to the scavenging ability.
At level 6 they get a shield. Since I am at the bronze league and I only use level 1 cards, we won't focus so much on this ability.
The Miner Dilemma
There is a big problem that needs to be addressed when using this card. Because of the scavenging ability and the low base health, it is almost necessary to position the Ant Miners in one of the last spots, in order to not let them die right away without taking benefit on the ability. However, being a melee unit, the Ant Miners can only attack the front position.
Because of this, there is a bit of a dilemma when positioning this card. You don't want to place it too much in the front because this way it won't get a lot of health, but you also can't place it in the last position, meaning it will only attack when all of the other friendly minions are gone.
For this reason, I think the card suffers a lot to find play. It won't be useful in all the comps, but it definitely can become a monster in the late game.
Not being the most versatile - because of the reasons listed above - the Ant Miners are one of the cheapest cards for the fire splinter. Being able to use them effectively means using a mostly unknown card for almost no DEC.
My strategy with the card
We are trying to maximize the triggers of the scavenging ability. With this in mind alone, it would make sense to place this card in the last position in the arena. However, we always have to take the opponents playing style into account. Cards with sneak (attacks last position) would absolutely stomp our little guy because of his low health. Because of that, it is best to put it in the second to last, position depending on available mana and predictions for the other team.
If the miners can survive the early game. They can really become a monster!
The Battle
Check out the battle I used for my entry with the link below:
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_f1b1442b9c948fb32e6fbbca54b8cfcc&ref=xgoivo
The ruleset was simple. Standard battle with 26 mana to use.
I saw that my opponent would most likely use the death cards. Since I was playing for the challenge, this didn't change much of my game plan - I had to stick with the fire type. Because I knew he would play with the death cards, I knew I really had to fortify my backside this time, since a death splinter can really use sneak to kill your team from the back.
The formation
- Cerberus;
- Fineas Rage;
- Spark Pixies;
- Serpentine Spy;
- Ant Miners;
- Fire Beetle;
This setup has a good solid front 2 cards that can take most of the direct hits. Serpentine and the Beetle are good snipers to pick up low health minions. And the ant Miners are hidden in the back of the squad to gain a bunch of health and shine in the late game.
Notable moments
- All according to plan... kinda
From the beginning of round one, the enemy had already killed two of my minions using snipe. On the bright side, my last card worked as a meat shield for the ant miners.
- One for the team
During round two Cerberus and the Ant Miners were able to take a lot of damage. Cerberus died after about 4 hits and left Fineas on the frontline. It is very tough to get through Cerberus and Fineas without some good utility.
- Pretty much done
At the beginning of the fifth round. Cerberus and Fineas once again were able to take all of the enemy's hits protecting our spy. Now, with a ranged minion on the enemy's frontline the game is basically over, still having our ant miners with good health to take some more hits.
Final thoughts
Even though the Ant Miners are not your conventional card, they really provide for an interesting and fun style of play. It is refreshing to try out new cards once in a while. From this battle, we could see that the Ant Miners excel in the last positions. They really need to get some hp before they can really do anything. Because of this reason, they can often get sniped on the first rounds. IF they survive though, they can become a great force on the battlefield. I intend to test out this card some more, maybe implementing it against certain archetypes.
Thanks for reading my post! Any feedback is greatly appreciated!