Splinter Strategy Battle Analysis - On the flip of a coin

In my last post I showcased a battle where Quora Towershead gives us a taste of all her power. She is indeed a feared monsters and, as I said, one of the most desired Gladiator cards. However, it's needless to say, she is not unbeatable and today we will show exactly that.

As often happens on Splinterlands, the battle you will see today ended the way it did because of a mix of strategy, good decision making and, of course, a little help from lady luck.

As usual, before we get to the battle itself, let's first discuss the context where it took place. For starters, let's talk about an ability that played a major role in the fight.

Stun

Here is the official description of the Stun ability:

A 50% probability is exactly the same as flipping a coin so, basically, when a monster is hit by stunning damage, it flips a coin to check whether it will be able to act normally or entirely skip its next turn.

We will come back to it but, for now, just keep these facts in mind.

Now, let's discuss other aspects of the scenario.

Battle context

This battle was a little different from the ones I usually analyze in this series because it was a Brawl battle. I won't go into details of what Brawl battles are because it's not the goal of this post but, basically, it's a mode where guilds fight each other to compete for the top ranks and better rewards.

There are a few particularities to Brawl battles, such as being naturally able to use one gladiator card (without the need for a special ruleset or summoner ability) and also the fact that, depending on how strong your guild is, you can choose cards to ban, making your enemies unable to use them in some battles.

In this case, the battle was on the enemy's "home", meaning they could ban some cards from my collection, which is exactly what they did, but I will discuss that while discussing the ruleset, summoner selection and lineup.

So, without further ado, let's get to it.

The Ruleset

So, it was an 18 mana fight, which I consider to be on the low side, no Legendaries allowed, all monsters would resurrect once and ranged monsters could attack even from the first position.

In terms of splinters available, we had Water, Earth, Death and Dragon. HOWEVER, because of the specific brawl mechanics, this situation was much more complex than it seemed but more on that in the next session.

Summoner Selection

At first glance, it looked like there were plenty of Splinters open but not really. The enemy banned me from using both Quora and Kelya which are my main motivations for using the Earth and Water splinters respectively so, in reality, I was really between Dragon and Death.

Additionally, 18 mana is way too low to use Dragons, at least in my opinion, so, by exclusion, I ended up going with Thaddius and the Death splinter.

The Lineup

Coming up with a lineup for this battle took quite a lot of strategy and decision-making mainly for a couple of reasons:

• I was very sure I would be facing Quora
• I could not use Quora myself

Knowing that Quora alone can be destructive, I tried to build a lineup exclusively to neutralize Quora and have some hope in this battle and, with very limited resources, my best bet was to Stun and disable Quora before she could get started with her bloodbath.

With that being said, for my first monster, I tried to take advantage of the Born Again rule so I picked Venari Marksrat for a double Martyr buff.

For my second position, I picked Trapp Falloway because I try to use Gladiators whenever possible and Trapp felt like a good pick for this situation

On the third position was the monster in which I deposited all my hopes. Revelaer, with his Stun ability, was the only way to win this battle but, as I mentioned at the beginning of this post, that meant that the battle could be decided on a coin toss.

In the fourth position, I had Soul Strangler, which I consider a good monster for low mana battles as it only costs 3 and has decent damage.

And, finally, the last monster in my lineup was Chaos Agent which, at 1 mana, is yet another great monster in this kind of battle.

So that is the lineup. No secrets here. The main idea was getting Revelaer to stun Quora and hoping that would be enough to creep the enemy and win the fight. So, let's see how it went.

The battle

To make this part more interactive, you can click here to watch the battle as you read.

As soon as the battle screen loaded, my suspicions were confirmed: I was about to face Quora, so my strategy was about to go through the ultimate test.

One downside of my strategy straight off the bat is having Marksrat as a sacrifice to buff my Trapp Falloway with Martyr, as this also gives an easy target for Quora to benefit twice from her Bloodlust. In this particular situation, I don't consider it a bad call since my whole strategy was based on stunning Quora, meaning whether it worked or not, it wouldn't really matter how many buffs she had.

In the first round, Quora did short work of the Rat but, to my great surprise, Revealer's stun triggered right at the first attack. My strategy was working!

Rat was killed twice, which meant Trapp started round 2 with a double Martyr buff facing a stunned Quora. Not the worst position to be in.

Stun is very strong because not only the affected monster doesn't attack but it skips its turn entirely. In Quora's case, that means she can't heal herself either.

That was great because Revealer's attack also triggered stun in round 2, which allowed Trapp to kill Quora's "first life". She briefly returned to life only to be taken out once again by no other than Revealer himself. This time Quora would not come back.

At this point, the battle was mine because just like I was betting all my chips on the Revealer's stun working, the opponent was betting all theirs on Quora sweeping the board.

In the end, luck was on my side and my bet was the better one.

It's true that the Close Range rule still enabled the opponent's Acid Shooter to attack but, at this point, Trapp was way too strong due to bloodlust and my army was pretty much intact, while the opponent only had the Shooter, which did not offer strong resistance.

Conclusion

Like I said many times, Splinterlands is a game of strategy but it's also a game of luck. Sometimes you have no alternative other than betting on luck and hoping you strike gold.

This was a good display of that kind of situation. Perhaps a better player would be able to come up with a strategy that didn't rely that much on luck, but considering I was facing one of the strongest cards in this format and I had some of my best cards banned I think I did a good work on this one.

If you also want to take part in amazing battles such as this one, click here and join Splinterlands!