Splinterlands, the obvious, not so obvious, part 3...

Hi everyone! Time for another explainer for Splinterlands, because it's a great game but with a steep learning curve, but then again... most good games have the same.
In the splinterlands collaboration with the Wasder app, we made a new guild to support and guide new players, and I started writing explainers to refer to, because it's just too much to simply tell people in our discord server.

Are you a new player who wants a nice team to work with and get some advice and support where needed? Feel free to join our Discord server.

In my explainer series I made some posts before:

Getting started in Splinterlands.

Explaining Brawls

The importance of speed.

Battle basics, rulesets and card placement.

Last weeks, I made the first posts in my 'The obvious, not so obvious series'
You can find part 1 here.
You can find part 2 here.

For us Splinter junkies some things are so obvious, while they are not at all for players starting and learning the ropes, so I want to talk about some basics and strategies I'm using in different rulesets to help you guys get some guidance because there's just too much to remember. In my country we have a saying, literally translated it goes: you can no longer see the wood because of the trees 😅

In my own gameplay doing ranked battles, brawls and sometimes a tournament I'll try and write down tips I can talk about here, I'll try to make 2 or 3 tips in every edition, depending on how long my post is because no one wants to read for 15 minutes right?

A little quiz first....

While we grind our battles, we just make our teams partially on automatic mode, but the little differences can decide a win or lose sometimes, here a some questions, do you know the answer?

• In a Super Sneak battle, when you play a Reach monster, what ability goes first? will your monster attack the backline as a sneaker or will it target the first position?
  
  
• In a Melee Mayhem match, when you play an Opportunity monster, will it strike the first position because it is Melee Mayhem, or will it strike as the Opportunity monster, targeting the lowest HP card on the battlefield?
  
  
  Do you know the answers? I'll continue with some tips first and will give you the answers later 😉

#1: Speed order.

In normal battles (not Reversed Speed ruleset) basic speed determines which monsters attacks first, with 1 being the slowest monsters, and 6 the fastest, of course fast monsters can attack first and have a better chance in landing it's attack than slower monsters, read more in detail about speed here The importance of speed.
But what if you both have a 5 speed monster, who goes first?
This is the attack order:

The order in which monsters attack is determined by the following variables, in order:

1. Speed
2. Attack Type
   • Magic
   • Range
   • Melee or No Attack
3. Rarity
4. Monster Level
5. Random (RNG)

#2: The last stand ability can really save you!

So we all know the Llama / Kron combo, but it's a little too expensive for most of us, but there are other better affordable last stand monsters like Tinderlock and Efreet Elder that have this ability at level 1.
As an example I did this battle where I think I would've without last stand too, but you can also use it in very low mana battles, even as the only monster on your team, it goes into last stand mode right at the start of the battle!

#3: Spell Reflect kills procs the Bloodlust ability.

I didn't knew this, I found out by accident lol, sometimes we get crazy ruleset combinations right? great... only magic AND spell reflect, so my thought was playing low HP monsters won't work since they're just going to kill themselves...

So at the start of the battle, it's 3 against 1, in most battles it pays to bring many small monsters to the battlefield instead of 1 big one, but not with spell reflect of course.

You can watch the battle unfold for yourself here.

What I didn't knew was when the enemy monster kills itself because of the spell reflect, Usut gets his Bloodlust going!

And now, the answers to the quiz...

• In a Super Sneak battle, when you play a Reach monster, what ability goes first? will your monster attack the backline as a sneaker or will it target the first position?

In this case, your Reach monster will attack the back line as a sneak monster, so Super Sneak has priority over Reach. (and also over Opportunity by the way)

• In a Melee Mayhem match, when you play an Opportunity monster, will it strike the first position because it is Melee Mayhem, or will it strike as the Opportunity monster, targeting the lowest HP card on the battlefield?

In this case, your Opportunity monster will target the lowest HP monster on the enemy team, so Opportunity has priority over Melee Mayhem. (Sneak also has priority over Melee Mayhem)

Little differences can get you more wins, I have a cheat-sheet next to my computer screen where I write down these kind of things, because I can't memorize them 😅.

Well, that's already it for this week! I'll try and write down more tips when I think of them in my battles, I hope to see you in my next posts!

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.

Have a great day!