Weekly Splinterlands Challenge: Rise of the commons

Welcome back, Summoners! I'm @easilykilled , and this is our submission for the weekly challenge within the thrilling world of Splinterlands. This week, we're taking on the rise of the commons challenge. So, grab your spellbooks and let's get started!

Introduction

Hey there! If you're new here, I'm @easilykilled, a returning Splinterlands player, I enjoy the opportunities in web3 and crypto and have been a long time lover of all things TCG. After initially buying the summoners spellbook and some cards, I ended up taking a long hiatus, however I am back and have rediscovered the fun this game has to offer.

Follow along as I continue my journey in Splinterlands and the hive blockchain.
This week we dive into a new challenge in the Splinterlands universe, sharing my experiences, strategies, and the occasional misstep. This week's challenge is all about the rise of the commons ruleset, as I am sure you all know, this restricts our options in battle as we lose out on some of the strong epic and legendary units that are available.

The game description:

Rise of the Commons: Only Common and Rare Monsters may be used in battles.

My Team

For this challenge, I decided to go with an earth lineup which I have a few common and rare units that I could use, another consideration to keep in mind is the ruleset of the match. Here's a breakdown of my team:

• [Obsidian]: Our earth summoner
• [Hill Giant]: Putting Hill Giant in as our tank, because he has high HP and a mana cast of only 3
• [Blackmoor Nymph]: Blackmoor Nymph is a nice 3 cost earth unit with immunity, in our match that ability wasn't used but we liked her decent HP for our secondary tank while doing magic damage (1)
• [Ujurak Mystic]: Ujurak has high shields and we put him in 3rd
• [Madcap Magus]: Was our next minion, he has scatter shot and life leach abilities normally but in this match I just used him for to synergize with our splinter, his low hp is normally a concern but not in this ruleset
• [Venari Spellsmith]: Our last minion for the remaining mana

Opponent's Team

Now, let's take a look at my opponent's team. They went with a lineup that used the dragon splinter Quix and had a mix of damage types. Here's what I was up against:

• [Quix the Devious]: His earth summoner
• [Pelacor Deceiver]: My opponent used Pelacor Deceiver as his tank, a good high HP and speed minion
• [Chaos Agent]: An ok 1 cost unit to help fill up his team and delay me getting to his damage dealers
• [Wily Coyotian]: A low cost melee unit was next
• [Naga Assassin]: Naga Assassin a ranged unit which has high speed
• [Soul Strangler]: Was his next ranged attacker.
• [Life Sapper]: Was his final unit a good magic damage dealer with a low mana cost.

The Ruleset

This match challenge had a low mana cap of 22 with the following rulesets: Rise of the common, Back to Basics and Armored Up. Here's a quick rundown about the ruleset and what splinters were available:

• Reverse speed: Units with lower speeds will attack before units with higher speeds. Attack Accuracy based on speed will also be reversed
• Back to Basics: Monsters lose all abilities.
• Armored Up: All Monsters have 2 Armor in addition to their normal Armor stat.
• Splinters available: Earth | Life | Death | Dragon

Battle

My opponent strategy seems to be using quix to lower my speed to get his attacks off before me, Pelacor deceiver, chaos agent and wily Coyotian were put there to give his backline time to get rid of my units.

My strategy with the rulesets in this match was to try only use magic, This is because we get bonus armor from the match rule, and also with units losing all abilities I knew void armor and magic reflect wasnt available.

As the battle progressed, we can see I was able to output more damage to the enemy by having all of the units in my backline hitting his tank, while my opponent had some units in the backline who were not able to attack me. This and our opponent trying to get through my armor with his range units was, I think the deciding factor in our match.

Finally, we can conclude that our magic lineup was able to bypass his armor effectively and we could get our victory.

• Watch the battle here

Tips

If you're facing a similar challenge, here are some tips that might help you out when you encounter this ruleset:
Because this was a novice tournament match the units were only level 1, this and the back to basic ruleset had a big impact on the magic.
In general I would say there are some strong common and rare units that I use all the time who have strong abilities, Goblin Psychic, Deeplurker and Xenith Monk for example, these 3 units I use very often and they have some good abilities.

Conclusion

This week's challenge was a blast, and I realized that I end up using common and rare minions very often in battle. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow me for future Splinterlands challengess. Also, feel free to share your own strategies and outcomes in the comments below!

Until next time, keep battling, keep grinding, keep growing!

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