Hey everyone I hope you're having a great weekend so far! Mine has just begun, and like usual - it started with some splinterlands ranked battles to grind on for as much glint and SPS as possible to prepare for the new Modern League in April next year.

To be honest I didn't went heavy on the Rebellion set until a couple of weeks ago, when Rebellion launched, I think I bought like 15 packs to support the team but I already had a higher level Chaos Legion deck by then, and with the price difference so big it wasn't even an option for me to play Rebellion cards at Gold level or higher.
And I'm sure I am not the only one, this is exactly the problem we now face until Chaos Legion rotates out of Modern League.

So recently I have started to prepare myself for when this happens, my post for this weeks Social Media Challenge was about exactly that.

Up until now, I only have Prunda Undervesch at Silver level, where I want to end up, I'm still working on the rest.
Some weeks ago I did buy enough Underboss Fabino cards to make it a level 3 and while it's unusable for me with my two account playing in Modern Gold, for the time being I delegated the Rebellion works in progress to my daughters account, she unfortunately stopped playing long ago so when I have some spare time I'm playing this account myself and it's a nice way to have to fun at lower levels with my new cards already!

And this brings me to this weeks Splinterlands Community Engagement Challenge, the task for this week is to make a post about how to use tactics summoners.

To find out how you can participate in the challenge yourself, check out the splinterlands post here.

What ARE tactics??

Well, before Rebellion, a summoner gives some extra's to your entire team, like +1 melee damage or +1 armor... a lot of options across all different summoners. With Rebellion a new layer was added to the battles - tactics!

When you're using a tactics summoner, after the team selection screen you go to the tactics screen - here you can see both teams and choose the tactic you want to use for this battle, this adds another layer to the battle and is pretty cool!

So this is my only tactics summoner for now 😅
You can see whether it's a tactics summoner in the encircled part of the card, Underboss Fabino gives you the choice giving 2 monsters +2 melee damage or to poison one monster, you can use these tactics on either team - of course you understand this for the poison, you weren't planning on poisoning your own monsters of course but you could also give your opponent the extra melee damage when you're using a unit with the forcefield ability so they now get above 5 damage, and do only 1 damage!

Don't think too long about what tactic you're going to use, you get 40 seconds for this!
The tactics screen looks like this:

So for this battle I choose to give both of my melee units the +2 boost, when you're done, just click the BATTLE button to go to the battle screen.

I actually think it's a lot of fun playing a lower level account every once in a while, it's a real different strategy game because other cards are more powerful and you don't have to worry about certain abilities the cards your opponent has at a higher level, it's less complicated but not less fun!

For now, I don't see a lot of tactics summoners being used in Modern League for obvious reasons, this all will change in April and May next year.

One of the nasty summoners is Akane, a Dragon tactics summoner able to give Ambush to two units, meaning they are able to attack before round 1 of the battle starts 😬

So, when you see your opponent likes to play this in the recent played battles, you might want to prepare for that!
The counter I like to use against Ambush is using a monster with the Taunt ability and put a unit with the Lookout ability adjacent to it, two monsters with this ability at low level are ujurak Mystic and Thanalorian Archer.

Show us a battle already!

Yeah, enough talk! Let's see how the use of tactics plays out in a real battle!

The battle I have saved for this post is a 45 mana Modern League battle with my alt account, it has the *Melee Mayhem* ruleset, meaning all melee units can attacks from anywhere and they will attack the first position unless they have their own ability like sneak or opportunity, then they will still use that ability and not attack the front. All splinters are open to be chosen from, except for the Fire splinter. With so many available options it's too much to anticipate for, so then just make an awesome team myself! I've seen this player use Quora quite a lot in it's previous battles, so I have to be prepared for that. Unfortunately in Bronze Quora is very powerful and there aren't a lot of counter abilities like Affliction to tame her.

First look at the battlefield:

Oh it's Quora allright! I forgot to take a screenshot in the tactics part but of course I had two options... poison one of the enemy monsters or boost my two melee monsters. The only real threat in the other team is Quora, but poisoning here makes no sense because she will just heal the damage, so I choose to boost the attack for Venari Knifer and Grund. Too bad my opponent takes 1 melee damage away, using Disintegrator which has the demoralize ability, doing -1 melee damage to my entire team until it's killed, and because it's safely tucked away it's not going to be killed in the early stage of the battle.

My Line-Up:

• Summoner: Underboss Fabino - reason: Awesome tactics summoner for the green team.
• First position: Mycelic Infantry - reason: Shield with good attack, very slow though.
• Second position: Mycelic Morphoid - reason: Filler card, I had 1 mana left to use.
• Third position: Grund - reason: Good damage double striker.
• Fourth position: Goblin Psychic - reason: Tank heal.
• Fifth position: Venari Knifer - reason: Fast with good damage.
• Sixth position: Endless Ape - reason: Backline protection, with scavenge it will sustain itself and once it gets to the front it will probably have a huge number of Health Points.

The Battle:

Round 1: Good start, the first kill is a fact!

Round 2: A lot of kills this round, and Quora's bloodlust is gearing up, my team has to kill her as soon as possible before she can't be stopped! Good thing is Grund and Venari Knifer combined are doing 12 damage, together with Goblin Psychic they will probably kill Quora next round.

Round 3: Nice, Quora is gone! So is most of my team, but see my fail safe - Endless Ape? Due to it's Scavenge ability it's already up to 17 Health Points! Venari Knifer is fast to hard to hit for my opponents with 1 and 2 speed.

Round 4: Yeah.. too bad, Quora spammer, she's strong in low leagues but you won't get me this time!

Round 5: And the lion is killed, it's another victory for Stella!! (yeah.. my daughter chose that name 😂)

The rewards with 1500 SPS staked are pretty nice at these low levels, like this I can earn this account some reward cards to make it stronger.

You can watch the battle unfold for yourself here.

Well that's it for this weeks for the Splinterlands Challenges, so back to ranked battles!
Hmm... I know @thepeoplesguild has also launched another challenge to make a post about... let me give this some thought as well and be sure to check them out if you haven't done this already!

Thank you for reading!!!

If you haven't made an account already, please consider using my referral link to sign up, I'll happily send the amount I get for your signup back to you in DEC or SPS to help you start.

Also, when you require any help to get you started, also let me know, I'm here to advice and guide new players and maybe I can help you with card delegations too!

Have a great day!