Hello, Splinterlands friends and family! 👋
This week, as part of the Splinterlands Community Engagement Challenge, we’re diving deep into Card Strategy Guides 🎓. The goal is to explore effective tactics for using specific cards or powerful combos in battles. Whether you're a seasoned strategist or new to building combos, this challenge is a great opportunity to share your insights and help others discover new ways to dominate the battlefield!
Introduction:
🎯 My Favorite Strategy for Melee-Only Rulesets
In today's post, I'm going to walk you through one of my favorite strategies for Melee Only rulesets. Keep in mind that I mainly play at a high Diamond/low Champion level, so this strategy is primarily aimed at that level of play. It may not work as well in lower-level battles, but it can certainly be a game-changer if executed correctly at higher levels! ⚔️
💡 The Strategy Overview
This strategy revolves around buffing a single unit to the point where it's nearly unkillable for the enemy team. The idea is to make sure one key card can survive all the enemy's attacks while steadily gaining health and strength over time.
🃏 The Combo: Tofu + Mana Warden + Pelacor Mercenary
The core combo here consists of Tofu, Mana Warden, and Pelacor Mercenary. The main goal is to buff the Pelacor Mercenary to make it very difficult for the enemy to kill. Here’s how we do it:
Mana Warden: Grants Pelacor Mercenary the Shield ability with its Shield Ward ability (At the start of battle, the unit in front of this unit gains Shield).
Tofu: Provides Scavenger and Triage abilities to Pelacor Mercenary:
- Scavenger: Gains +1 max health each time a monster dies.
- Triage: Heals the friendly back-line monster with the most damage taken.
🛡️ How It Works:
The key to making this strategy work is the synergy between Pelacor Mercenary's Healing, Scavenger, and Shield. With each unit that dies, Pelacor Mercenary will gain +1 max health from Scavenger. As a result, when Pelacor Mercenary heals itself with its own Heal ability (which restores 1/3 of max health per turn), it will heal for more and more each turn. Without any anti-heal debuffs from the enemy, Pelacor Mercenary becomes almost unkillable over time.
The Shield granted by Mana Warden also plays a major role. This ability reduces melee and ranged damage by half, making Pelacor Mercenary even harder to take down. Since Melee Only rulesets are often dominated by melee damage, this is a perfect setup.
🔄 Placement and Strategy:
To set this up, you’ll want to place Pelacor Mercenary in the middle of your backline, even if it’s unable to attack. The idea is to allow your frontline tanks to hold the enemy's attention while Pelacor Mercenary quietly gains strength from the dying enemies. As your allies fall, Pelacor Mercenary will eventually take the frontline position, much stronger than when the battle started. By this point, it will have gained a lot of health, making it nearly impossible for the enemy to kill.
⚖️ Team Composition:
For this strategy to work, you’ll need a few key units:
- Strong tank(s): To absorb damage in the beginning.
- Offtank with Reach: To try to deal the most possible damage to the enemy's frontline.
- Backline attackers with Sneak or Opportunity: These abilities target the last enemy or the weakest monster, helping to eliminate enemies before Pelacor Mercenary becomes the frontline.
⚔️ Tofu's Role:
In addition to boosting Pelacor Mercenary, Tofu provides the Thorns ability to your entire team, meaning melee attackers will take damage every time they hit. This ability adds another layer of defense while you work on strengthening Pelacor Mercenary.
📊 When It Works & When It Doesn’t:
While this strategy is incredibly strong, it’s not foolproof. There are a few rulesets that can counter it, especially:
- No Healing: If healing is disabled, Pelacor Mercenary won’t benefit from its own Heal ability, rendering it less effective.
- Anti-Heal Debuffs: If the enemy uses anti-heal abilities, this strategy can quickly fall apart.
- Heavy magic damage: If the enemy somehow manages to bring heavy magic damage in a melee only ruleset your units might fall too quickly and Pelacor Mercenary wont reach a good health pool.
But in Melee Only rulesets, this strategy has been incredibly successful for me. It’s a fun and powerful way to buff a unit and watch it dominate the battlefield! 🔥
In the next part of this post, I'll be sharing a battle replay where I successfully used this strategy. Stay tuned! 🎥
🏆 The Battle Review
📸 
For this post, I’ve chosen a battle that demonstrates how even a solid strategy can be adapted based on the situation at hand. I mentioned earlier that the best use of Pelacor Mercenary is usually to position it in the middle of the backline to allow it to gain strength before moving to the frontline. However, in this particular fight, I decided to place Pelacor Mercenary in the first position from the start.
🤔 Why the Change?
This decision was based on the FabFour ruleset, which only allows 4 units to be used. As a result, there’s no extensive backline to work with, so I had to adapt the strategy accordingly. Fortunately, the core principles I discussed earlier still apply, even with this change in positioning.
Additionally, this fight features the Opportunity ruleset, allowing me to set up a strong tank with Taunt in the backline. Bera Dalin is placed in the 4th spot for a reason: she will absorb most of the enemy’s damage until Pelacor Mercenary can gain momentum and increase its health pool with Scavenger.
Meanwhile, Bera Dalin benefits from Triage, healing her each turn, making her even harder to kill. This combination ensures that my team can hold strong while Pelacor Mercenary powers up! 💪
📊 Turn 2 – The Battle unveils
By Turn 2, the fight looks like this:
As you can see, Bera Dalin took a lot of damage in Turn 1 but is still alive with 7 health. I was unlucky with the Dumacke Orc's retaliates, but despite this, Bera Dalin held her ground. The enemy tank, on the other hand, only has 1 life left with no armor.
Once Turn 2 begins, the enemy tank falls, and Venka becomes exposed in the 1st position. At this point, my team focuses all their damage on Venka, who will be taken down quickly.
📊 Turn 3 – Victory Almost Secured
By Turn 3, the game was essentially decided. Here's how it looked:
As you can see, Venka is now dead, and Jared Scar is at just 1 health. My Pelacor Mercenary remains strong with 9 health, primarily due to the Shield ability, which greatly reduced incoming damage. Most of the damage it did take was healed thanks to Pelacor’s Heal ability.
The strategy worked as expected: Pelacor Mercenary healed itself and the backline each turn while dealing decent damage to the enemy frontline. Thorns also did a significant amount of damage to the enemy team.
One key factor that contributed to my success was the use of Runi, who provided Reflection Shield, reducing incoming damage from thorns. Also both Bera and Pelacor had Shield, which made them even harder to break through. The Thorns damage from my team was mostly reduced to just 1 due to these defensive layers.
🏁 Final Thoughts
The strategy worked brilliantly, and by the end of the game, the combination of Triage, Shield, Scavenger, and Thorns created a near-unstoppable force. I was able to heal, protect, and buff my units effectively, while the enemy couldn’t counter my sustained momentum. 🎯
In the end, Pelacor Mercenary stood as the last man standing, proving just how powerful this strategy can be when executed with the right setup. 💥
🏁 Conclusion – Resilience at Its Finest
This strategy, centered around Pelacor Mercenary, is an excellent choice for Melee Only rulesets, where the focus is on building up a single unit. By leveraging Tofu, Mana Warden, and Pelacor Mercenary, you can build an incredibly resilient unit that can become nearly unkillable as the battle progresses. The Shield and Triage abilities provide invaluable protection, while Scavenger ensures that your unit’s health keeps growing with each kill, making it a formidable force on the battlefield.
While this strategy excels in Melee Only rulesets, it’s important to note that it thrives specifically in these conditions. Magic or Ranged teams will easily overpower this strategy, as they bypass the melee protection and would deal significant damage to your unit before it can reach full potential.
In conclusion, this strategy is perfect for taking full advantage of Melee Only rulesets, allowing you to create an incredibly durable powerhouse in the form of Pelacor Mercenary. By focusing all your buffs and healing on a single unit, you’ll be able to outlast your opponents and dominate in these specific conditions. 🔥🎯
Also if you want to check out my latest post you can by clicking the images:
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Thanks for sharing! - @clove71
