Hi everyone, welcome back to my Splinterlands Blog, today I'll be making a post about this weeks battle mage secrets challenge: the Earthquake ruleset in which all non-flying units take 2 physical damage at the end of every turn.
snared units are considered non-flying. Since the damage given is physical, it can be reduced to 1 if the unit has the shield ability.
If you like to find out how you can enter the challenge yourself, you can find the official post here.
This week, I'll be sharing not 1, but two strategies for both high mana and low mana, I did a earthquake battle with 15 mana and one with 99 mana.
My strategy combines with speed, it's so important in our splinterlands battles, I made a post about it last week, you can read it here.
With the earthquake ruleset, flying types are the best to use, you can use several splinters which have a lot of flying monsters, I like to use Life, Death, Earth and Dragon, depending on the available splinters to choose from, and you can add some good flyers from the Neutral team as well... let's get over the options I have in my modern high level silver deck...
Starting with the Life splinter:
- Pelacor Conjurer: This great cheap card without attack is very good, with it's flying ability combined with it's speed, it can dodge a lot of physical attacks, and when it gets hit by magic, it's reflects some damage back to the attacker, making low health attackers kill themselves, when I expect a lot of magic this is a must have, it pairs very well with Grandmaster Rathe, giving it void armor.
- War Pegasus: This new soulbound reward card is very good, it has good speed and combined with it's flying ability I like to use this as my last card, protecting my team against sneak attacks, the war pegasus can dodge a lot of attacks most of the times. The shatter ability is great too, because it has good speed, it fires as one of the first, shattering the enemy tank's armor, so the rest of my team can delete the tank in the first round.
- Light Elemental: This cheap card for only 4 mana is a real glass cannon with only 2 health points and 2 magic damage, I tuck this card somewhere in the 4th or 5th position to prevent it from dying too fast, like all cards in this list, it too has the flying ability, so it can hopefully dodge some attacks. I bought this card especially from the earthquake ruleset.
- Adelaide Brightwing: This is a great card, not cheap, both in price as in mana value. I have her at level 2, and with flying, repair and resurrect it's a great support card.
- Uriel the Purifier: This 11 mana tank is considered a giant, but in silver there aren't a lot of giant killers yet, it has great armor and health points and good attack strength, I have him at level 2 for the self heal ability which is great. He has one major drawback though... the recharge ability, I really don't like it.
Next is the Death splinter:
- Pelacor Deceiver: A good flying tank with good speed, great health points and ok attack strength, I have it at level 4 gold foil, I can summon a level 5 but it only gains 1 extra health point and it needs 3 extra gold foil cards, I don't consider this a good investment.
- Riftwing: This card without attack is really nice to use in earthquake battles, I like to put it in the snipe position or at the back so it can gain a lot of HP with it's scavenger ability. it's speed and flying ability makes it dodge a lot of physical attacks, I have this at level 5 so it has the backfire ability, really cool to see enemy attackers miss and receive 2 damage back, killing themselves.
- Every Hungry Skull: High armor, good attack, but only 1 HP, when I have mana left I use this as my last card so it can hopefully outlast the enemy team without taking earthquake damage because of it's flying ability. This card is more useful in the equalizer or weak magic ruleset.
- Soulstorm: Another card I bought specific for the earthquake ruleset, and another glass cannon. Good attack, great speed and the flying ability. I put this in the 4th or 5th position to hopefully protect it from dying too fast.
- Will-O-Wisp: This new soulbound reward card without attack is nice for earthquake battles! Good speed, great HP and the flying ability makes it good in dodging some attacks, and the weaken ability nerfing the whole enemy team with -1 HP, hopefully making some enemy cards die 1 round sooner.
- Lira the Dark: This card doesn't have flying but it's still nice because of it's snare ability, rendering enemy flying monsters take damage anyway. In most earthquake battles I play her, she targets the neutral Gargoya Devil, with only 3 HP it dies fast when it takes earthquake damage.
Next is the Earth splinter:
When I have other options, I don't like to play earth, because many players already do, I prefer to counter my opponents so I'll use death in most cases when I expect my opponent to play earth. When death isn't available however, it can be a nice choice.
- Nectar Queen: Great attack and HP but with only 2 speed, it's gonna miss some attacks, it's a nice 2nd tank for higher mana battles and a good meat shield.
- Pelacor Mercenary: Great tank, good speed, good attack, flying... Solid choice for earthquake battles.
- Regal Peryton: The star of this team in this ruleset, I like to surround this card with martyr cards, it's one of the strategies I'm gonna share later is this post, it will become very fast and very powerful.
- Queen Mycelia: Her protect ability gives all non flying monsters in her team one extra round without earthquake damage.
And now, the all-mighty Dragon splinter:
Dragon cards are pretty expensive, and I only recently invested in expanding my dragon deck, so it's not something for starting players, for them, I do have 1 good tip: the dragon splinter also has a summoner that gives everyone flying: Brighton Bloom! When I had a lower deck I used Brighton a lot in earthquake battles, and I still do sometimes when I don't have good other options.
Pretty much all dragon cards have the same characteristics: they're fast, expensive and most of them are flyers.
- Runic Skyclaw: A really strong card, perfect for the last position, great speed and flying makes it dodge a lot of sneak attacks while it does a solid 3 archery snipe damage himself.
- Void Dragon: Fast, void, nice as a 2nd position off-tank.
- Agor Longtail: The king of my dragon team, with 2 attack types it's a very dangerous card, with 15 mana it's also the most expensive card as far as mana concerned in the game I think. Because it has taunt, it's gonna take all the heat, so some support cards are needed to heal and repair him or he will die too fast.
The Neutral team has some great additions too:
- Gargoya Lion: With void and flying it makes a nice tank sometimes, but I prefer other options when I have them because it only has 2 speed.
- Gargoya Devil: This is a great card, I got it at level 4. Good speed, great attack, flying... the deathblow ability is a little underwhelming because most of the times, I'm already winning when the enemy team is down to 1 card. It's a nice counter against a card with last stand.
The Battles
On to the battles! I first like to share the low mana battle. with only 15 mana you don't have a lot of option. My strategy is pretty powerful, I like to surround Regal Peryton with martyr cards, it works even better on my main account, where my Peryton has 2 magic attack damage.
You can watch the battle unfold for yourself here.
This battle is against a poor configured bot, because it would be better if it switched the cards around lol...
In round 2, when the earthquake damage hits and my martyr cards die, my peryton had a whopping 4 magic damage, 8 speed and 8 HP... Good luck in hitting that! 😆 The outcome of this battle is not hard to predict...
This also works with a 12 mana battle, I put 1 martyr in front of the peryton.
The next battle is all about speed....
So this battle is a very high mana battle, so you can expect some heavy hitters to be played...
You can watch the battle unfold for yourself here.
In this battle I went all flying, it would be a waste to use low mana martyr cards in this high mana battle.
The setup is pretty straight forward, Quix the Devious primary job is to nerf the enemy speed of my already fast team, Will-O-Wisp is just a meat shield, while Riftwing can gain some extra HP before it gets to the front. My back line has some heavy damage archers.
When you watch the battle, you will see the power of speed once again! So many misses!
The fire team is great at damage, not so much in speed though, and high damage when you keep missing is no damage at all 😄
This battle is against a bot AGAIN.... they're really starting to become annoying, some are pretty good, especially against lower accounts. My alt account with only lvl 2 rare summoners gets defeated by it quite some times, luckily, my main has a lot more success against them.
I really hope the anti bot measures are gonna be effective, I wonder how they're gonna do it though. I don't have a problem with people using bots on a few accounts when they don't have time to play all of them. I DO have a problem with the bot farms though, in silver it's all the same names last months, this 'ding' bot farm is one of them, and it's one of the better ones, just not in this fight 😁
Well that was a bit besides the topic but still relevant, on to my battle..
While the enemy team started with A LOT more HP and armor points, by round 4 my team didn't received a lot of damage, which can't be said about my opponent...
1 round later, the battle was already done, with little change in my team since the start
Well, enough typing for today, that's it! I'll talk to you soon in my Social Media Challenge post, which I still need to make for this week.
Have fun, stay strong!!
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Thanks for sharing! - @alokkumar121
very important