Strategy Corner #41- Unprotected Ruleset - Another Possibilus setup.

I have to say, it was quite a rollercoaster. We were supposed to have Lands 1.5 on the main server, but unfortunately, it was postponed. I don't need to say what was the community's reaction to that announcement, but I still think it could be worse. Despite that fact, we had quite nice events, Rebellion pre-sale ended, and almost all packs were sold. I'm not sure about it, because it's not easy to check the real price history on the hive chain (maybe you have any tips for that), but I saw one tweet with a screen that DEC hit peg value. But still, it doesn't change a lot, because even without that peg value we had a nice bunch of SPS burned to get DEC. As always, I hope that it will be enough to stop always thinking about the economy and move on to more interesting elements and gameplay features. My personal favorite could be a draft mode and a battle pass.
And of course, we come here to discuss strategy, so let's check our today's ruleset.

Description:

All armor is removed from units and one cannot gain armor.

Shield and Divine Shield are unaffected.

Firstly, the description of the ruleset in the game is not perfect, sometimes you get just general information which does not give you all the information you need. The best way to read the full description as above from the game documentation at least once. You can check all here.

I seriously encourage you guys to check this site, even more advanced players could find something interesting there.

It might seem that negating armor will not change the rules of combat so drastically. But you should know, that in my opinion we have heavy armor meta, and stacking armor is almost always a great idea. Now we have to change our way of thinking, some of the cards are almost useless. Of course, you can still use monsters with Protect ability, but you will not get any armor that way. It points us to use more physical damage monsters, which usually have greater damage and now without armor protection, we have much better effectiveness. The same rules apply to summoners, big part of them give additional armor, which now it's just a useless ability. That's why it's just the perfect ruleset for summoners like Possibilus, General Sloan etc. Of course, as always that opens more options to find some counterplay, shiled is the best example of perfect counter ability. And mind games begin :), maybe using a magic monster could be a good idea to surprise the opponent, that's why I still stick to the game. Let's jump to the battle :)

Today's battle is Wild Silver ladder game. Maybe it's not the fairest battle, but it was the perfect example to present a great setup with Possibilus the Wise. That's why I chose it,

Recently we had the battle with Possibilus, so today we have quite a similar setup, but the big change is the ruleset, of course, unprotected is the perfect set for him. I will try to focus more on different aspects of the battle, but you can check my thoughts about the previous battle here . This time I haven't forgotten about Coastal Sentry, so great card with Possibulus. Deeplurker could be quite surprising for you because you should know that I'm not a big fan of that card. But with the addition of another opportunity card: Kulu Mastermind and the no armor the team is quite effective. And because it's the melee-only battle we used buff and debuff.
Opponent's setup seems quite budget version, not all card are on max level, so definitely we have big advantage here, and mostly concentrate of our team to present this strategy.

Round 1, we stopped in the middle of round one, because action is quite fast here. We already managed to killed Kraken and we damaged the next unit, mostly because of the trample ability from Possibilus. Opponent monsters are quite slow, so still haven't received most of the damage from their attacks.

Round 2, we had some hits from sneak monsters, but not enough to kill our Deeplurker. We managed to kill another monster and as we can see for the next round it is just 10 rounds so it will probably be over soon.

Final Blow - Round 2 - one of my fastest battles, just 2 rounds and we didn't lose any monsters. Of course, one of the reasons is the lower level of the opponent, but we will discuss it in the analysis section

it was a slaughter :). But as I mentioned the opponents had quite a budget setup with underdeveloped monsters, so that definitely wasn't a fair battle. I still think even that setup with maxed-level monsters for the league we played should be easily beaten with Possibilus. We will talk more about the specific monsters in Core action below, but I would like to mention a few words about opportunity. In general, I'm usually not the biggest fan of that ability. It could be used against you with smarter opponents when he uses some cannon fodder to change focus outside the real damage dealers. Additionally, most opportunity monsters have physical damage, so when armor is available they usually need 2-3 attacks to destroy those targets. Situations change a lot without armor, and with an additional trample ability from Possibilus, monsters become the beasts. So let's check what option we have.

KULU MASTERMIND, that cards change my thinking of opportunity ability. I think we talked about that card already, but it's nice to bring it back. From the stats view, Kulu is more than solid, fast enough, and 4 damage is excellent to kill a lower HP monster with just one hit. The mix of abilities is interesting, we have some protection with Shield. And of course Weapon training, which opens some nice combo with Noe. So sometimes even the Unprotected ruleset isn't necessary, but of course very helpful for Kulu Mastermind effectiveness.

DEEPLURKER , yes we got him. Most hated cards on my every stream. I called people to burn that card :). And now it hits the Core team section :). My opinion is usually based on lower leagues, I know that for gold and higher Deeplurker gets a nice bunch of abilities which make him quite an effective card. In silver it could be the curse, but as I mentioned all opportunity cards shine brighter when armor is not available. Deeplurker does a good job, with similar stats as Kulu, a lower mana cost but no no abilities, and still a very good killer card. (in proper circumstances.

DEMENTED SHARK, is another card that I bought from older set. My plan was to build a water melee team. It was totally different time and my way of thinking. But Shark is still in my collection and could be a great addition to a heavy melee team. That melee buff could be the element that will help break the deadlock, especially in the melee-only ruleset, when you want to lower melee damage as much as you can. The card is not ideal, the defense capabilities aren't very big, so if you put it in the front row, it dies quite fast, and you lose the buff. On the other hand, standing back usually means you can't attack. Quid pro quo.

Firstly, let's summarize the ruleset exploration. I think you should notice that I like Unprotected ruleset. It's another thing, which changes interestingly the rules of combat. It shifts slightly the balance of damage towards the physical one, but you need to be aware of any other tricks.

Around ecosystem news, I think we have finally seen some hype. We could have seen some new cards from Rebellion, the pre-sale went great, flywheel was somewhat activated. For sure we see some movement around, and I hope this time we can use that momentum optimally. I wonder what the regular Rebellion sale will look like. What do you think?

I hope you like this kind of report, battle, and strategy presentation. More strategy analysis, discussion, and prediction games you can find on my Wednesday Twitch Channel stream. There will be schedule soon :)

If you have any comments, please do not hesitate. Do you think I could improve anything just tell me :)

If you wish to try out Splinterlands you can use my reference link.

Thumbnails and other pictures borrowed with permission from the Splinterlands team or made in Cooltext

We continue our game from the previous week, today new battle, new card to win :).

I come up with some ideas, I hope you will like them and participate. Every week I will publish one battle, and your goal is to point out the first victim of the battle and who will be the winner. This game is exactly the same as my prediction game which I run on my Wednesday Splinterlands.tv stream. I know that not everyone can attend the stream, so I hope you will still have fun in that way. More about the rules can be read here.

Among all participants who get the correct answer, I will randomly (probably on my Wednesday stream) choose one winner.

The prize of the blog prediction game for the lucky winner will be the epic card:

Here we got the battle:

Game instruction:
Try to point out which monster will die first on the battlefield and who wins the battle

• t - top player
• b - bottom player
• number - order counting from the first position

Examples:
t2b = monster on the second position of top player dies first, the bottom player wins
b6t = monster on the sixth position of bottom player dies first, the top player wins
t3t = monster on the third position of top player dies first, the top player wins

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