Introduction
Hi, everyone! Konaqua-desu! Here's my entry for Splinterland's current Social Media Challenge.
This contest is designed to provide your experience and insight playing Splinterlands, a super fun NFT Deck building card game, where you can earn while you play!
Also I tried a little harder today and tried to get to Bronze 2. This is the first time I encountered a different rule set.
Lore
Venari Knifers are specialized rogues, assassins, and thieves that make their living through shadier dealings in the Realm of Silence underneath Praetoria. They often work as part of criminal organizations or guilds, taking on contracts to put more gold in their pockets. When the Chaos Legion's agents came to Praetoria, many Venari Knifers saw them as new benefactors for their mercenary work. Using the tunnels that run beneath the surface world, the Knifers move like shadows in the night to strike at their opponents.
Like the rest of their kin, Knifers are masters of tools and technology. They've used their knowledge to perfect the Knifer Rig. A deadly weapon powered by magic and pneumatics, Knifer Rigs consist of six fully articulated blades and rods carried on the back. When not in use, they fold away neatly and unobtrusively. When employed, however, they are silent, speedy, and absolutely deadly.
Lyberg rubbed his eyes and squinted around the dimly lit alley. He thought he’d seen… what? He wasn’t sure, but when he looked again, it was gone.
He shook his head. The day had been long. It was probably a trick of the light or his overwrought imagination.
As he started down the alley again, he heard a whisper of movement behind him. But when he spun around, there was nothing but darkness and shadows.
A series of sharp pains pierced his back in rapid succession.
Lyberg let out a cry and fell forward. He rolled over and let out a gasp. His attacker was humanoid, hairless and pale, with large ears and wide eyes. A Venari dressed in leather. From its back, six hinged metal rods protruded, each tipped with a wicked blade. In the moonlight, the blood dripping from them looked almost silvery.
Before Lyberg could so much as beg for his life, the rods pistoned forward, all six blades striking at once. Contract fulfilled.
Stats and Abilities
Good damage, good speed and good health. That's what Venari Knifer is. The only reason Venari Knifer is not used as much is because Venari Knifer is built as damage dealer and not to absorb damage like Unicorn Mustang. Since Earth's strategy mainly rotates using magic damage along with Obsidian, losing your main front line is dangerous since your back line all has low health.
Initially, Venari Knifer has Thorns. This allows you to damage any melee attacker every time they attack her. It's a really good ability but as I said above, unless you don't use magic damage units, it's a risk using Venari Knifer on Earth element.
At level 6, Backfire is unlocked. it deals another 2 damage but only if your opponent misses. This means whether an opponent hits or miss, they take 2 damage. The good thing is this also include range and magic damage. The bad thing is it doesn't stack with Thorns because opponent needs to miss while Thorns needs opponent to hit.
Battle Section
Click on the link below to view the full battle:
https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_c3ff12ae43c7c954cdba850bde96ac3c
Mana Cap & Rules
This is my first time in Bronze 2 and they have a different random rule set.
During this battle, it has a mana cap of 24 and an element exception of dragons meaning no dragons can be played in this battle. In addition to that, a rule set called "Equal Opportunity", which gives everyone, allies and enemies, opportunity abilities.
Equal Opportunity - Provides Opportunity ability to all units on the field. Opportunity forces the unit to target the lowest health on the opponent's side.
Team Lineup
- Wizard of Eastwood: Alternative summoner because I would not get any benefits from Obsidian.
- Unicorn Mustang: Currently best front line among Earth units. It has void ability that reduces any magic damage.
- Venari Knifer: Has good damage, speed and health. Has thorns ability allowing melee opponent to take damage if they hit him. Due to the rule set, it gains opportunity ability allowing Venari Knifer to attack from any position.
- Disintegrator: Has a good support ability of Demoralize decreasing opponent's melee damage by 1. Equal opportunity gives this monster the opportunity ability as well allowing him to attack from any position.
This line up is great with Venari Knifer and Equal Opportunity rule set because it allows everyone to attack from any position while having their abilities work as intended. I intended to use a more complex strategy here that didn't work but I still explain a bit later.
Battle Highlights
These are rhe abilities used in this battle.
Below is the battle per round.
Round 1
- Hardy Stonefiesh dies from Venari Knifer's opportunity attack.
- Ice Pixie dies from Disintegrator's opportunity attack.
Round 2
- Serpent of Eld dies from Venari Knifer's attack.
- Disintegrator dies from Kulu Swimhunter's attack.
Round 3
- Unicorn Mustang dies from Deeplurker's attack.
Round 4
- Deeplurker dies from Venari Knifer's attack.
Round 6
- Since range units cannot attack while on 1st position, Venari Knifer gets free hits for 2 rounds and kills Kulu Swimhunter by Round 6.
Author's Notes
Did your strategy worked?
YES
Abusing the new rule set, this allowed my monsters to be able to attack from any position. Without Equal Opportunity, Venari Knifer and Disintegrator cannot attack while being in 2nd and 3rd position respectively.
What will you try differently next time?
The strategy is supposed to work as Venari Knifer being the lowest health monster on my field. This should allow opponent's monsters to target him via the effect of opportunity given by Equal Opportunity. This means that if the opponent is a melee monster, they would take damage if they get a hit from Venari Knifer.
My mistake was having Disintegrator lower health than Venari Knifer which made him the target instead.
Do you like Venari Knifer ? Why or Why not?
As I mentioned, Venari Knifer is good but he's not suited for Earth team. The Earth units are mostly designed to have magic damage with the help of Obsidian which Venari Knifer doesn't get benefits from.
Since Venari Knifer doesn't have defensive abilities like Void or Shield, using him in the front would kill him in a few turns making your low health mages very exposed at the back.
Disclaimer
- This post is encoded and edited in Ecency's Mobile app.
- Lores and abilities are all from Splinterlands and posted for additional context.
- Venari Knifer's lore can be found here.
- Backfire ability came from here
- Unless otherwise stated, all other photos are from Splinterlands as well.
Good luck and Have fun grinding!
Join Our Discord
Your Splinterlands post has been manually curated on behalf of @SBTOfficial by @sgt-dan. Check out our partners' projects to find more play2earn opportunites!
Congratulations @konaqua! You have completed the following achievement on the Hive blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s):
Your next target is to reach 2750 upvotes.
You can view your badges on your board and compare yourself to others in the Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPCheck out the last post from @hivebuzz:
Support the HiveBuzz project. Vote for our proposal!
Thanks for sharing! - @alokkumar121
