Gladiators, Martyrs and Snipe – Combinations for a winning advantage

This article focusses on the use of Gladiators in combination with Martyrs – the example features a Snipe-Ruleset and how you can use that to your advantage. This is part of the Community Engagement Challenge: https://peakd.com/hive-13323/@splinterlands/splinterlands-community-engagement-challenge-card-strategy-guides

Katrelba Gobson

Katrelba is one of the strongest Gladiators and if used right, can even beat Quora as a Nature-Gladiator. It thrives in the Unprotected (no armor) Ruleset, since it can hit without any obstruction, but is useful in many other combinations.

As every Gladiator, she has bloodlust from the beginning – giving her +1 on all stats with every kill she makes. Additionally, she has double strike and sneak right from the start, having her attack the monster in the opponent’s rear position. That can be incredibly useful if there’s a decoy (a low mana monster with low life, just placed to protect another monster), since she gains stats from the first kill, and then can attack the next monster right away, with more damage.

At level 5 she gains Snare. She now can remove the “flying” ability from enemy monsters and will always land the attack if the enemy monster is flying. Very useful in earthquake or against Dragons.

At level 9 she also gains Cripple – now if she hits armor, she also reduces the enemy’s health by 1, making it more likely to be killed with the second strike. This comes in very handy against armored monsters.

The downside is her low health - if she gets targeted by Opportunity or other Sneak monsters, she might go down quickly. Same goes if she hits a monster with Thorns - then she might even die right away from the Thorns damage.
The other downside is that you can only get her in Gladiator-Packs - that means, you can't buy her anyway, but depend on Guild Brawls and Merits from chests.
Katrelba is not a cheap monster, either - 6 Mana is quite a bit for the stats she has. Quora costs only 4 more mana, and is more of an allrounder - as an example.

Still, I think Katrelba is one of the best Gladiators in the set.

Martyrs

There are a few martyrs in the game, mostly from the former Soulbound-Reward cards set. You will see the Venari Marksrat (neutral), the Fungus Flinger (Nature) and the Firecaller (Fire) quite a lot – a little less often the Dragon Martyr, Vruz (one of my favorites). There are some others, but not too many more, and usually they get Martyr on higher levels, like Vruz.

Martyrs are great to enhance your other cards, especially gladiators – the stronger a gladiator gets, the higher the probability to get a kill and hence even stronger. They get some cool other abilities on higher levels, but the main one remains Martyr – sometimes I actually think it’s better to have them killed of easily and get the bonus for the other cards as quick as possible.

One of many rulesets that you will encounter is Target Practice. This ruleset gives all magic and ranged monsters snipe, meaning, they will attack the first magic, ranged or no-attack monster behind the tank of the enemy team. They will not attack monsters that have melee-damage only, though – and that can be used as an advantage, as I will show you.

If you just look at the line-up, you will notice that my opponent’s monsters are way superior. A legendary summoner giving them amazing stats. Darg Deadblast giving Weaponstraining to a healer and a magic reflect. A magic + explosion legend. In total 3 Legends, 2 epics, 1 rare and 1 common. And me? Well, 4 commons and 3 rares. Sounds unfair? Wait and see.

Summoner: Lobb Lowland – This summoner allows me to have a Gladiator on the field, and that’s important to my strategy. It also reduces the speed of the opponents, making it more likely for me to attack sooner.

Tank: Flesh Golem. He can restore a third of his health each round, which is 3 of his 10 health. Also does decent damage and has a bit of speed. For 6 mana a good deal, a great allrounder that can be used in many strategies that require a tank. For example, you can have him in second position in a Noxious Fumes (all monsters get poisoned), since he will heal the poison damage. If you put a monster with the Flank-Ability in front of the Golem, that can be even more effective.

Second Position: Venari Marksrat. It’s a ranged monster, so it will get attacked first and probably die very early on, giving the Flesh Golem and Katrelba a +1 on all stats. On low levels, the martyr function is the primary reason to choose this monster.

Third Position: Katrelba Gobson. This Gladiator is very versatile due to double strike, sneak and bloodlust. If it can kill the last monster in line, it will already get +1 on everything – plus the bonus from the Marksrat and the 4th position martyr, the Fungus Flinger. Following that, it can become quite unstoppable. Being a melee-only monster, it will not be affected by Snipe.

Fourth Position: Fungus Flinger. Same idea as for the marksrat. As soon as the latter is killed, the Flinger will be the new target of all enemy magic and ranged monsters. It will die and give +1 on all stats of Katrelba and the Halaran Huntress.

Fifth Position: Halaran Huntress. Another melee monster, not affected by snipe. Due to Charge, it can attack from anywhere on the battlefield – like a ranged or magic monster, but again, not affected by snipe since its damage is melee. Will also benefit from the martyr. It’s one of the strongest monsters from the new reward cards, especially when it comes to battles that only allow melee-monsters.

Sixth Position: Furious Chicken. Since this is a monster without any attack, it will get targeted early on as well – just as a decoy to not have too much damage dealt to the tank to early, so Katrelba might get another kill.

Start of the battle

As you can see, there’s a little bug in the display – the weapons trained monsters do have snipe ability, even though it’s not shown in their abilities.

First attack takes down the marksrat, as planned. Here comes the Martyr Bonus! The second attack explodes and takes 2 health from Katrelba and the Huntress – but they both get a bonus from the death of the second martyr. Now it’s Katrelba’s turn, and she takes down the last line monster and gets another bonus. The Chicken gets killed as planned, the Golem heals itself and together with the Huntress they bring down the Refugee to 1 health.

Second Round – Since Katrelba has accumulated 6 Speed, she is to attack first and takes down the next monster, gaining another Bloodlust Bonus: +1 on all stats. Luckily, the Refugee suffers exhaustion and does not end my Golem, who heals itself and takes down the Refugee. Otherwise, the game might have ended differently.

Third Round – Katrelba is unstoppable now. Each attack is a kill, giving her more bonus. The Huntress and the Golem take care of the last monster.

This is certainly not a bullet-proof strategy, as you can see in the fact that if the Refugee had attacked the Golem, I would’ve lost. But looking at the quality of cards, it was a David vs. Goliath game, and the strategy did pay off to get that Goliath down.

I hope this helps someone on their Splinterlands journey! Thank you for reading and have a great day!