Splinterlands Amazing Battles – Archer’s bane mini battle

Welcome to another Amazing Battle analysis!

We look at a max League Gold foil Modern tournament match on this occasion. Our opponent this time around is @thebadwitch from the Team Possible guild.

Rules:

Little League (only summoners and monsters that cost 4 or less can be used in this battle), What Doesn’t Kill You (all monsters have the Enrage ability), and Keep Your Distance (melee monsters may not be used in this battle).

59 mana cap. Earth, Life, and Dragon splinters are available.

As there is no melee in this battle, Magic Reflect and Return Fire will be really important, so we go with Ilthain as our summoner of choice.

Life has some high initiative monsters that benefit greatly from Enrage and the speed bonus.

Our team:

Pelacor Conjurer (Flying, Phase, Divine Shield, and Magic Reflect), Tower Griffin (Flying and Protect), Light Elemental (Flying, Blind, and Headwinds), Truthspeaker (Protect, Cleanse, and Tank Heal), Venari Crystalsmith (Dispel and Tank Heal) and closing with Doctor Blight (Poison, Afflict, Camouflage and Poison).

Pelacor Conjurer is an amazing tank on this ruleset. Phase and high initiative make it a hard target when it's damaged.

We have double Protect to soak some archery damage, double tank heals to make our frontline last longer, and Blind, which works amazingly with enrage.

We get a good mix of archery and magic damage with some bonus poison and afflict in the combination. A nice blend of debuffs for this ruleset.

Let’s take a look at the opposing team.

Summoner:

Quix the Devious (-1 archery -1 speed). Nice debuffs for this ruleset, archery is mostly sure gonna be used, and the speed debuffs help a lot in dealing with the enrage bonus.

That is a nice counter on this particular mix of rulesets.

Opposing lineup:

Pelacor Conjurer (Flying, Phase, Divine Shield, and Magic Reflect), Truthspeaker (Protect, Cleanse, and Tank Heal), Doctor Blight (Poison, Afflict, Camouflage, and Poison), Thunderbird (Flying, Stun, and Redemption), Grenadier (Blast, Oppress, and Snare) and closing with Tower Griffin (Flying and Protect).

This is very similar to our team, with some key differences. This team is more aggressive than ours.

Grenadier is going to be a real threat to our tank.

The key difference here is that this team is less protected, so the return fire will play a huge role in this matchup.

Let's see if our tank withstands the combined attacks from this team.

Let’s see how this battle plays out!

Click on the image below to watch the fight:

Round 1:

Both tanks take some damage, and armor gets peeled off, but in sum, our tank takes more damage than the opposing conjurer.

Round 2:

Our tank barely survives this round with a combination of misses and a very suitable heal by the Crystalsmith.

However, it still is very damaged and might not stay for long.

Round 3:

Our poor tank goes down here, but only after reflecting a lot of damage, especially to the Grenadier, which is left with a measly 1 HP.

Round 4:

Our Tower Griffin is left in front, and enrage plus blind helps it evade many attacks.

It gets hit by the Grenadier, but the return fire finally does its work, and the opposing menace goes down.

Round 5:

Ouch, our Light Elemental goes down fast due to reflection, and we lose the Blind ability.

Due to a lucky miss, our Tower Griffin survives one more round!

And the opposing Pelacor conjurer finally goes down, leaving the vulnerable Truthspeaker up front.

Round 6:

Both off-tanks hold their ground here, but the Truthspeaker gets sentenced as it gets poisoned with only 1 HP left.

Round 7:

As predicted, the Truthspeaker goes down as the round starts due to poison, leaving a very beefy Dr. Blight up front to tank our shots.

Round 8:

The opposing Thunderbird gets reduced to 1 hp due to all the return fire damage it has taken, and the opposing Dr. gets its sentence as it is poisoned and with 1 HP left.

Round 9:

Our Truthspeaker and the opposing Dr. Blight and Thunderbird go down this round!

This decides the battle, as the opposing team is left with a ranged monster who cannot attack, and we have the bad doctor still active and shooting poisoned magic from the last position.

Round 10-11:

Doctor Blight shoots twice at the defenseless Tower Griffing, and this match is over!

This match was very, very close, but we prevailed due to the defensive advantages we had:

Enrage, Flying, and Blind make an awesome combo to evade ranged and melee attacks, and the accumulated damage from return fire definitely impacted the outcome of this match.

Also, the double Tank Heal made our tank and off tanks last a little longer, so the reflects and damage from our team accumulated into a victory for us!