Every week the splinterlands team holds a highlight your battle contest. You can find more information here.

This week's theme is the water splinter.

Most people default to the beta summoner when they think of the water splinter.

Alric

Alric is a powerful summoner as he adds +1 to magic attacks.

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With the release of untamed a new summoner has shown up on the battlefield.

Bortus

Bortus applies a -1 to your opponents magical attacks.

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Picking your summoner is just as crucial as picking your monsters when you fight a battle. I would like to highlight this a battle I fought todaywhere the summoner selection was just as important as my monster selection. If I had chosen the other summoner this battle would have concluded differently.

First lets talk about the rule set for this batle

Rule sets were Target Practice and Keep your Distance.

Target Practice: Means that all magic attack and ranged monsters have the snipe ability.
Keep your distance: means that no melee monsters would be able to play so the damage has to come from either ranged or magic.

Summoner Selection:

I choose Bortus over Alric because I had a feeling my opponent was going to go heavy on the magic instead of ranged and as we discussed earlier Bortus gives a -1 magic to opponent. My opponents last few battles showed Water, Life, Life, and Death. So it was really tough to decided whether they were going to go ranged or magic, I was hoping they would go magic as most people are more comfortable with that. If they had chosen to go ranged then the summoner selection would have been better to choose Alric.

Monster Selection

1rst Position: I choose the Water Elemental for this position because it does self heal and would be able to mend whatever damage my opponents first monster threw at it as long as it was 2 or less. This left me not needing a tank healer.

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2nd position: I put Lord Arianthus here because he has 2 wonderful abilities for this particular rule set. Lord A will be the target of all attacks in this rule set because he is in the snipe position. His shield ability would remove a significant amount of damage from ranged attacks. The void and magic reflect make it an offensive cards against magic attacks, void lessens the magic damage he takes and magic reflect throws the magic back to the caster.

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3rd position: I put Pirate Captain here because I do not have a mermaid healer. Pirate Captain is a 3 mana card that does 2 ranged and has 4 health. The health is the reason I put him here, as a preempt in case my opponent was using a blast card like I did, the pirate captain would soak up the damage before my 2 blast cards got hit.

If I had a mermaid healer I would have used Ruler of the Seas here instead and put mermaid healer in position 5.

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4th Position:
I choose the Pirate Archer for my 4th position because he has Blast which does damage to monsters on both sides of his target monster so I get to damage 3 monsters in 1 shot because of the snipe ability. I put him here because he has only 3 life so he is a little weak and I wanted him protected. A quick note the pirate Archer's blast hits the shield before it affects the health of a monster.

5th Position:
I choose Ruler of the Seas for my last position because I was banking on no monsters with sneak ability from my opponent.The magic blast from Ruler of the Seas skips any armor and goes straight for health and affects 3 monsters instead of one so this card was my powerhouse for this battle. The swiftness was a nice perk in that it let my monsters attack before all of my opponents except the Mischievous Mermaid.

Conclusion:
My strategy worked very well for this battle.I took no casualties. I really enjoy playing the water splinter and never skip a water splinter daily quest. I also find myself using the water splinter when I play in gold foil tournaments.