Antoid Platoon's Strength in Numbers

It's time for our mighty little warriors to show off their so called strength in numbers, I mean teamwork...

ANTOID PLATOON are a group of Fire Ants, ranging from five to seven, fully equiped with armors, shields and spears. They have a formidable defense and offense to defend their colony from invaders.

Stats:

• Attack Type: Melee
• Damage: 1 to 3
• Speed: 1 to 2
• Armor: 2 to 3
• Health: 3 to 5
• Capacity: 4

SHIELD is one of the best ability for a tank. With only 4 mana requirement, this is one of the best tanky monster you can use especially in a Little League ruleset wherein only 4 mana and below monster can be used. This is very helpful if fighting against melee and ranged monster as their damage can be halve with this ability. The only counter to this ability will be magic damage.

SCAVENGER on the otherhand is a good ability to help you sustain longer during the fight as it gives you 1 max health each time a monster dies in the field, whether enemies or allies. Of course, as a tank you don't want your allies to die before this monster. Gaining one max health may be beneficial incase you have support monsters that has Tank Heal. Healing effect is increased when you have higher max HP.

Monster Compatibility

ANTOID PLATOON is more of a defensive monster rather than offensive type. Monsters with armor REPAIR and TANK HEAL will be more compatible to allow this monster to survive and protect your backline monsters.

Tank Heal's effect may not be effective in the early stages of the fight since with a 5 max HP, it can only be healed by 2 HP (healing effect is equal to 1/3 of the max HP, rounded down and with minimum of 2 HP per heal). But as the match goes on, assuming some monsters from both side dies, it can gain additional HP upto 11 (Assuming your opponent deploys 6 monster while you also deploy 5 monster aside from ANTOID PLATOON)

Some of the monsters with REPAIR and TANK HEAL ability from FIRE and NEUTRAL:

• FLAME MONKEY at level 5 (FIRE) - REPAIR
• FLAMESMITH at level 6 (FIRE) - REPAIR
• SCAVO HIRELING (NEUTRAL) - REPAIR
• BEETLE QUEEN at level 5 (FIRE) - TANK HEAL

Aside from REPAIR and TANK HEAL, you can also combine monsters with attack debuffs to further decrease opponents fire power. DEMORALIZE for melee damage and HEADWINDS for ranged damage. Further reducing the enemy's melee or ranged damage to 1 will allow SHIELD ability to negate the damage to zero.

Monsters with Inspire from FIRE Splinter:

• MOLTEN OGRE LVL1
• MOLTEN ASH GOLEM LVL8
• SCORCH FIEND LVL4

Monsters with Headwinds from FIRE Splinter:

• SCAVO CHEMIST LVL8
• ZALRAN EFREET LVL3

Summoner Compatibility

Incase you want to increase the damage of ANTOID PLATOON, you can use TARSA or MALRIC INFERNO to buff the melee damage of all your monsters in the field.

There are also some monsters with Inspire from FIRE Splinter that can increase the melee damage by 1 (stackable):

• BEETLE QUEEN (LVL8)
• FEREXIA GENERAL (LVL4)
• TUSK THE WIDE (LVL4)

Ruleset Compatibility

FEATURED BATTLE

No Magic at 21 mana cap...

https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_b417b9706b0df298ffd58025a60a2a64&ref=jpleron

One of the weaknesses of Antoid Platoon is magic attacks. Since Magic monsters are not allowed in this ruleset, it's time for our featured monster to shine. I chose to use Antoid Platoon as my tank to preserved the mana cap with other attack monsters like Radiated Brute, Tenyii Striker and Uraues. I also place Furious Chicken as a decoy for Sneak or Opportunity attacks. Fire and Death have a lot of monsters with Sneak or Opportunity.

Buff vs Debuff

https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_c879a6fe2f0ea6858ce97586b6c06b68&ref=jpleron

In this match, melee monsters were given the SNEAK ability to attack backline monsters. This means that there's a high chance that we can see melee monsters being used for this ruleset.

This was a battle against buff and debuffs. As you can see, my opponent uses monsters with Inspire ability and Summoner which increases melee damage to fully utilize the ruleset, while I focus on using DEMORALIZE to decrease the enemy monster's melee attack. With plus 2 and minus 3 melee damage, I managed to reduced their damage by 1. I also used a summoner that increases my monster's melee damage as well so overall I have a plus 1 while my opponent has a minus 1 melee damage.

In terms of positioning, I may have a better win rate if I place Alvar Legionaire in the first position and Antoid Platoon at the last position. Although my opponent's attack will be focus on Magnor due to TAUNT ability, when Magnor dies I'm sure that Antoid Platoon's Shield ability will further reduced the melee damage from the enemy.

This is a sample of high mana cap battle with Antoid Platoon still being playable.
The low HP was not a problem since we have the Equalizer ruleset.

Poison panicked!

https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_4ba3c1071bbee80c78cca28010531240&ref=jpleron

With the Equal Opportunity and Noxious Fumes, this was the great scenario to demonstrate the capability of ANTOID PLATOON. ANTOID PLATOON has the lowest HP aside from Furious Chicken (which will be killed easily) and Venator Kinjo (which cannot be attacked due to Camouflage ability). This means that monsters will target ANTOID PLATOON since it has the lowest HP from my line-up. And since my opponent uses melee monsters as well, the SHIELD ability of ANTOID PLATOON really helps to lower the damage.

The SCAVENGER ability of ANTOID PLATOON works wonder in this match as I was able to sustain the damage from Poison with the help of plus health each time any monster dies in the field, either from poison or from attacks.

Healing ability from Xenith Monk and Cerberus allows them to regen the damage from Poison (2 HP per round).

In this match, VENATOR KINJO gains the most advantage from this ruleset. The Camouflage prevented enemy monsters from attacking it even though it has the lowest HP aside from Furious Chicken. The Immunity ability prevents him from being poisoned. And the Equal Opportunity gives him the chance to attack even from the backline.

But still, hands down to ANTOID PLATOON for showing his capability, both the SHIELD and SCAVENGER ability, in this particular match.

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Take Aways:

1. Aside from Little League ruleset, ANTOID PLATOON will also be a great substitute for low mana battles.
2. You can utilize this monster to absorb Sneak attacks. In terms of monsters with Sneak attacks, there are a lot of melee and ranged monsters with Sneak ability compare with Magic monsters, especially if you are against Fire splinter.

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