Good day you all out there, and welcome back to my Splinterlands blog!
It's a Friday today and while I'm still recovering from the flue I have a lot of extra time so I can make my second post for this week a day early because on normal weeks on Friday I have to work and can't make my challenge post until Saturday.

This weeks Community Engagement Challenge is about making a post about Favorite Strategies we like to use, and there are so many! Especially when you play at a higher level the combined rule sets can really make things interesting, or difficult, it depends on your point of view I guess! 😅
In fact, there are so many strategies we use with all different rule set combinations that I tend on forgetting some of them, we are not bots.. and well.. it happens, so my strategies vary over time as well.

Strategies depend a lot on your deck and the level of the cards you play at, some cards really get interesting at higher levels but aren't as good at lower levels.

So, without further ado, let's get going!

Challenge Theme: Favorite Strategies
We all have that go-to deck or perfect card combo that helps us secure those clutch victories. Now’s your chance to tell everyone about it! Whether it’s a clever tactic or a tried-and-true strategy, we want to hear what makes your approach to Splinterlands stand out.

To find out how you can participate in the challenge yourself, check out the Splinterlands post here.

The battle I'm going to make this post about it a very recent one, in fact, I just fought it and it had a very interesting, and somewhat contradicting rule set combination... This is a battle fought in the Modern League with my highest level deck, the mana count was 47 with a rule set combo of Briar Patch / Up Close and Personal / What doesn't kills you with only the Water and Dragon splinters available to be chosen from, let's talk about the separate rule sets in details, after all, it is a strategy post!

Briar Patch. All Melee attacks receive two damage because of the Thorns, Units with the Shield ability however only receive one damage. Basically in this ruleset you will see a lot of magic attackers with ranged units in the back, The use of melee attackers is limited but you could still use a melee tank with the Shield ability or melee units with the Reflection Shield ability.

Here is where things get interesting, so Briar Patch discourages the use of Melee units, but now we can ONLY use melee attackers! Certain abilities are key: Shield - Reflection Shield - Demoralize / Inspire.

Up on receiving damage (what WILL happen because of the thorns damage) the units get enraged, boosting their stats with 50%. A need to have ability here in this rule set for me is Forcefield because with enrage most attackers will be over 5 damage.

Now we know all this we can build a nice team around these rule sets and see what my opponent has come up with. Let's go!

First look at the battlefield:

So we both picked the same summoner, interesting! I do have a level advantage so that's a nice start for this battle. We both brought a demoralize monster, one difference, mine can attack while the disintegrator won't be able to unless he gets to the second position, oh! my opponent brought two!! So his strategy is very different to mine: He is nerfing my damage output as much as possible and uses units who can't attack from the positions they start in, so they are not receiving any damage. His strategy is to let me attack and get killed by the thorn damage, very clever, I strategy I like to use as well in different circumstances. 👍

My strategy however is offensive and bases on doing more damage than I will receive back with thorn damage (of course this is heavily influenced now with the double demoralize).
Arkemis provides armor for my entire team, at least to survive one round of damage as well as minimize incoming damage with Forcefield, Commander Slade is put in the second position but with Possibilus providing the Reach ability, he is in a safe spot to hit hard and because of the Reflection Shield, he will survive the longest, at least, that's the plan!

My Line-Up:

• Summoner: Possibilus the Wise - reason: Provide Reach and Trample and boost Health Points.
• First position: Arkemis the Bear - reason: Formidable tank with high attack, Protect and Forcefield.
• Second position: Commander Slade - reason: Reflection Shield.
• Third position: Deep Lurker - reason: Poison and Demoralize.
• Fourth position: Pelacor Bandit - reason: High damage with high speed.
• Fifth position: Diemon Shark - reason: Sneak defense with Retaliate.
• Sixth position: Venator Kinjo - reason: Fail safe, when everyone dies there's still 1 unit left with Reflection Shield, I had 2 mana left anyway, hopefully it doesn't get to that!

The Battle:

Round 1: That healing back line Xenith Monk is a really smart move my opponent did! Hopefully I can drop poison on him with my Deep Lurker, it will hit him with the Trample once he kills the enemy Ureaus. So far, not much has happened!

Round 2: The trample did hit the Monk but didn't drop the Poison just yet... Both tanks are about to die, nothing to say about who is winning this just yet.

Round 3: And then suddenly there's a lot happening fast, the enemy front line broke, Commander Slade is now in first position and without the enemy team doing a lot of damage, there isn't a lot of danger for him to die, this looks good!

Round 4: Disintegrator missed it's attack against the much faster Commander, the Monk has died as well so it's basically four vs. two now, my Kinjo not counting because it's a passive unit.

Round 5: And it's over, the thorns damage killed the last enemy monster!

A nice amount of glint and SPS for my win, I'll take it, on to the next battle!

Conclusion

It's very important to have as much options as possible, as of now I don't use my Commander Slade a lot because Diemon Shark and Arkemis are both formidable tanks as well, but in the new Modern Format, the Commander will be one of the most important monsters for the Water splinter.

Well, that's it for this week, back to my battles, I put up a rental bid for some extra SPS for my second account, let's see if it got filled already so I can start grinding again. 😁
I'm testing out the difference is renting an extra 50k SPS, what it will get me in extra SPS (and glint) vs. what it will cost me to rent, maybe I will make a small post about this later.

Thank you for reading!!!

If you haven't made an account already, please consider using my referral link to sign up, I'll happily send the amount I get for your signup back to you in DEC or SPS to help you start.

Also, when you require any help to get you started,let me know, I'm here to advice and guide new players and maybe I can help you with card delegations too!

Have a great day!