Brawling? Invest in GOLD FOILS and RESEARCH your opponent!

Brawling? You need to research your opponent!

You know, I think the part I love most about Splinterlands is the brawls. They bring guilds together in a way where each member of the team needs to do their bit to achieve the end outcome. Now, in a brawl situation, depending on the guild you're in - that 'working together' might look like different things. For me, it's about renting cards and making sure I research my opponents. In tight brawls, knowing your opponent can often make the difference between a win and a loss.

To that end, today I want to show you one of my most recent brawl battles, which was not particularly amazing, but it is a good battle to show the importance of thoroughly checking out your opposition.

To give this battle context, I should let you know I play in FRAY 15 in TIER 2. This is a spot I've come to love, and I do alright in it. Last brawl I got a clean sweep, and in this brawl, I'm sitting on 75% (1 battle to go, I'm hoping to go 4-1. Wish me luck!). But, Fray 15 specifically has a few interesting things to note:

1. It let's you play cards up to silver league. This means that leveled gold cards and summoners are needed to do well, in contrast to the bronze gold foil only deck, where you could potentially get away with 1 bcx cards.
2. Being GOLD FOIL only, that will limit your GLADIATOR deck considerably. This is really key, as GLADIATORS are the game changers. You need to know who you're coming up against in order to counter their moves.

This is where the research kicks in. Here's my process:

1. Visit each opponent in my fray and take a screen shot of their summoners.
2. Visit each opponent in my fray and take a screen shot of their gladiators.
3. If something jumps out at me, I write a note or two.

I then have this information in a document, and after I get my battle assignment, I check out my document and then I put together teams in a way I think will work against my opponent's strengths.

Here's what it looks like in practice:
On visiting my opponent and filtering their cards to only see GOLD FOIL GLADIATORS, I take note that my opponent has just the two cards which scare me. This scares me a little, as they're both dangerous melee attackers with the ability to enhance their stats through BLOODLUST quickly. I have often used ABADON and GOBSON in regular print battles, and so my opponent is absolutely lucky to have them for brawls. AJAX LIGHTFOOT, on the other hand, is a bit meh. Now - when you think of how to stop melee attackers, there is a really obvious way, right? It's THORNS.

Right away then, when the RULESET appears - I knew I could put money on my opponent picking FIRE. In a 50/50 where you have access to such an awesome card like ABADON, where TARSA makes him more aggressive - taking his base stats to +3 melee - you can bet that's where my opponent would go. For me then, it was a no brainer - go hard and go into DEATH - thinking carefully how to counter the 2 mana ABADON.

And this is how the battle opened. Brawls are so intense, because wins and losses really are high stakes - but, I did something potentially dumb. I played my CURSED WINDEKU in position 6 - so why was it dumb? Because it means he can't attack. He's taking up 6 of my 36 mana allocation, and I put him in a position where he's useless! Well, no - you see, the plan is that he is there for ABADON to attack, and ultimately, to kill ABADON with THORNS before that pesky GLADIATOR could get his BLOODLUST working. This positioning of CURSED WINDEKU was simply a trap to take down a card which I believed would be my opponent's most dangerous!

At the end of ROUND 1, you'll notice that this battle is already turning in my rusty. I was able to knock off his RUSTY ANDROID out the front - however, that guy's REFLECT did take a health off each of my MAGIC throwers. The other key part of this battle was the ABADON hit my WINDEKU and is now reduced to 1 health. This round will see him hit me again and that will be his death.

And then by the end of ROUND 2, this battle is firmly in my favour. I have been able to have discarded his ants with the MAGIC attack, with the ABADON died to the THORNS. Sure, he took 6 health off my CURSED WINDEKU - which meant he did his job. If I hadn't played the WINDEKU there, he would have killed my XENITH ARCHER in Round 1, then my VENARI in Round 2 and so on.

And then by the time we start ROUND 4, this game is well and truly over, and it has my team remaining with all characters standing. It just goes to show the importance of RESEARCH. Had I just looked in a team without checking out who I'd be up against, there is NO WAY IN THE WORLD I would be putting the CURSED WINDEKU at the rear - it would feel beyond dumb. But, in the end, that 60 seconds it took to research my opponent led to an absolutely crushing victory.

So it begs the question; with 15 hours left in the brawl, do you know your opponents?

Investment Corner (#leofinance):
A lot of people, including myself, like to see the Splinterland cards I own as NFTs which have a value determined by the market. And, the best part is - even being second hand and used, they still retain value as if they were shiny and new!

You'll notice in this battle (and indeed, in any of my battles) that I predominantly use GOLD FOIL cards. In this battle I owned 5 of my cards, and my only rental is the PRISMATIC ENERGY which costs 20 DEC per day.

You might be interested to know why, then, I see the value in GOLD FOILS? Well, that's easy - you see, in your RANKED BATTLES, you gain more RSHARES by using GOLDS. In turn, this will allow you to use less ECR to gain x amount of chests each day - this is HUGE, as ideally, you want to only use 20% ECR per day to allow it to recharge to maximise rewards. By using only GOLD FOILS, you'll be getting more RSHARES which will mean less battles to achieve the same amount of RSHARES as someone using an identical deck in the regular print!

That's my GOLDEN investment advice; buy the gold foils which have a reduced print, they give you a better return while you hold them, and ultimately, they'll appreciate more in value that regular prints. But back on topic for this post - it also means that I am contributing to my GUILD as I am able to confidently take FRAY 15 and achieve a high win rate. This benefits my guild, but also me, as collectively we receive higher MERITS each week - and those merits = gladiator cards. It's an equation which you can't actually put a dollar figure on, and one of these days, I intend to pull a GOLDEN QUORA! How much would she be worth on the open market?

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