Splinterlands Share Your Battle Weekly Challenge - Portal Spinner

INTRODUCTION
Hi guys, it has been a busy week for me at work and I was not actually sure if I will be able to do the Splinterlands SHARE YOUR BATTLE Weekly Challenge. I had a bit of free time to write some content last weekend and it was also a good time to relax and play my Splinterlands account and complete the focus missions. As of this writing, I am currently sitting with 57 rewards chests in the Gold league and I hope to get a decent amount of rewards at the end of this current season.

Before I continue with the challenge, let me share my rewards from the most recent focus mission that I completed. It's not that good actually, even if they are gold chests. I barely recoup my rental expenses but I hope I will get a much better set of rewards at the end of this season.

Back to the challenge, I can say I use it frequently, depending on what the ruleset(s) is/are, especially if my Focus is the Life Splinter. Let's now delve onto what this card is about.

THE CARD

Pros and Cons

It is good to use in teams with General Sloan as the summoner. Hitting a random target does good, especially if the target monster is very critical in the opponent's team offense/defense. I like using this in EXPLOSIVE WEAPONRY ruleset, as the randomness of its attack gives surprising results sometimes.

For me, the not-so-good thing about this card is its cost which is 5 mana. As such, it can't be used in LITTLE LEAGUE ruleset, or even in low mana battles where you prioritize using melee or magic attack creatures, unless the match has a CLOSE RANGE ruleset. Even so, there are other ways to spend that 5 mana to a couple of cards rather than using it for this card.

General Strategy

My general strategy is to use the TAUNT+REPAIR+TANK HEAL. The thing with this combo, at least from my own experience is you need to have a good attacker at the back. I do not mind attacking the tank monster right away (though this may have exemptions from time to time). It is better for me to take away the creatures at the back first one by one and worry about the tank monster later. Unless it is a tank monster with a huge attack damage, Shieldbearer is able to handle the attack because of the REPAIR and TANK HEAL. Another good thing about this combo, at least for the Life Splinter, is you can use this for as low as 17 mana.

For my opponent, I have no clue what he/she/they will be using as in the past previous matches, there were different Splinters that were used. My general approach is to use the combo and at the same time have a good attackers at the back. The challenge with this approach sometimes is that it is heavily dependent on range attack monsters and if for situations where the Shieldbearer won't survive that long, the ranged attackers won't be able to do as much when they get to the tank position.

I had a good feeling about this match when I started building my team primarily because of the rulesets --- RISE OF THE COMMONS and CLOSE RANGE. The combo above works well with common and rare monsters. You do not need Epic and Legendary cards to make this work and with this ruleset, it is just timely. What gave the icing on the cake is the CLOSE RANGE ruleset. I mentioned the challenge with the ranged-attack monster above and by allowing the these cards to attack in the first position, that is a game-changer (SPOILER ALERT: It did change the game actually, I won't win this battle if this ruleset is not there!).

Let's proceed now to the lineup.

The Lineup

Summoner - General Sloan

• Slot 1 - Shieldbearer
• Slot 2 - Stitch Leech
• Slot 3 - Armor Smith
• Slot 4 - Venari Crystalsmith
• Slot 5 - Portal Spinner
• Slot 6 - Pelacor Arbalest

Explanation of the lineup

I want to have a set of ranged-attackers for this match and a good way to beef up their attacks is to use General Sloan as my summoner. That extra range damage will go a long way.

The main star for the combo is the Shieldbearer. Its TAUNT ability is a good strategy of redirecting all the attacks to this monster. The real challenge is to keep it alive for as long as it can because it acts like this big wall that when it dies, the defense usually crumbles. If it is a huge mana battle, it may be a different case, as you can still deploy big creatures, even better that Shieldbearer when they get to the tank position.

Next in my line is the STITCH LEECH. Its SNEAK ability will provide damage at the enemy's back monster. At only 3 to summon, this is a must-have for me in this type of battles.

While the new setups include Scavo Hireling for the REPAIR ability, I still prefer to use Armorsmith when doing this combo. At 2 mana to summon (instead of 3 for Scavo), that extra mana that you saved can be used to choose a better monster for your other battle slots.

Completing the combo will be the Venari Crystalsmith. Its TANK HEAL ability will provide an extension to Shieldbearer's life as well as probably some of the other friendly monsters as well.

Then here's our featured card... the Portal Spinner. I like to use this to inflict damage to the opponent's back monsters (most of the time, as it hits a random target).

The last in the lineup will be the Pelacor Arbalest. A popular addition to Life splinter teams because of its DOUBLE STRIKE ability, it can inflict up to six damage per round. In most occasions, that DOUBLE STRIKE ability changes the course of the game.

When you see the match, you will see that my opponent used the REPAIR + TANK HEAL combo, which is very effective. The introduction of Scavo Hireling as a neutral monster made it possible for the combo to be easily applied to other elements as well, unlike before that it is most frequently used in the Life splinter.

My team got a beating and like what I've said, if not for the CLOSE RANGE ruleset, I would have lost the match.

The Match

Watch The Battle

Thank you for reading. Please feel free to comment and leave your feedback.

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My previous challenges:
· Hill Giant · Flying Squid · Antoid Platoon · Xenith Archer · Delwyn Dragonscale · Silent Sha-vi · Animated Corpse · Defender of Truth · Stone Golem · Elven Cutthroat · Serpentine Mystic · Haunted Spider · Crystal Jaguar · Centauri Mage ·

Posted using Neoxian City