Welcome to my 22nd #BrawlReport as part of the @hive.pizza PIZZA 2 The Deep Dish guild!

I'm back in the action in this brawl after entering the last brawl and having no opponents join my Gold Foil fray!

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Congratulations to @nata86 for taking 1st place with 7 wins and 2 losses. I placed a close second with 6 wins and 2 losses, tied with @amaillo-m who also had 6 wins.

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PIZZA 2 The Deep Dish Results

We had some serious competition in this brawl, with several top 100 guilds and even a top 10 guild. We placed a respectable 6th place given the level of competition, although we could have possibly earned enough points to overtake Armageddon, it wouldn't have really changed our rewards much.

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My Battles

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Battle 1 - Win

Armored Up: All monsters have 2 armor in addition to their normal armor stat.
Taking Sides: Neutral monsters may not be used in battles.

This opponent is in a #13 ranked guild, Ice Cream Syndicate, and chose a magic-defense strategy with the Unicorn Mustang tank and a Gladiator placed right behind. I also chose to deploy a Gladiator in the second position, Palidon Rakk, with his massive 12 health that will be further boosted by the +2 armor provided by the Armored Up ruleset. In hindsight, my mistake was placing a useless card in the tank position as it gave his gladiator the chance to power up with the bloodlust ability - I should have just played my Gladiator by himself. This is something to keep in mind as a difference in strategy between ranked battles and brawls.

When my gladiator took the first position, his Last Stand ability boosted his stats to 5 melee, 3 speed, 3 armor (yes it boosts with Last Stand and Bloodlust even with the Armor Up source of the armor), and 21 health. He is basically a super-tank at this point. The 5 melee took out my opponent's tank then boosted my gladiator's stats to make the next two kills even easier.

Watch this battle.

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Battle 2 - Loss

Explosive Weaponry: All monsters have the blast ability.
Stampede: The Trample ability can trigger multiple times per attack if the trampled monster is killed.

I really hate these low-mana battles! It makes choosing good cards very difficult and I feel it lends more to luck in how the battle ends. In this case, I didn't want to put multiple cards out because of the Blast ability that could cause additional damage to me. But, I also wanted to make sure if my opponent made that mistake that I had a card with Bloodlust ability to be able to take advantage of card deaths.

The problem here is that my opponent used Magnor, which has 3 speed and is boosted further by their summoner. The damn "miss" and the fact that they get to go first each round cost me this battle. Speed and the miss calculation is something I need to get better at.

Watch this battle.

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Battle 3 - Win

Opponent Fled.

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Battle 4 - Win

Opponent Fled.

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Battle 5 - Loss

Weak Magic: Magic attacks hit armor before reducing health.
Rise of the Commons: Only common and rare monster may be used in battles.

A 50-mana battle is exactly what I enjoy, but this one added the awful restriction that only common and rare monsters may be used! Ugh!

In this case, my summoner and gladiator will have to carry the weight of the battle without the use of any of the legendaries that I rent for these Untamed brawls. My opponent is from the #10 ranked Goat Gang and has gold foil Gladiators already, which should tell you something! We matched strategy for the first three cards in each of our lineups, but I played it a bit differently in the last card and used a defensive melee monster to insulate me from any Sneak attacks. Unfortunately, my opponent did not utilize any Sneak cards so that back monster of mine was just dead weight there and my opponent used an other range attack in that place.

Their use of a +2 speed summoner also meant nearly all of their cards got the first hit on me and quickly killed one of my monsters. Add to that some misses because of the speed difference and this was a quickly lost battle for me despite very similar cards in play.

Watch this battle.

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Battle 6 - Win

Armored Up: All monsters have 2 armor in addition to their normal armor stat.

This is one of my favorite brawl setups, with Chimney Wallstop in the second position and the Yodin summoner providing blast ability. That Chimney monster really lays out a lot of damage with blast. My opponent also used Chimney, but placed him in the tank position. I prefer to hold him back one position because he has the Reach ability and can boost his stats before becoming a target as a tank.

Watch this battle

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Battle 7 - Win

Opponent Fled.

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Battle 8 - Win

Target Practice: All ranged and magic attack monsters have the snipe ability.

Any time there is a 17 mana battle that allows the earth splinter, you have to go with the Llama/Kron combo. There is probably a specific counter set for this now with the Chaos Legion cards in play, but this is still as good a setup as you can get without a very sophisticated opponent who knows that you'll play Llama/Kron.

Watch this battle

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Final Thoughts

There were some tough challengers in this brawl and each win was hard fought and each loss stung quite badly. For the especially well fought battles, I'd like to start sending some Splinterlands Battle Tokens (SBT) to my opponents to celebrate a good fight! However, I am finding that very few of my brawl opponents use the blogging feature of Hive and seem to just stick with playing Splinterlands.

I'm very happy with how this set of battles turned out, although I may have just gotten lucky by having 3 opponents who fled. I made sure to wait to submit my battles until a few hours before the end of the brawl to ensure my rentals didn't disappear before the battle occurred. However, I believe I saw something in Discord recently that this "bug" has been fixed. I'll have to explore this some more to see what exactly the devs did to change this.

For my efforts in this brawl, I received 415 merits and am probably two more brawls away from being able to buy my next Gladius case!

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1Up Project

If you haven't seen the news yet, check out the new 1UP project. This looks like a great new gaming project for Play2Earn blockchain games like Splinterlands! I seem to be getting around 100 OneUp tokens on each of these posts, so the earnings will add up over time!

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What is the @hive.pizza #BrawlReport?

@kennysgaminglife has spearheaded the #BrawlReport project as a way to get PIZZA guild members more engaged in the @Splinterlands community. Here's what he had to say:

Starting with the brawl that just ended, I've invited/asked members of the #HivePizza guild to publish a #BrawlReport, breaking down their highs & lows, where they need help, questions they have, strategies they love, and so on. The idea is to help us all reflect a bit, learn a bit, share a bit, earn a bit, and connect a bit :-)
Any other guilds interested in publishing a #BrawlReport, either as individuals, or one for the whole guild, I'm happy to send some curation love your way!

My last Brawl Report: https://www.splintertalk.io/@shauner/shauner-s-21st-splinterlands-brawl

My season 63 @Splinterstats rewards post: https://www.splintertalk.io/@shauner/splinterstats-season-63-report-card

Check out the other recent #BrawlReport posts from the #HIVEPIZZA family:

@higherlow - Splinterlands Brawl Report - 12/20/2021 #HivePizza #BrawlReport

@failingforward - My Brawl Report No.14 - HivePizza BrawlReport 21/12/2021

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