Splinterlands Battle Challenge - Ant Miners

Today's daily quest was to win 5 battles using the Fire Splinter, so it was a perfect opportunity to try to work in the featured card for this week's @splinterlands Share Your Battle Challenge, Ant Miners!

Let's talk a little bit about this card, and then review a battle using it.

Ant Miners

Ant Miners are a common card from the Rewards set for the Fire Splinter.

At first level, they don't seem like much. They only have 1 health, 1 speed, and 1 melee attack. As they level up, each of those stats increases modestly and a little bit of armor is gained. Nothing special. You can see in the image below how these ants progress as they level.

The real benefit of using Ant Miners lies in their low mana cost. At 2 mana, they're easy to fit in to very low mana battles. And depending on the ruleset, they may even be useful for higher mana battles.

Their utility comes from the Scavenge ability, which they have at level 1. This allows them to gain one health for every monster who dies, on either team. In battles of attrition, this can be useful.

At level 6, Ant Miners get the shield ability, making them more resistant to melee and ranged attacks.

All in all, they are a good, cheap card to use when survivability is important. And there's lots of these available in the game right now, so levelling them up isn't too hard. In the following battle, I'm using a level 2 Ant Miners.

The Battle

This battle was a Bronze League battle for 18 mana cost with Normal Rules and all Splinters allowed.

My Strategy and Lineup

I chose Pyre for my summoner in part because he's the only Level 2 Fire summoner I have and partly because of the +1 buff to speed that he offers all of your monsters. It's a useful summoner.

Cerberus was my tank. This card is a great staple card for low mana fire battles, and I really need to get around to renting a higher level Cerberus. He doesn't cost much mana, and while he also doesn't have a ton of hit points, his healing ability is very useful.

Beetle Queen was my second position monster. I wanted a card that could serve as a secondary tank while also being able to attack from first or second position. I was hoping that a little bit of armor would take care of the former, while having a magic attack would take care of the latter.

Ant Miners took up third position. They need some time on the battlefield to scavenge some health, so putting them up front where they are vulnerable to blast damage, or in the last position where they are vulnerable to sneak doesn't help. In third spot they are protected for a bit in case they find their way up to first position. I also intended them to be a buffer to keep my main damage dealer in a good position to continue blasting away.

Fire Elemental was my main damage dealer with ranged attack and blast. This is a fast card that is able to deal out small damage over multiple cards.

Furious Chicken took up the rear position to soak any sneak attacks, and by way of doing so, feed the Ant Miners health when it died.

The Battle!

My opponent chose Alric Stormbringer for his summoner to buff all of his magic attacks with +1.

They then proceeded to field a lot of magic damage dealers. All in all, their damage output was much more than mine. But fortunately, their monsters were fairly squishy.

My tanks fell hard and fast early in round 1. But that only served to feed the ants health. Since many of their monsters also only had 1 health, they were vulnerable to the blast from my Fire Elemental. This only served to keep feeding the ants and increasing their health.

It was a little bit of a close call. If my ants took any more damage than they did, my Elemental would have ended up useless in the first position.

But, the Ant Miners did their job in this battle, protecting the Elemental, and growing in health to fulfill their role as last ditch tank.

Watch the battle play out here.

Reflections

In Normal rules battles the Ant Miners are difficult to use well. To keep them safe long enough to scavenge health you need to put them in a spot that is generally better used for damage dealing.

However, the low mana cost and the scavenge ability make them useful in certain situations. In the Earthquake ruleset you can use them along side the Dragon Splinter with Brighton Bloom who gives every monster flying. In such a battle, your flying ants would be immune to earthquake damage, and would grow in health with every monster who succumbed to the quakes.

Splinterlands offers a depth of strategy that is surprising considering how fast the game plays. Many other games have fairly repetitive play, and games can drag on. Splinterlands is a blast. There's a reason it is exploding in popularity right now.

If you're not already playing, here's a link to get started. If you purchase the Summoner's Spellbook to unlock all of the game features through that link, let me know so I can send you some stuff to get started on your path to glory.