This week's Splinterlands Community Engagement Challenge invited us to share our favourite strategies.
Hands down mine is to play a defensive challenge involving shields, lots of repair and resurrect.
I don't know why, it's almost certainly not rational, but I've always had a soft spot for the Life Splinter, and this is precisely the Splinter that favours shields.
The week point in this strategy is magic, which regular shields do not offend against, so I usually only use this strategy when there is a no magic rule set, or when a reflect ruleset would put most players off using magic.
UNLESS I play with Raith, who has Void Shield, which can soak up that damage!
And example of a battle with self-resurrect
I recently had a self-resurrect rule-set come up and shields can work very well with resurrection as monsters are always resurrected with ONE health but ALL shields, so if you have Void shield or no magic and a lot of repairing and maybe some triage going on this means you really can get a lot of bonus 'health' points by playing shields with resurrect...
The ruleset and line up
- 19 Mana self-resurrect and broken arrows...
Summoner Raithe - mainly for the Void Shield...
- Zenith Monk - A decent low mana tank
- Soul Fiend - 0 mana soak
- Scavo Hireling - crucial REPAIR
- Celestial Harpy - a decent low mana opportunity card
- Dr Blight - always worth playing!
The battle...
You can rewatch this battle here.
- Round 1 - I take out the Corpse Fiend - twice!
- Round 2 - I lose my Harpy, they are resurrected
- Round 3 - I take out the Winedku, twice! I lose my Harpy, I take out the Vampire thing, it's resurrected, same for my Soul Fiend.
- round 4 - I lose my soul fiend, I take out Fenmoor.
- Rounds 5-6 it's al over, I take out Uraes.
I think with my shields and repair, it defo kept my monsters alive for longer, especially with my opponent playing no magic.
For an crazier, higher mana battle featuring also a shields strategy, see this epic 42 mana equaliser ruleset battle...
This features Raithe again with a treble repair going on...
I win with 6/6 cards remaining!
Downsides to the shields strategy.....
Obviously there is the opportunity cost of using Void Shield... if you are getting that you are missing out on something else.
And your nemesis is SHATTER, it's painful when that happens....
If you are gonna play Raithe, I find it very hard to utilise that amplify ability!
Final thoughts, when to play shields....
I think it favours no magic, 'irrational' magic and resurrect rulesets, ironically possibly NOT shield rulesets as then you're more likely to get counters such as shatter.
