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Ahoy my fellow Splinterlands players, welcome to my next Battle Make Secrets post.

I still haven't gotten into the habit of trying to get my post up during the weekend and so I'm once again posting much later after my evening class.

The featured ruleset for this week's challenge is Stampede. With this ruleset active the Trample ability can trigger more than once until the attack stops killing a unit. Which could lead to some crazy combos! My best one ever was a Sextuple Trample kill which was AMAZING to see! I'm not sure if I have the link for it still saved somewhere, I should check that out. It would be ideal to share for this challenge. If I do find the link I could make a post about it some other time though.

You can recognise the ruleset with the following icon.

If you have this ruleset you could try to build a team around Trample. The Summoner Possibilus the Wise is great for that. Armour really is the bane of this setup though if your Monsters don't also have Piercing because then if you kill a Monster and Trample triggers to hit the next Monster it would just hit their Armour. Which makes a Summoner like Kelya a great counter to that possibility. Unless you make sure you bring something like a Rust ability to reduce the opponent's Armour. With this ruleset active bringing a Monster that can give you Armour it also smart to potentially protect your team from serious Trample damage.

The battle I'm sharing with you today is from a recent tournament. Being the Gauntlet Wild Bronze Invitational Tournament. Where I played against the player tsuyou.

In this tournament I actually had 3 wins where the Stampede ruleset was active. Though due to other rulesets I didn't really play anything with Trample in 2 of those battles. Which made this battle the most logical one to share.

Here is a picture of our initial lineup.

Battle Rules

This was a battle with a 55 Mana Cap. Half of the Elements were available being Water, Life and Dragon. The battle had 3 rulesets:

• Reverse Speed: Monsters with the lowest Speed attack first and have the highest chance of evading attacks.
• Stampede: The Trample ability can trigger multiple times per attack if the trampled Monster is killed.
• Taking Sides: Neutral Monsters may not be used in battles.

Here is a link to the battle if you want to check it out: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sm_NdK2kbT3NaEe9DfPAME1&ref=athunderstruck

Battle Lineup

In this battle I really want to try and go for some Trample fun. With Water being available it is ideal as that allows Possibilus the Wise to be used as the Summoner to give Trample to all Monsters on the team. He also gives Reach to the Monster in the 2nd position allowing any Melee unit that doesn't have Reach by themselves to actually attack from that 2nd position.

There is also the Reverse Speed ruleset to keep in mind, which means I have to focus on lower Speed Monsters.

I choose Torhilo the Frozen as my first Monster. He only has 1 Speed which will work well for the Reverse Speed. He also has some Armour so it'll take the Melee hits longer to take him down. He also has the Void ability in case my opponent chooses to bring more Magic attack Monsters.

In the second position I place Coastal Sentry. She has 4 Speed so she really isn't that ideal with the Reverse Speed ruleset as it'll take her a while to attack. BUT she has Double Strike allowing her to attack twice and both hits could trigger Trample if either of them kills a target. So despite her higher Speed she would still be quite solid.

Then I have Nerissa Tridawn, she's won't be able to Trample as she is a Magic attacker. But she has only 2 Speed and has good health so she's quite tanky and with that low Speed can help to quickly deal extra damage.

I'm choosing to then pick Deeplurker and Feasting Seaweed. I prefer going with 2 Monsters with Opportunity instead of just 1 because otherwise that could be too slow to take out something in the backline.
Kulu Mastermind might be a great pick here too, but he is even faster than Deeplurker which isn't really ideal in this case with the Reverse Speed ruleset.
I would have picked my Runi because it also has 1 Speed and would be really solid here. But there's the Taking Sides ruleset so Neutral Monsters can't be played.

As my last option I choose to play Runemancer Kye. One reason is that I recently was finally able to buy her! 🤩 And really wanted to play her. But she could also offer good protection. If my opponent plays Opportunity that kills my Feasting Seaweed and Tramples they'll target her and she has high Health and good Armour so their Trample hit should be kinda useless. With that higher Health and Armour she's also protecting my backline against potential Sneak hits. And her Magic attack could help with some extra damage.

Battle Analysis

Aha my opponent also planned on using Possibilus the Wise here for that trample. Just like me they have Coastal Sentry in position 2 for that Double Strike with the Reach. We have 2 more similar units. Nerissa Tridawn and Feasting Seaweed. Theirs are lower level though. They also brought a Taunt Monster which means my 2 Opportunity Monsters will be hitting those first.

Normally when Speed is tied the higher level Monster goes first. But because this is Reverse Speed ruleset, everything is reversed for the attack order. That means their Feasting Seaweed being level 1 will attack first. It is their only Opportunity Monster though and at level 1 it has just 2 attack. Mine has 5 Health (3 Base +2 from Possibilus) so it'll actually take them 3 turns to take it out.

My whole backline is forced to attack their Wave Brood because of the Taunt ability. Luckily I have a combined total of 11 damage with my Nerissa Tridawn, Deeplurker, Feasting Seaweed and Runemancer Kye. So as long as Deeplurker doesn't miss I'll be able to get it down really low so I only need to use 2 more attacks on it next round.

Meanwhile my Torhilo the Frozen breaks the Armour of their Lemell Refugee. Setting her up for a potential kill by my Coastal Sentry.
But unfortunately my Coastal Sentry's high Speed makes her turn go after their Swamp Spitter, who already repaired some of that Armour on Lemell Refugee. On top of that my Coastal Sentry even misses her first attack! Which is also the drawback of that high Speed. Quite crazy too because they do only have 1 Speed difference so she only had 10% chance to miss. Her second attack does destroy that Armour from Lemell Refugee again.
My opponent's Coastal Sentry luckily also misses my frontline. In their case it makes more sense since there's a 3 speed difference meaning they had 30% chance to miss. They did get unlucky and actually missed both hits.

Here's a picture of our lineups at the start of round 2.

My Feasting Seaweed and Nerissa Tridawn now manage to kill the Wave Brood. The first kill of the game! No Trample though because it got killed by a Magic attack. Even if it got killed by a Melee hit it was in the far back so there wouldn't have been anything to Trample.

Now my attacks can start to focus more on the frontline and with Opportunity. Lemell Refugee has its Armour repaired again just before my Runemancer Kye could attack. Since Lemell Refugee has Void Armor as an ability my Magic attack will hit that. So Runemancer Kye just destroys that Armour.

This time their Coastal Sentry goes first. They're the same level so it's kinda RNG which of them goes first. They kill my Torhillo the Frozen and that causes my opponent to get the first Trample ability trigger in the game to destroy the Armour on my Coastal Sentry.

Now it's my Coastal Sentry's time to attack, killing the Lemell Refugee and also triggering Trample to destroy the Armour on the opponent's Coastal Sentry. Then Double Strike causes a second attack to damage some of her Health too.

For the start of Round 3 our teams looks like this.

Their Feasting Seaweed kills mine and triggers Trample to hit Runemancer Kye. It ends up missing though because of the Flying-ability on her. Even if it did hit her that would just lower her Armour a bit so no big deal there.

My Nerissa Tridawn hits their Coastal Sentry, making its Health low enough for my Deeplurker to attack and kill her, triggering a Trample where it hits the Feasting Seaweed. Unfortunately the Feasting Seaweed still has 1 Health left and so there is no triggering the Stampede ruleset to get an addition Trample :(

Runemancer Kye now kills that Feasting Seaweed.

Now my Coastal Sentry, almost dead, gets her turn and lands the Double Strike hits against the enemy's Nerissa Tridawn for some serious damage.

Start of round 4.

My opponent's Nerissa Tridawn now kills my Coastal Sentry. Then mine deals damage to theirs. Deeplurker gets hit turn now aaaaaaand he misses 🤦‍♂️ Again with only 10% chance to miss, so 90% chance to hit but a miss anyway. So now more Trample now as my Runemancer Kye will kill their Nerissa Tridawn bringing my opponent down to their last Monster.

At this point the victory is guaranteed because their Swamp Spitter with Ranged attack can't attack from the first position.

It'll still take me round 5 and 6 to win though because I have 5 Magic damage per round and 3 Melee. But the Melee will have to hit the Armour first. Which also gets repaired so it's really the Magic attack Monsters that have to now secure that victory. It's an easy job for them but just takes 2 turns due to the combined damage being too low.

GG!

Was My Strategy Successful?

Yeah this was a solid strategy. Torhilo the Frozen is a strong frontline here with the Reverse Speed ruleset. Also taking a bit less damage from the opponent's Magic attack. It was really sad to see my Coastal Sentry miss her first attack when she only had 10% chance to miss but at least the same happened to my opponent.

Bringing Runemancer Kye worked out really well for some extra Magic damage and to serve as protection for Trample when my opponent's Feasting Seaweed killed mine and triggered Trample.

It was smart of my opponent to divert my damage for a turn and a half with that Taunt from the Wave Brood, but it wasn't enough to stop my team from killing theirs. They also played quite well with Armour Repair from Swamp Spitter that combined with the Taunt did slow down my team's potential by a lot!

Too bad that neither of us managed to trigger a double or even better Trample combo.

Conclusion

The reason we didn't see double or better Trample combo's is because we both built our team in such a way that Trample wouldn't easily be able to be triggered multiple times. By having some units with Armour behind the ones that could get killed quickly to stop that Trample hit from immediately killing the next one. My opponent also built against it by diverting the damage with their Taunt.

That's it for my Battle Mage Secrets challenge this week. Thank you for reading!

If you haven't signed up for Splinterlands yet and want to check it out, you can do so with my referral link at: https://splinterlands.com?ref=athunderstruck