Top 3 Games where critical strike changed the course of my battles | Axie Infinity

Hello to members of Hive Gaming. I had been following the community and found passionate content on all's respective favorite gameplays. Here I also want to publish my first gaming blog and share with you all funny moments.

This blog will be about Axie Infinity—one of the best play-to-earn games in terms of player headcount and growth this year. The context is the recent update the game had upon reaching season 19, where abilities can be seen with buffs and nerfs. But one of the most remarkable changes is towards Skill stats damage calculation, and most importantly, critical strikes determinant. Critical strike in Axie Infinity has been criticized for its randomness and ability to redefine the battle outcome and all the more make battles unpredictable.

Now, whenever I see gameplays or even witness first-hand in my gameplays where critical strikes happen during season 19 which still have significant effect and randomness, I always meme about the above statement. Not out of frustration though, even it turned to be against me—I see this as the nature of Axie gameplays lol.

So I want to share 3 games that represent the unfair critical strike effects on my favor during season 19.

Game 1

My Axie team is quite mediocre consisting of a Yam tank plant, a Tri Spike-Grass Snake reptile, and a 39-speed terminator reptile. Here I faced a two plant and one reptile team, which is quite a meta team in season 19 but with random parts.

My team is not great against dual plant teams, and plants are naturally effective around energy and soaking up damage, so I set the goal to eliminate the two plants as quickly as possible.

Shown above is how I successfully forced a one to two plant trade, sacrificing most of my energy and cards, but got my 2 remaining reptiles poisoned by 2-4 stacks respectively. The opponent's reptile has many cards and 3 energy left. It is a different but not scary terminator reptile, unlike speedy dusks or modified parts terminators. I thought this battle is in my favor. But leaving energy to terminators with many cards can be a mistake, especially in the hands of those who lay their cards well, or if you are not great with mind games.

The opponent got rid of my Tri spike terminator with ease, and with more energy remaining. He successfully forced the game into a 1v1 and his favor—I was with lower HP, and with 2 poison stack ticking 4 damage every turn. I also could not keep up with his mind games, as my 'Snail Shell' attack triggered the opponent's Snail Shell to trigger stun onto my terminator, rendering my next 'Chomp' to miss. It was a game-changing outplay from the opponent.

Round 9 ended. I could slow the opponent with 'Mystic Rush' and leave Stun on him, meaning I will attack first next round through shield. But I was left with 6 HP and 2 poison stacks, meaning I must finish the 159 HP Axie with 2 attacks before I die from ticking damage. I was left with 2 energy and no 0 energy card, so even if I had a 'Chomp' card this round, I could not piece through the opponent's snail shell with the 'Chomp' effect (requiring 3 cards to be played).

I played 2 'Thorny Caterpillar' cards out of desperation. Each deals 154 damage with its effect. Although the enemy is still stunned, I cannot finish it with a single attack and must do it through a second attack, which means at best both will die from my attack—enemy Axie will die from my second attack, and my Axie will die from poison. The best I could hope for is a draw, but...

My first 'Thorny Caterpillar' hit with a critical strike, out of nowhere. The enemy Axie died from the damage, and my Axie was left with 2 HP. It turned out to be my victory, purely out of randomness... or luck, many would say. Remember the statement in the update? "Critical Strikes were too random and powerful and would often decide the course of games". LOL. Let's move to the second game.

Game 2

This time, I faced the team of a frontline reptile, a middle 'Zigzag-Hot Butt' tank plant, and a 'Double Talk' bird.

It seemed like huge mountains to get through, but my Tri-Spike reptile managed to target the bird. It may seem like I got rid of the DPS Axie, but I may also have forgotten that the Zigzag plant is known for its sustain, disable, and purely 1v3 Axie.

My two reptiles could not get through the plant's HP drain and durability. The opponent forced a 1v1 situation. Terminator reptiles are only good with their synergy of body parts, so the Hot Butt disabling the 'Chomp' card means the damage output was lowered significantly. In a 1v1 situation between a terminator reptile and Zigzag plant, many would call it hopeless for the reptile.

The battle dragged to round 10. Apparently, the plant was still healthy compared to my terminator with 79 HP and would take 50 damage from the end of round 10. My 2 Chomp cards were just there, disabled. The next round is decisive—I could not just bring the plant low, as it would simply Zigzag and restore HP to endure the next 80 damage from the end of the round, nor could I finish the 379 hp plant who would have 100+ shield points from their cards, even if I had Chomp available. So I played 1 Snail Shell, 1 Mystic Rush, and 2 Thorny Caterpillar cards in desperation (again). It turned out like this...

LOL. The 2 Thorny Caterpillar cards struck with critical strikes. 379 HP with 100 shield points plant just went down like that. The little damage from the first two cards took away most of the shield points, but without the critical strikes, my two 154 damage thorny caterpillar would leave the plant at around 70 HP. Even if only one of them proc critical strike, it would still leave the plant on the 'Last Stand' stage, and it would be able to play 2 cards—if both of them are attack cards, my Axie would also die and it would have been a draw. Let's move on to the third game.

Game 3

This time, I faced another dual plant and a backline Aquatic team—the middle plant was also a Zigzag plant, but a DPS one rather than a tank. I stick to my own guns to bring down the first two plants as quickly as possible. This time, I slowly pushed to the backline without exploiting any backline target priority with my Tri-Spike Axie, because an Aquatic Axie has more HP than a bird and cannot be finished in one combo. I put all my attack cards to the two front plants. Going back to the critical strike point, I was also lucky with this one.

My terminator landed two critical strikes, brought the plant quite low. I also left a Stun effect on it, which will enable the next round attack to go through the shield, so I did not have to be afraid that the plant will play a lot of shield points and Zigzag to sustain. But the problematic one is not the Zigzag plant alone. The Aquatic Axie was one with Cuckoo and Revenge Arrow, making it a great DPS with some durability. With many cards and energy at hand, this Aquatic can easily burst down any foe.

As expected, the Aquatic quickly disposed of my Tri-Spike reptile and brought my last reptile low. As I had some energy left for a long combo, my only shot was to double Mystic Rush to slow the Aquatic two times and hope to attack first next round. But the Aquatic Axie had Koi to boost speed, effectively negating my attempt to slow it down. One slow stack is not enough to outspeed an almost-pure Aquatics. So, it did not matter. The Aquatic would always attack first in any round.

The round concluded. I could guard up with Snail Shell to prevent my Axie from dying and extend the game and bring the Aquatic to 336 HP. But a Cuckoo Aquatic would have 100+ shield points from a combo. I had many cards and enough energy to play 4 cards. I had twochoices: play a normal Stun combo, which will leave my Axie low but survive, but would only scratch the opponent Axie; play two Chomps and two Thorny Caterpillars which will do 992 + 1152 = 428 damage, and hope for the Aquatic to play cards that result in less than 90 shield points, which was unlikely. Both choices allowed survival, as the latter would give me close to 200 shield points and take the damage. I chose the latter choice, just to be hopeless against a 100+ shield points combo from the opponent. The opponent's combo landed on my Axie, left it with 49 HP. I could only watch the terminator's combo do its job and not kill the Aquatic. But...

The last Chomp card landed a critical strike. Although not an overkill, the last stand Aquatic could not do much next round. Aquatic has low morale stats and has only one last stand tick (each tick allows one turn before dying), but it was left stunned by the Chomp effect. So it was already a win because no matter what the opponent played, it would not have any effect and the Axie would exhaust after.

That's it for my post today. I hope you all had fun reading this and if you are an Axie Infinity player, you may realize how all this played out in gameplay. Not included here are cases of random critical strikes that happened against my favor, too. But overall, the changes in season 19 made some good balances on critical strikes, although the rest of the notes applied as a nerf to my whole Axie team. But I still enjoy playing the game every day.