Not attacking at all – outsourcing dirty work to nature

Dear splinterlands fans, in this weekly battle article I want to show what can happen when you don’t attack at all.

First they attack you,
Then you ignore them, then you laugh,
Then you win, then you laugh again and collect DEC.

- definitely not Mahatma Gandhi

When it comes to monsters with no attack two comes into mind first – Lord A. and Cube. This duo seems to frequently struggle for best tank for that specific situation with no clear winner in most cases. Rules changes, but struggle prevails. So what if we choose to play both? And what if we play no damage dealer at all? Let’s try it.
Honorable mention goes to Furious Chicken and Creeping Ooze – both are spectacular cards that starts with no attack, but they gain attack as they level up, so they kinda half-count.
All 4 of those monsters are present in today’s battle…

Let’s get into match analysis, it is ranked from high diamond league:

Earthquake low mana matches are tricky, 16 is very limiting when combined with earthquake. Reverse speed complicates things even further be effectively removing powerhouses like Spark Pixies or Cocatrices.
Not having dragon splinter allowed further removes Manticores and Fire Spitters leaving surprisingly little options. They basically boil down to one big monster (Kron for example), tank + some damage behind, flying band that will probably not be that optimized or risky land based team.
Or there is one more option... Cube.
And Cube start to seem more and more interesting – it has good matchups against most of the rest. Cube seems so promising that I decided to go all in with cube making all other monster’s job to either protect or feed the cube and do nothing else. I plan to win in fatigue phase or by earthquake if opponent is non-flying non-healing composition. Worst nightmare of this comp is obviously affliction monsters, but most of them don’t have flying, so Lord A. might actually be able to protect Cube from being hit by affliction until opponents affliction monster dies to Earthquake. Perfect set of rules for this crazy plan.

Pyre was sadly my only option here. My Earth and Life summoners are significantly lower level and cube needs its heal. And not just heal, cube lives matters.
Having extra speed will reduce dodge chances of Lord A. and Cube and decrease initiative of our monsters. Mother Khala or Lyana Natura would be much better option here.

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Normally monkey acts as healer, but in this case his only job is to absorb one or two hits before dying protecting Lord A. Pyre will actually help here a bit, because slower attack means higher chance to die before attacking (which is preferable to risking possible counterattacks in this specific case)
Other than that Monkey is tasty cube food.

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Works as tank protecting our other tank, Lord A.’s job is simply to eat all possible affliction attacks and return bit of damage via thorns or reflect magic, speeding up demise of opposing monsters from Earthquake.

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Chicken acts as decoy against possible opportunity attacks and mainly is cube food. Guaranteed to die at first Earthquake damage or sooner.

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My only win condition, must be protected against affliction at all costs. Cube will just sit here, do nothing and wait until all enemy monsters dies either to Earthquake or to fatigue. Cube lives matters, especially those divisible by 3, because they increase health regen. It’s safe to assume that at least one of opponent’s monsters will die (to Lord A’s return damage or Earthquake) and rest of our monsters die too, which leaves cube at 18 health and 6 health per turn regen.

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Another Cube food + acts as protection against possible sneak attackers and quickens up opponent’s monsters first turn. Guaranteed to die at first Earthquake damage or sooner.

here is link to battle

That crazy plan worked! Not playing any attackers in low (but not ultra-low) mana matches requires very rare ruleset and can’t be done often, but when it works its beautiful.

I do use monsters without attack often? For sure, both Cube and Lord A. are pretty good (+ I recommend to acquire Chicken as first card to any newbie), but do I play only monster without attack often? Hell no, that requires very specific circumstances. Doing something fancy just for doing something fancy is best way to lose rating points. When You just play normally amazing opportunities arrives on their own from time to time.

Thank you for reading and good luck in the @splinterlands.

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