Strategy Guide for Tactics Summoners. Using a Tactic Summoner and Countering One (Cryptic)

This week Splinterlands blog has a new challenge out for your community: Write a Strategy Guide for Tactics Summoners. This could take a form of describing how to use a Tactics Summoner in the Tactics Stage or how to respond effectively to popular Tactics Summoners.

In this guide I will cover both topics. I will start with how you use a Tactics Summoner in the Tactics Stage and I will proceed to covering effective strategies against popular Tactics Summoners.

Using a Tactics Summoner in the Tactics Stage

Tactics Summoners are new to Splinterlands and they were introduced in the Rebellion card set. I used a few of these summoners though I do not own any at this time.

For the purpose of creating of this guide I have rented one of the cheapest Tactics Summoners: Nomos
As you can see I have rented a max level Nomos for under 8 DEC for two days. Since it is about 1,200 DEC tokens for one dollar this represents a cost of fraction of a cent!

So how do you use a tactics summoner?

The battle starts normally like with any other summoner. You pick your team like you normally would:

You still have a team select time limit where you build up your team and consider the ruleset and abilities of your Tactics Summoner. If you picked your team quicker than your opponent you would see the following screen:

As you can see I am waiting for my opponent to pick his team. This happened because I was quicker at picking my team than my opponent. Once your opponent selects and submits their team your screen will update and show you their team. At that point you will have a very limited time period to select and apply Tactics to the battle:

And this is where the real fun begins. You have two actions to perform here:

1. Select what Tactic you are going to use for the battle
2. Select two targets on the opposing team that would have the tactic applied to

So in this case you can see that I have selected a -2 Magic attack nerf and have applied it to two monsters on the opponent team: Void Dragon and Usut

Once you performed both actions (selecting the tactic and selecting the monsters on the opponent team to apply it to) you simply click the Battle button and battle begins.

Unfortunately Nomos is a very niche summoner and very few battles would make it the perfect choice for the ruleset so this time my selection was not perfect and I lost this battle:
Link to My Tactics Summoner Battle using Nomos

Countering Popular Tactics Summoners

As I select my team I would look and see if my opponent is over-using a popular Tactics Summoner. Once I figure that they like to play a particular summoner with a set of super powerful cards I would build my strategy around a counter for their lineup.

Here I would like to present my effective strategy against a team lead by Cryptic Tactical Summoner in combination with maxed out Mantaroth and maxed out Grimbardun Smith. This play is really tough to beat particularly in the ruleset like this where magic attack monsters are not allowed.

Link To Me Winning This Battle

In order to counter Mantaroth and Grimbardun Smith in a no magic allowed you have to keep in mind the following tips:

1. You are not very likely to get through these two with front focused fire
2. You have to select sneak and opportunity monsters
3. You have to pick high damage monsters ideally with Enrage ability to increase damage even further
4. Throw a strong tank in front because you will need it then follow it up with a self healing tank to take blast damage from the Mantaroth
5. I used Baakjira to absorb blast damage from Mantaroth. Baakjira has huge health and self-healing
6. Follow the first two cards up with your main damage dealer in this case I am using a perfect card for that: Kulu Mastermind. This card has weapons training so it give Baakjira melee attack and it has Enrage ability so it will get enraged for eight melee damage and it has Shield so it is also very resistant to the blast damage.
7. The last three monsters are selected for their sneak abilities and/or high damage.

As you can see I won this battle pretty convincingly with four cards out of six cards left standing on the field:

And my reward is a nice 9.374 SPS for a win against a significantly higher ranked opponent in the Modern Diamond league.

If you wonder what is the best way to get involved you can use my link to begin your Splinterlands and HIVE journey.