Olivia vs. Olivia - the effect of randomness

Prologue

a really interesting post about over-powered Splinterlands-Cards, and one that he featured was Olivia. Even though I first didn't understand why that cards breaks the meta/gameplay in a way that Tofu, the Smith and Riklauniman do, I decided to follow his assessment and use Olivia a lot more than I had originally. And here's a battle where both teams have an Olivia with Mimic - Silver League Rebellion Tournament.@bjangles just did

Set-Ups

In Silver-league-Tournaments, I always try to use Akane since it's the only Rebellion Summoner that I have on Silver-Level. But Dragon was out of the question, so the next best Summoner I have was Max Pruitt.

26 Mana, Equalizer (all units have the health of the unit with most LP), Aim True and no legends.

I went for the Halfling as a tank. Then a low cost unit with anit-range attack. Olivia comes next, and she gets Opportunity-Support by the Ogre Anarchist - that unit also gets piercing and armor strike from Max, so he attacks twice per round. At the end, the explorar for extra armor - always a good combination with armor strike.

The enemy has quite the good line-up, too, and all on the allowed max. level - a level 3 Croire, given shield by the Mana Warden who can also slow, then the Nomad with additional health buff, the elder with more health buff, then Olivia and the Halfling at the end, probably as Sneak-Protection with its heal.

Round 1

Here we go then! The enemies damage count is 6 viable melee attack and 3 magic attack. Mine is 9 melee attack, 5 armor strike, and 1 magic attack - looking good for me! But the enemy has a shield unit... let's see!

It's going well! While my halfling goes only down to 4 LP despite not having shield, Croire ends the round with 3 LP. Good for me!

Round 2

The mimicking begins! My Olivia gets Strengthen, so all my units get +1 LP. The enemy unfortunately gets Armor Strike and now can attack once more and make one more damage.

So there she goes and does 3 damage to my halfling. Croire survives the the attacks from my Olivia and finishes off my halfling, but gets struck down by the Anarchist's Armor strike.

Round 3

Now here comes the luck! The enemy Olivia gets backfire from the Forester - while mine gets Armor Strike and with that +3 damage! Looking better now!

Things start to turn around. The Mana Warden can strike the Forester, but is taken out by the Anarchist afterwards after taking 6 damage from Olivia. The Forester surives, and the Nomad takes 3 damage as well!

Round 4

First glance - awesome, the enemy Olivia gets only piercing. With all her attacks at 1, that's nothing useful. Second glance - mine only gets Camouflage, not useful, either.

So, the battle continues. Fun fact now - my Olivia gets Piercing from being attacked by the enemy Olivia. Doesn't really matter, since the opponent has no armor. The Nomad and the forester fall, and Olivia is my new tank against the elder being the enemy's.

Round 5

Heal! Yes! My Olivia gets heal, and the other one only Camouflage. Love it.

Heal in a tank is super useful, Olivia just absorbs the damage done to her. Only that she looses her Armor Strike due to the loss of said armor.
The Anarchist takes down the Elder - it's now two Olivias in first position, with mine having one ability more than the other.

Round 5

The enemy gets heal now, too, and mine gets - Return Fire. Yey.

I'm definitely in the advantage now, having two attacking monsters with a total of 11 attack points. There is no coming back from this.

The enemy Olivia gets Strengthen while attack by mine, and a short breather. She survives with 1 LP!

Final Round

The only ability left for both to gain is Protected.

Since that's +2 Armor for all, it also means +2 damage for my Anarchist. It's not really the final round since the Halfling survives, but it is too frightened to fight, so an easy beat for the Anarchist who now does 10 Damage in total.

Conclusion

Okay, yes, Olivia is a very strong card - but still a gamble in my perspective. The outcomes can differ a lot depending on what abilities are on the playing field, and especially in the upper leagues, that is usually a huge load of different ones.

Another thing I learned is that I can somewhat influence the outcome with the abilities that I choose for my team. If I switched Return Fire for a Shield unit, Olivia might have gotten that. Or any other ability. So, the more useful abilities I have in my team, and the less lesser useful ones, the better my chances of getting that over-powered Olivia.

Thank you very much for reading, I hope you enjoyed it at least as much as I enjoyed writing :-D If you have any comments or feedback - please let me know! And don't forget to leave your own posts for me to curate. Thank you very much!

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