Splinterlands Community Engagement Challenge: Battlefield Breakthroughs!

This week's community challenge is about sharing an epic battle moment, strategy, a clever counter-pick or a last-second win. This is definitely a fun topic to explore as this is basically what Splinterlands is all about. It is always exciting when you manage to "read" your opponent based on the active rulesets and their previous teams, and deliver the perfect counter to their favorite strategy. It's often even more exciting (or upsetting) when your opponent's units miss a few attack so you can take that coveted clutch win or on the contrary when your high-speed dodge/evasion/backfire team just refuses to cause a single miss for the opponent and you lose miserably. The bottom line is - no matter what happens, it's always emotional for one of the two sides, or for both.

The battle I've chosen to showcase is both a way to showcase picks for a particular ruleset and with a satisfying end (for me). It was exciting because it was the last win I needed for my 3rd Foundations pack from the Frontier mode dailies yesterday. I think we should be showcasing as many Frontier battles as possible because the mode has proven to be very successful in just the 10 days it's been out. I think it has great potential to onboard a lot of new players into the ecosystem of SPL. I hope this is only the beginning.

The rulesets are Earthquake and Reverse Speed, the mana is 31 and the only available element is Life. I would have probably played Life anyway even if other elements were available since Life is a good counter to Earthquake in the Frontier format, as the Life Archon is the only one which provides Armor (+1) to its team.

Mirror battles are really common in Frontier, even more so when there is only one Element available but I made sure to make my line-up and positioning different than the standard one. I included my maxed Wild Horse Tamer:

mostly because it has 7 life at max level so that would guaranteed it survives longer taking damage from Earthquake. Another deliberate positioning decision I often make in Frontier was to place:

The Spellmonger in first position. I do this usually for 2 reasons - first of all the Spellmonger is a great counter to enemy Opportunity units, but also when it's placed in first position, it gets to be hit by the main tank of the enemy as well and the purpose of that is to reduce the armor/hp of the tank faster. The damage in Frontier is generally low (unless you're facing a stacked Magic-Spam Water team with all the bells and whistles), so it takes some time for the units with higher health/armor values to die.

Round 3 - my Spellmonger has gone down, however, my main tank is still with 4 Armor and 6 HP while theirs is with 1 Armor and 6 HP, both of my back-line units are definitely going down this round though. My victory does not look certain at all at this point, in fact it looks more like I am on the losing side right now.

Round 4 - it is just my main tank left versus 3 of their units (before Earthquake), however, it has Shield (as an ability) and it still has 1 armor and full HP of 6, while the enemy tank is already at 5 HP and 0 armor (the Spellmonger helped for that). The enemy back-line is definitely going down to Earthquake sooner rather than later.

The Earthquake sweeps the battleground in the beginning of Round 6 and my calculated strategy manages to prevail by exactly 1 HP. That was an exciting victory for me cause it allowed me to claim my last daily pack for the day as I previously mentioned.

Well, this was it for this week. Remember - Drawing in Frontier is not a beneficial outcome. Always try to surprise your opponent with a slightly different positioning or with the inclusion of an extra unit they do not expect. Getting to a 62% WR on a daily basis is actually pretty hard for the most part, so every point of energy is very important and should be treated very seriously. See you on the battlefield of Frontier!