Splinterlands Quidditch - Best Little League Line Up: Saved by Triage

Thanks to @bdcommunity for putting together these Quidditch challenges - this week's is on Little League Line Ups.

If you take a look at the Peakmonster's battle chain, filtered for Champions league, Fire seems to be the Splinter which wins the most often, and often with sneak as a strategy.

Unfortunately for me Fire is the deck I've sacrificed in order to build all the others, so that's not an option, but I need to be able to defend against it, so thinking through the most effective strategies for Little Leagues is useful.

Below I present one battle where I successfully used triage with water to successfully defend against against a sneaky Fire attack with a Little League Rule set.

What I especially like about this battle is that I won, triage was crucial, but not in the way I'd have expected!

Little league - saved by triage!

This is a battle with a somewhat amusing, skin of my teeth outcome - the starting line up is as below (little league is the only rule).

1. The Turtle - a good all round tank with a good amount of shields and health, and of course Thorns
2. The chicken - mainly to soak up blast, which can be common in LL battles
3. The Mermaid - I was expecting sneak, so the idea was that triage can heal the back row.
4. The Medusa - a no-brainer in a little league battle - 2 damage and stun.
5. Ice Pixie - Risky if reflect is played, but I like shatter (as the turtle is quite common), also a handy shield for defense from sneak
6. The Crustacean - heal and shields being crucial for both front and back row.

The battle round by round

Round 1

We exchange blows, and by the end of the round I've lost my Crustacean - the Mermaid can't heal anything thanks to those consecutive sneaks. However, I have got my opponent's tank down to 1 health, and the retaliate didn't work, so that was some good news!

Round 2

By the end of round two, I've lost my Ice Pixie, again thanks to double sneak, but my Turtle stands strong, as my opponent doensn't have too much fire power at the front, despite my healing capacity disappearing in the previous round. My cumulative attacks finish off his Cerberus and Creeping Ooze, bringing his Elf to the front, crucially now he has much reduced sneak damage and the Mermaid can do some useful healing!

Round 3

The Elf takes out the Turtle, and his thorns return the favour. The Imp then takes out my chicken (he did his bit!) and my Mermaid takes out his Imp.

Now, my Mermaid's the tank, but his front row goblin only has one damage, meaning she can last a while!

His Miner hits the Medusa, she is healed back up to 4 health by the Mermaid - that is the crucial triage moment number one!

Round four

You can probably tell from above - The Miner hits the Medusa, she gets healed by the Mermaid back up to 4 health again, crucial triage moment number two! I take out his Goblin,

Rounds 5 and 6

The Miner strikes first - takes out my Mermaid, then the Mermaid does 2 damage, and she fails to stun, but with 3 damage to 4 health, it's game over anyway.

And I ended up with a 'skin of my teeth' win:

Analysis

This battle didn't go according to plan, but it ended up being an accidental defense against a sneak attack - in the end the Mermaid did do two rounds of healing on the Medusa which were crucial to my victory.

For my opponent, he did the right thing playing consecutive sneaks, but he lost mainly because he put one of his sneak attacks too far fowards, hence they became a tank sooner than they may have.

So is triage an effective defense against sneak?

I'm not convinced on the back of this battle, I think I got lucky with my opponent splitting his sneak attacks. I think in future I may have to experiment a bit more with little league defenses against sneak, or just replace the Mermaid with a damage card to bludgeon the front more quickly!