There Will Be Thorns - A Super Sneak Battle

Greetings, battle mages!

I hope your Splinterlands week has been good for you and full of SPS & card rewards and less of those potions. As for me, the Splintergods have finally shown some mercy and I've managed to pull a couple of summoners and gold foil cards too. The cherry on top of the cake was the legendary Usut card! Now I'm only one card short of upgrading that beast to the second level.

This week's Battle Mage Secrets challenge features the Super Sneak ruleset and I have a great example battle to share with you guys.

Super Sneak means that all the Melee monsters will have the Sneak ability which will likely lead to massive pressure on the last spot monsters. With this on my mind, I began to build my squad.

The Summoner

I had already decided to go with Earth Splinter but instead of choosing one of the Earth Summoners, I'd ended up picking HELIOS MATRIARCH.

The reason for this was that I needed one particular monster from the Dragon Splinter and also because my strategy required a certain Gladiator unit to cause some mayhem on the battlefield. In addition to these options, the Matriarch also boosts the speed of all of my monsters.

My Team

I mentioned that I got a few new gold foil cards this week and one of them happened to TERRACEUS GRUNT which I then was able to upgrade to level 4.

Even though the Grunt doesn't have any armour, its Dodge ability will make will make it harder for the melee or ranged units to hit. Also, even if they manage to land some blows, Terraceous Grunt with its 11 hitpoints won't go down that easily.

In my opinion, these traits are more than enough to compensate for its rather weak attack and the fact that it isn't the faster unit in the arena.

VENARI MARKSRAT is a quite weak ranged unit with one of my favourite abilities - Martyr.

In a very likely case the Marksrat should die the adjacent monsters would get all their stats increased by one.

My tank unit could also benefit from this awesome ability if the opponent should use Blast ability, or they would have monsters with Opportunity. In the latter case, they would be targeting the Rat because it has the lowest amount of health(3) on my team.

Still, perhaps the biggest reason for Venari Marksrat being on my team and being placed here is the next monster...

QUORA TOWERSHEAD is probably the unit with the most mentions in my posts, and for a reason!

She is very likely one the most powerful level 1 unit in the game with both melee and magic attacks, plenty of health, Heal ability, and on top of that - the Bloodlust ability.

My idea here is simple: because of the Super Sneak ruleset, Quora is able to use both of her attacks from the safety of the middle spot. This will hopefully result in destroying the last monster on the enemy squad triggering the Bloodlust ability and making her even stronger if and when it's her to take the tank spot.

If this would happen, it would mean the Marksrat would be dead but not before contributing to Quora's awesomeness first. All hail the champion!

With Super Sneak it is quite tempting to choose as many melee monsters as possible and because of that, we have DISINTEGRATOR here to make them a bit less dangerous.

This unit will use its Demoralize ability to reduce the melee strength of enemy monsters by one.

Disintegrator has also good armour and a nice amount of health and that is why I have placed it in the second to last spot. Here it will be able to protect the first-line units if the pressure on the back should become too much for my last spot monster.

Because of the Super Sneak, the Disintegrator is also able to perform attacks from this position.

Last but not least, DJINN CHWALA takes the last spot.

She has a good amount of health(9) and a strong armour(5). These will come in handy since most of the opponent's melee monsters will be targeting her.

However, they might be in for a surprise because of Chwala's Thorns. This means they'll take damage themselves after each successful hit.

Djinn Chwala has a strong melee attack(3) of her own and will be using that from this spot thanks to Super Sneak.

Entering The Arena

There you have it, in a nutshell, I'm kinda using two tank units - one in front and one in the back. Besides that, Demoralize, Thorns, and Martyr should give some hardship to my opponent.

Speaking of which, let's take a look at their team.

Just like me, they also put their trust in the Earth Splinter but instead of choosing a more expensive Soulbound summoner, they went with a classic one.

MYLOR CROWLING is a nasty piece of work and a perfect choice for a battle in which the use of melee monsters is expected.

The one and only summoner buff of Mylor is to give the Thorns ability to every friendly monster. This is like my grand idea of using Djinn Chawala but multiplied by six...

The rest of their team looks pretty intimidating too even though they are all level 1 monsters. The couple of ones I'd like to highlight here are Mycelic Infantry and GRUND.

The latter one mentioned is this lizard with two war hammers and a Double Strike ability. This causes some extra pressure on Djinn Chwala but thanks to Thorns, Grund will also suffer some extra damage for attacking twice.

Their answer to Super Sneak is MYCELIC INFANTRY, a quite common sight as a tank unit but this time placed in the last spot. This is actually an even better idea than Djinn Chwala because thanks to their summoner buff it will have Thorns as well as the Shield ability.

The Battle

So, I think we will have an interesting 40-mana Super Sneak battle ahead of us which will also include Ferocity ruleset. However, in this battle it won't have any effect.

If you want to watch the whole battle, click HERE or/and continue reading my battle report below!

ROUND 1

After the first round of crazy melee attacks, almost all of the monsters had taken some damage - Djinn Chwala being the one who was left barely alive.

ROUND 2

Quora Towershead being the fastest unit in the arena performed the first (two) attacks and neatly took out the Mycelic Infantry. The opponent quickly retaliated and killed the injured Djinn Chwala.

The disintegrator then became their target but it was us who removed the next monster as Xenith Monk found this being too much for him.

ROUND 3

The next round began with Quare doing Quora things. She first killed Venari Knifer and then hurt Grund with her second attack. The round ended in the death of Venari Marksrat making Quara even more powerful.

ROUND 4

Before continuing her killing spree, Quora first healed herself after taking some damage from Thorns. She then destroyed the buzzing nuisance of Nectar Queen. Even though Grund still managed to hurt Quora with its double strike, we moved on to the last round much faster and overpowered Quora having the advantage.

The match was over.

Conclusion

This is a ruleset that allows many different approaches. In this battle, we saw the use of Thorns ability on both sides as well as the Shield. Besides these, one way to tackle this ruleset, and to remove the negative effects of Thorns, for example, would be to use Ranged or/and magic units.

Super Sneak is a ruleset that makes it very tempting to use those powerful melee monsters in the back line but at the same time, it opens the door for all sorts of evil traps that can make the most advanced strategy to backfire.

Be cautious when playing Super Sneak.

Thank you for reading!