Hello, Splinter fans!
It's been somewhat of a legendary week for me. I think I've already mentioned that I pulled a gold foil version of the Drybone Raider which in fact, is my very first GF ever in the game. That wasn't all though as the next day I was lucky enough to pull a legendary , a life unit I've been jealously watching other players use.
Adelade Brightwing is another legendary monster that has been on my watchlist for a long time but not anymore as yesterday, I just had to add her to my collection as well.
It seems I have sort of drifted into building myself a decent Life Splinter deck. Well, Drybone Raider is Neutral but it works well with Life and especially with General Sloan. From now on it should also benefit from Adelade and her repair ability
As I didn't receive any legendaries from those three packs I bought, I have not been paying that much attention to those until just yesterday when was caught up in comparing their abilities and stats.
Feeling the legendary frenzy, I also got a great idea for this article as I was taking a closer look at the three monsters with the Armored Strike ability.
The unit with Armored Strike gets an additional melee attack using its armour stat.
I was pretty sure I knew what was meant by this but since I haven't been up against opponents with the ability, nor do I own any monsters with it myself, I needed to be 100% sure so I decided to rent one to see if the ability is as good as I think it will be.
Three legendary Rebellion monsters possess the Armored Strike ability on level 1 and from these three, I chose to rent Bera Dallin to boost my Life Splinter team. I also had a clear strategy in my mind for how to maximize the Armoured Strike effect.
As we know, things don't usually go as planned in SPLINTERLANDS but I think I ended up with an interesting enough battle to share with you. Let's have a look!
BERA DALLIN is a clear choice for the tank position. She has a massive amount of health(12) and a strong armour of six points.
In addition to the already mentioned Armored Strike, Bera also has the ability.
This is very interesting as the opponent monsters will now be targeting her and it is very likely that her armour points will come down reducing her Armoured Strike attack points. Then again, taking those hits like a real MVP, she leaves more room for the rest of the team to operate and perhaps stay alive a bit longer.
Also, the armour stat isn't fixed so perhaps we can increase it a bit during the battle...
As for a summoner I picked FRANZ RUFFMAN who will buff the armour stats of all my units in addition to allowing me to take one Gladiator monster to the battle.
Franz's armour buff will protect my weaker backline units but will also make Bera Dallin's secondary attack even stronger as would now be dealing a +7 melee attack in addition to her base melee attack of 2 points.
Even though my plan wasn't to go bloodlust and all, I can't deny that having a unit like MARISOL CONTUMA on my side wouldn't feel good.
I placed her right behind Bera Dallin to offer 4-point melee support with the ability.
BABY UNICORN cannot attack from this position but it doesn't have to as it is on the team to provide an extra health point to all units with strengthen
It could also hold back the enemy for a while if my plans with Bera Dallin and Marisol Contuma should fail.
ARMORSMITH is an important part of my strategy.
As Bera Dallin's secondary melee attack is based on the strength of her armour and the Taunt ability will draw enemy fire onto her, it's for sure that her armour will take damage and the retaliation won't be so fierce after that.
My solution to keeping her both safe and lethal is to add Armorsmith to constantly her armour and actually, it's the ability of Bera Dallin that will make sure that it's her armour that the Armorsmith will focus on.
Another support unit on my team is VENARI CRYSTALSMITH
She is also an important part of the puzzle as she will be healing our champion with her tank heal ability
In the case of Bera's armour should be destroyed, or the opponent should have magic monsters, Crystalsmith would be healing her and buying time for Armorsmith to use repair again. This should in theory create a kind of a good heal/repair loop to keep Bera fighting until the end.
Last but not least we have WAR PEGASUS who is more of an offensive unit paving the way for Brea's attacks.
War Pegasus will destroy the armour of the opponent tank using its ability. This should help Bera to waste the enemy tank with her double attack even if she was up against a monster with really strong armour.
I often place Pegasus in the last position because it also has the which will help to dodge melee and ranged attacks.
The Armored Strike Battle
All in all, my team is mostly built to support Bera Dallin and to make the most of her Armoured Strike. In testing the ability, the challenge couldn't be much harder as we are facing the dreaded Quora Towershead with some of her nasty friends seen here below.
It also looks like they have stolen my idea of sacrificing the Fungus Flinger to make Quora even stronger. The battle is most certainly gonna be a showdown between Bera Dallin and Quora and the winner will determine the outcome.
You can watch the battle , or/and read my analysis below:
Since I was up against a magic team the damage done to Bera's armour wasn't that much and she was able to do a 2 + 4 melee damage Unicorn Mustang leaving it with only one health point.
At the beginning of the second round, Bera got some assistance from Marisol who took the Mustang which also triggered the Bloodlust. With armour repaired back to 5 points, Bera now killed the Fungus Flinger but missed her second attack on Quora who was now in the tank position.
In the third round, however, she did not miss but instead landed both her attacks on Quora doing a total of 6 damage again. With the help of Venari Crystalmiths and Armorsmith, her health and armour were again on safe levels.
ROUNDS 4 & 5
While I was focused on the duel between Quora and Bera, Marisol Contuma struck from the second spot and killed Quora just like that.
This was a game-changer. Even though Bera missed an attack against the fast Regal Peryton, Marisol was now getting so strong and fast that even the fastest monster was no match for her.
Even though this example battle was to try out a legendary Rebellion card, Bera Dallin, it was also a good example of great teamwork as the monsters were all supporting Bera. Meanwhile, Bera's Taunt ability allowed them to be left alone and not targeted by enemy units.
I would call this experiment a success and I have begun to understand more and more of the Taunt ability.
It's difficult to say if this strategy would have been as successful against melee/ranged teams since now they used magic too which didn't reduce Bera's armour allowing her to use the powerful Armoured Strike.
Also, it's needless to say that against good melee/ranged teams, a repair unit is a must. Otherwise, Bera's armour power is eaten up way before she can even utilize it.
If you want to max out Bera Dallin, she would become almost indestructible with **Shield** and **Void Armor** but that would cost as Bera isn't the cheapest card on the market costing $9.80.
Still, that's something to think about...
Thank you for reading!
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