Splinterlands Basic Battle Tips – The Taunt Strategy

Today I want to show you a strategy that I always use and with a lot of success in the Novice and Bronze leagues, mainly with this Life's card: the Shieldbearer.

Taunt – All enemy Monsters target this Monster.

The idea is to use the Taunt ability card as bait, that is, diverting the attention of enemy monsters from one area of the fight to another, to reduce the amount of damage inflicted on our cards in that most crucial region of the battle.

See this example:

Battle Link: @dosh versus @change2improve

In the battle above it is clear that the winning strategy was superior, note that the card Elven Defender, used by both teams, had a much more active role for me, since he participated in the fight from the beginning, while the opponent was stopped doing nothing waiting at the rear during the first rounds.

These are the cards that have the Taunt ability:

They all start with Taunt from level 1, but while Shieldbearer is a rare monster, all the others are legendary, which makes it much more usable, since it is available in the rulesets Lost Legendaries, Rise of the Commons, and also in tournaments where legendary cards are not allowed.

Also, the Shieldbearer requires less mana, just 8, against 10 for Magnor and Dark Ha'on, and 12 for Kraken.

In this second example still in the Novice League, I want to show the typical formation of this strategy, with Elven Defender being the tank and Luminous Eagle in the second position to attack with Snare ability.

While in the first example the opponent facilitated with the passive card Elven Defender, here the opposing team came with an extremely strong and dangerous team and the battle was fierce and exciting.

Battle Link: @marianaemilia versus @jemmarti

In the lower leagues, we should always try to use cards with + 2 damage, and that's exactly what I did, with Cave Slug, and 2 snipers: Mantoid and Lone Boatman, these are the typical cards and in some cases also the Light Elemental with + 2 magic attack and Flying ability

Now a very exciting Bronze league battle in the Target Practice ruleset, where all magical and ranged attack cards are snipers.

Note that Taunt's strategy was victorious even against an excellent enemy formation that used the robust War Chaang card to absorb snipe attacks, and had the presence of Mitica Headhunter with a sharp and brutal + 4 arrow damage.

Battle Link: @marianaemilia versus @foxconnmars

However, during some rounds, Mitica's attacks were directed at my Shielbearer in the last position and not at my Mantoid, a fundamental and precious time gain for me to be able to win by a small difference.

To finish, now let’s see another battle example, more complex and no less instructive...

So far all the examples have been with only Untamed cards, and I would like to show this one with all the editions available in a Bronze league tournament:

Here my formidable opponent also used the Shieldbearer, but as the main tank, which reduced its effect since it did not work to deflect attacks in another direction.

Battle Link: @dosh versus @shoemanchu

I chose the Silvershield Knight as a tank that is a very important card in the bronze league because besides being fast, it has the Inspire ability that gives + 1 melee attack for you and your companions.

Healing cards like the Divine Healer are also crucial in these leagues, as explained in my previous posts.

The interesting thing about this battle, which perfectly exemplifies this strategy, is that although my opponent had several more cards with greater damage, they lost a lot of time and energy attacking my Shieldbearer in the rearguard, while I was able to be more decisive in the center of the board.

That's it for today, I hope you enjoyed it and see you soon in the next strategy tip!

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Images: @splinterlands

This post was also published on HIVE blockchain.