This slight tweak will protect you from all the snipers [STEEM MONSTERS]

To be fair, this is not my innovation, I randomly encountered it while playing (against Hive account@sgt-dan), but I just fell in love with it once I started using it.

So, what is the problem?

Snipers. Not the player, but the monster. The ranged units that attack your first non-melee unit. This is annoying because you become forced to expose either your debuffer, magic unit, or ranged hitter. You must account for sneak attacks, as well as for snipers. Sure, there are some workarounds, like using a sneak melee on last position, but overall the total expected value (EV) through this change is less than it was. So, we would love to have something to waste the enemy's sniper hits, as they usually are an important part of their tactic.

Peace is what you need.

But only when it comes in the form of a GIANT. Intuitively, you would say that the Peaceful Giant should be used as the main tank, thanks to its absurd amount of health. And that isn't wrong. But if you use it in the second position, you will not only get a powerful secondary tank, but he will absorb all the ranged snipe damage. This positioning made me not lose a single non-melee unit due to snipe. Only times I lost was against teams that were massively ahead to begin with.

How to make this effective

Granted, this doesn't work all the time. One condition is to have battles on the higher mana side. Peaceful Giant costs 5 mana, your summoner costs 3, a decent tank around 5-7, so you need at least a 20 mana battle to be able to add 2 or more monsters on your team. And adding 2-3 more monsters is essential as they will be your main hitters.

You should think the meta in this way:

I want a tank that can last reasonably and do some damage.
I want to use Peaceful Giant on position 2, to absorb all the snipe damage.
I want my main damage to come from monsters on position 3 and above.
I want to use ranged damage rather than sneak melee, to be more effective against Death (one of the more obnoxious lineups, at least in low ratings).
I want to try and fit a debuffer (Weaken) in my team for increased protection against sneak.

Ideally, you will win before your tank falls. If however the tank falls, your Giant may still be able to hold it off just to tip the balance in your favour, letting your ranged units kill an essential enemy monster. If you still lose the battle, then I think it was lost to begin with, at least with the Splinter you chose.

I babbled on quite a bit about this, but it made such a difference in my case. Since I tried it last evening, I went 14-6 (compared to a 40% winrate up till then), I nearly doubled my rating, and I beat teams that amounted a total card advantage of 10 levels or even more!

Cheers and happy battling!