Greetings to all Splinterlands players and Midnight Letters community! There are some basic rules in chess that beginners have to follow to avoid losing early such as develop your pieces, don't move the same piece twice in the opening, secure your king, etc. Veteran strong players like Magnus Carlsen can violate these ruIes but there are conditions. It's the same thing in a strategic game like Splinterlands. Players should generally follow the rulesets laid out and form your game plan based on those. Violate those and you will suffer the consequences.
Negative Modifiers
There are game modifiers in Splinterlands like Briar Patch or Counterspell that discourage us to use certain units otherwise we will be at a disadvantage. It would be wise to form our game plan and strategies around modifiers to give us a strategic advantage in the game. There may be chances when it's possible to go against the modifier and still win but these are few. In this post, I will show games when my opponent chose to go against the ruleset and led to losing the game.
Fire & Regret
All units have Return Fire (returns 50% of ranged damage to attacker, rounded up) in this game. We are discouraged to use archers in this game. It's an easy strategy to follow but my opponent chose not to. Even though he has the higher level cards, having archers in his team gave him a distinct disadvantage.
I used Water element which is focused on magic units. I also have an archer in the team but his role was a non attacking tank in first position. Then all of my team are magic units.
My opponent has maximum and next to maximum level cards that should give him an advantage in this game. But he also put two archer units that will suffer from Return Fire when they attack targets. This led to him losing the game. A better strategy would be to include New Beluroc Aegis and Kanaaq Miner in his team in place of the archers.
Game link: https://splinterlands.com/battle/sl_508a30221df529088b7603f1f6f13b82?ref=iamchessguy
Briar Patch
All units have Thorns (returns 2 damage to attacker when hit by a melee attack). This time melee units are discouraged. Only Fire element is allowed to be used. Thankfully it has many non-melee units that can be chosen.
I have two units with no attack then all units are all archers. I carefully avoided using any melee unit. My opponent ignored this and had two melee units in front and then archer and magic units. The fight was close this time. I had an early lead that carried on to the later rounds.
Game link: https://splinterlands.com/battle/sl_841c0479d57d932eca288e9b88324df3?ref=iamchessguy
Fog of War
Units lose Sneak, Snipe, and Opportunity in this game. The punishment for using units with those abilities are not direct. The user will only waste a turn because those melee cards cannot attack if they are not in front position.
I chose my team so that each card can attack every round except for New Beluroc Aegis who has a role to divert attacks from first position. My opponent maybe forgot the modifier because he had three melee units with Sneak and Opportunity skills. The consequence was only one unit from his team attack in each round because he had two no attack cards in front. His melee units won't attack unless they get in first position. It's funny because all his units are at the maximum level but they were no use. My units had all the time to attack while his units just sat there.
Game link: https://splinterlands.com/battle/sl_de8aae4059df6c07aff521ada8b405c1?ref=iamchessguy
Conclusion
The rulesets serve as guide posts with which we form our game plan and strategies. Choose cards to maximize the rulesets or else you may suffer consequences. Having stronger cards won't work if you don't form your team in accordance with modifiers. Learning how to play with them will increase your win rate.
My Referrals
If this post interests you and you are not playing Splinterlands yet, please consider joining this wonderful game using my referral.
https://splinterlands.com/register?ref=iamchessguy
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