Share Your Battle: Dragons

This week’s Share Your Battle theme is the Dragons!

After a few share-your-battle features that I have never played before, I finally have one that I am fairly well acquainted with, dragons.

Still toiling away in the bronze leagues, the dragon splinter gets a lot of play, especially in low mana matches, where the death splinter combination of 4-mana Thadius Brood, 6-mana Cursed Windeku and 2-mana Undead Badger make for a oft winning combination. But actually, there is a team that beats the deaths, enter the dragons!

In fact it isn’t a different team, it’s the same team just a different summoner! Substitute the 4-mana Drake of Anak for Thadius Brood, and it’s death for death. It works because the Drake’s +1 armor makes his Undead Badger a 1-armor/1-health card, and the 1 armor added to the Windeku absorbs a 2 damage hit making it effectively a 10-health card to Thadius’ 9. Clearly, the Drake's team has the edge but there is one more wrinkle.

Since the Windeku has thorns, each round each Windeku does 4 points of damage to the other. So at 10-health to 9, both Windekus will bite the dust in round 3, Unless Thadius’ Windeku takes one more point of damage. At 10 to 8 the Drake’s Windeku lives on after Thadius’ meets his demise in round 2. Well, remember the armored Undead badger is guaranteed to kill his counterpart in round one. Leaving him free to deliver that extra point of damage to the opposing Windeku in round 2. Chalk one up for the dragons!

So, with a winning idea already in hand I am ready for this week's share your battle.

I found a 14-mana, standard match, and knowing that the same death team is often played in 12-, 13- and 14-mana matches, with zero, one or two 1-mana fillers added to the base 12-mana team, I could see it was a dragon/death team candidate.

My opponent had two death matches in his last five, and both were low mana. Time to unleash the dragon/death team.

I have already spelled out the basics of my strategy above. The main idea is to construct a team that will deliver one extra point of damage to my opponent's expected Windeku tank. After that, my surviving Windeku’s thorns will go a long way to finishing off his backfield.

Naturally, my summoner is Drake of Arnak and my tank is the Cursed Windeku. Taking a cue from the last share-your-battle feature, I used the Shadow Snitch as my backfield. For my strategy it fits the bill perfectly. With it's reach it should deliver the one needed point of damage to my opponent's expected Windegu tank, and it has plenty of health to withstand the attcks from the expected Badger while also helping to clean up the my opponents backfield.

Well, no drama here. The plan worked exactly as expected this time. My opponent played the basic death team with two 1-mana fillers. And knowing what we do about how these low-mana death vs dragon/death matches go, the final outcome is hardly in question.

My opponent’s only hope is that my slow Snitch misses both its chances to take a point of damage from his tank. With a difference of 2 between the Snitch’s speed and the opposing Windeku’s speed I should expect to miss twice .2 * .2 or 4 percent of the time. I will take a 96 percent chance of winning any day.

The odds are in far in my favor, but you can see for yourself what happened here.

Unlike in my SYB post last week, this time my Snitch couldn't miss and the dragon team rolled to victory.

Strategies are always evolving in Splinterlands. It's a constant cat and mouse game as teams that counter popular teams emerge and then become popular themselves. I am seeing more low mana dragon/death teams now then I did just a few weeks ago, and if I can see that my opponent plays them I counter with magic that slips under the Drake's armor. In time, I expect such magic teams to gain favor, as many players have shifted to dragon. But then, the old death teams become the natural counter taking advantage of Thadius Brood's -1 magic. And on it goes.

But no matter what the most popular stategy might be, if I see that my opponent is playing low mana death teams, he should expect me to counter with a dragon/death team when we meet in a low mana match.