This week's challenge involves a the fire splinter which I've been playing a lot of since the new rewards system. We're going to be breaking down the Antoid Platoon card, a situational tank that has come in handy a number of times.
Card Details
Antoid Platoon's main ability is shield which makes it a great tank choice starting at level 1. In higher level leagues, it picks up scavenger starting at level 6 which can extend the life of platoon when running a more aggressive composition. The main drawback of this monster is the low damage output and low health. With only 1 attack and 3 health at level 1 it is very weak to magic attacks.
The main advantage in running Antoid Platoon over another shield tank like Living Lava, is the 4 mana cost. The 3 mana difference gives more options for making up the damage output depending on the battle ruleset. For low mana battles or 4 mana or less rulesets, Antoid Platoon is a perfect tank choice.
Battle
You can watch the battle replay here
At 23 mana, it's tough to justify not using a bigger tank like Living Lava. However, I've been leaning pretty heavily on Yodin for my dailies so that summoner effectively leaves 16 mana for monsters. Given the low mana available I am considering this a low mana battle where Antoid Platoon could open more options up for cards.
My lineup
| Card | Notes |
|---|---|
 | An extremely powerful summoner I managed to snag one early on in the rental season but now he's around 40 DEC/day. If you have a fire splinter quest I highly recommend picking him up for the day. The ranged damage and health abilities will be an asset especially in a True Aim ruleset (our ranged attackers won't have to worry about missing due to speed.) Yodin's real strength is the blast ability which turns ordinary units into destructive team clearing machines. |
 | The spotlight card is our tank since Antoid Platoon checks all the boxes for the frontline role. Good survivability and at level 3 he should take at least 2 magic hits before he goes down. |
 | The second slot will go to the Goblin Shaman, a utility card that is underappreciated and fairly cheap to rent. At level 3 he gets 1 magic attack which coupled with the blast from Yodin will chip away at enemy monsters. Lowering the enemy health makes blast even more effective. |
 | A super cheap neutral rental that everyone should pick up is Creeping Ooze. I could have filled this slot with a 1 mana sponge like Radiated Scorcher or Chaos Agent, but the Ooze brings slow to the enemy team which can change fights if you get an early blast attack in. |
 | One of our backline slots goes to Serpentine Spy. This was a tough choice, a bunch of units could have filled this slot but I wanted a unit that could snipe some of those pesky backline enemy units and spread the blast damage around. At 4 speed, the Spy usually gets the first hit in and should survive long enough to do it in the second round again. |
 | Our second backline slot goes to the Halfling Alchemist for incredible utility in low mana situations. The Alchemist's job is to help our Antoid survive by hopefully reducing a high damage enemy tank down to a manageable level. |
 | Our last slot goes to another overlooked gem, the Fire Beetle. For only 3 mana we get a high health, snipe, ranged unit that will do 3 damage and blast with Yodin. With the True Aim ruleset we don't even need to worry about speed. I'm actually banking on Fire Beetle doing most of the work in this battle. |
Our opponent chose a higher level Kelya Frendul and some high damage opportunity melee monsters. The speed increase is a little concerning since he will get the first strikes in. The armor also helps soak a lot of our blast damage in the first round. This doesn't look great on the initial matchup.
Round 1
Our opponent immediately snipes our Ooze with his Deeplurker giving him even more speed advantage. Luckily our Alchemist soaks a hit with the armor leaving the bulk of our team still alive. Serpentine Spy lands a very important hit on the enemy backline Ooze knocking the armor off 3 enemy monsters. With no armor, the snipe from Fire Beetle cleans up both enemy backlines and takes some health off the Deeplurker. Antoid Platoon holds off the enemy frontline very well with assistance from Alchemist's debuff. The three hits to the enemy tank also clear our Feasting Seaweed just from blast damage alone.
I think the entire battle was almost resolved in this one round. We still have the Deeplurker to contend with but things are looking good so far.
Rounds 2-3
Deeplurker opens the round by immediately chopping down on our Alchemist. However the Alchemist has done the job already and this leaving our heavy hitters alive to continue dealing damage. Once again blast damage does work and finishes off Deeplurker. With only a low damage Diemonshark left, our opponent will never be able to get through our Antoid Platoon.
From here, our monsters easily finish off the last enemy.
Summary
I feel Antoid Platoon is a very good compliment card to Yodin for mid range mana battles. Using Living Lava in this battle would have really limited our options for filling the backline slots. It's also very important to have multiple targets in lower mana situations so your key units are protected. We saw Alchemist and Ooze take some very key hits in this battle.
In higher leagues, Antoid Platoon would be even more effective with Scavenger. In this battle alone the Platoon would have gained 3 health in the first round from the backline snipes. Shield is also a great ability to soak damage from sneak monsters or earthquake damage. I would love to try mixing this card into more situations as a secondary tank.
Overall, Antoid Platoon brings a lot of utility in a fairly cheap package. Definitely buy or rent a copy if you don't have one already!
Images in this article are all taken from splinterlands.com
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Thanks for sharing! - @marianaemilia
Thanks for sharing!