Hey everyone and welcome back to my Splinterlands blog, it's a Thursday evening now and I'm a bit behind on making the first post for this week, real life got in the way - it happens to all of us sometimes so without further ado, let's get going!

This post is to participate in this weeks Social Media Challenge, and the theme we have to work with is the same as last weeks:

🔥 Share Your Most Remarkable Splinterlands Moments: Do you possess a battle of epic proportions that deserves to be seen by all? Have you crafted something extraordinary within the Splinterlands realm? Maybe you've got profound thoughts, insights, or strategies related to stats, cards, abilities, or gameplay that are waiting to be shared? We want it all, and we want it to be nothing short of AMAZING!

To find out how you can participate in this challenge yourself, check out the official Splinterlands post here.

Social Media Challenge

Every week, there is a lot happening in the world of Praetoria, for me the most exciting thing that happened this week was I was able to buy Mantaroth with my blogging rewards. 😃

I felt I needed a tank with decent HP and the Shield ability, especially in certain rulesets like neutrals only and when I was playing the Death splinter in higher mana matches in general, I didn't have a good chunky tank that was able to take a couple of hits.

When we look at the market, only 13 cards are currently for sale and about half of them are higher level.
I only needed a level 1, it's quite expensive but well worth the money, at level 2 Mantaroth gains the True Strike ability, which is great of course but his first job is to stop enemy attacks, when it doesn't land it's own attack it's not that bad - it's what the rest of my team is supposed to do anyway. 🙂

Sharing a battle

So, what is a Splinterlands post without a shared battle in it, right!? For this post I saved a cool battle I had a couple of days ago, and my new Mantaroth is fighting in it as well!

A battle where two Dragon Archons clash...

The battle I saved to share for this post is a 38 mana Modern League, Maneuvers / Equalizer battle with only the Death splinter locked out, so plenty of options to choose from. With the Equalizer ruleset I always try to incorporate one of my two monsters with *Corrupted Healing* and because the Death splinter was locked out, I choose a Dragon / Fire combo.

First look at the battlefield:

In the previous played battles, I could see my opponent had a higher level deck and was playing Akane a lot, I also own Akane but I only play it at really high mana matches, where I can put units like Rage and Barashkukor in my team so they both can attack before round 1 with the Ambush ability, doing a combined 9 magic damage even before the fight started.

In this case my attack power wasn't that high so I went for Sheng Xiao instead, the Poison Burst helped me win against higher level players before, I can only do my best to make a great team with this disadvantage, so let's see how this plays out!

My Line-Up:

• Archon: Sheng Xiao - reason: Access to Dragons and Poison Burst tactic.
• First position: Drybone Megalodon - reason: High damage with Retaliate.
• Second position: Mantaroth - reason: Good damage, great tank with Shield and Armored Strike.
• Third position: Inept Healer - reason: Corrupted Healing.
• Fourth position: Baron Fyatt - reason: Halving with Scattershot can cripple the enemy's attack in longer battles.
• Fifth position: Blazebeard Merc - reason: Good damage with Charge.
• Sixth position: Kha'Zi Conjurer - reason: High damage with Piercing.

So as you can see I've put two debilitation units in my team, they both like to set fire to their team mates but have great damage output for only a couple of mana... I choose to put the Inept Healer so far to the front because I didn't want it to get burned too fast, and with the Corrupted Healing it can heal the damage the Burning has caused

The Battle:

Tactics Stage: My opponent choose to give Ambush to the two units with the highest attack, good choice! With Poison Burst I like to adapt to the enemy team but because of the Equalizer ruleset, there's not a lot of chance of anyone in the middle of my team will get killed fast by an enemy monster with Opportunity so I simply gave the tactic to the first two units in my team.

Ambush Round: My tank got hit pretty hard, it is what it is, hopefully my healer is fast enough to heal it before it dies.

Round 1: My tank did got healed, since Inept Healer is Legendary and 4 speed, like other units in the other team, it's the first in the round to take it's turn. Unfortunately my tank was killed anyway, but not before it retaliated to one attack and poisoned Halfling Refugee when it was killed.

Round 2: One killed of both sides now, the Burning is active but hopefully my healer can contain the damage. Night Reaper's attack got halved, very nice since it's the unit doing the most damage.

Round 3: The burning has spread to Fyatt now, Halfling Refugee is almost dead, let's get him!

Round 4: This is starting to look good!! Mantaroth is getting dangerously low on HP now though...

Round 5: Looks like Mantaroth will live another day, the enemy damage output isn't high enough to kill him.

Round 6: Another monster is killed!

Round 7: Crazy the burning hasn't spread any further, but Inept Healer is worth it's steep price for sure in this battle! Great card!

Round 8: Oh shit... Night Reaper has Last Stand on max level, I don't think I've ever seen a max level before!

Round 9: This is getting exciting after all... KILL HIM!!!

Round 10: O crap, Blazebeard Merc missed!

Round 11: Hah! The poison got him, well he fought hard I give him that!

You can watch the battle unfold for yourself here.

A great battle with good rewards!

Well, that's it for this post - I hope you enjoyed!

With my energy drained enough to last to tomorrow before it reaches 50, and no more time to grind another five wins, I have at least earned my 100 entries goal, wish me luck!

Thank you for reading!!!

If you haven't made an account already, please consider using my referral link to sign up, I'll happily send the amount I get for your signup back to you in DEC or SPS to help you start.

Also, when you require any help to get you started,let me know, I'm here to advice and guide new players and maybe I can help you with card delegations too!

Have a great day!