Splinterlands Community Engagement Challenge: Battlefield Breakdowns - First Win From Reckless Ruleset!

It's been a while since I did a Community Engagement Challenge and when I saw that this week's theme was Battlefield Breakdowns, I thought why not give it a shot?

Reckless ability features in Collateral Damage ruleset, and it's a pretty new ruleset that I came across. The tricky part of this ruleset is each successful attack deals 1 damage to the adjacent cards as well. This means in a way, the team is "committing suicide" when attacking the opponent.

I struggled a bit in finding a good strategy for this ruleset, and in the latest brawl, I was so happy that I managed to think through, came up with a good set of lineup, and won my opponent!

And today's featured card is Haunted Spirit! Haunted Spirit is a pretty old card from Death deck but it has a very unique ability called Heal. Not many Melee attackers have it (I probably can only think of Sea Monster).

Considering many cards were trading at low prices, Haunted Spirit does come in a little more expensive than most non Legendary cards. But that speaks a lot about its unique-ness.

Before we go further, here's the lore for Haunted Spirit and you should take a read too!

Many Dark Eternals by their third or fourth form take on a more ethereal and energetic existence. Their souls are beginning to merge with the Dark Reality. These Haunted Spirits are able to attack the living with blunt force and heal themselves with ease.

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So using the brawl battle to illustrate, here's how I lined up my cards!

• Having Equaliser ruleset in the battle meant Ever Hungry Skull would be the best fit for the tank because it gets a massive boost in HP regardless. With that, the summoner then has got to be Astral Entity. Have the extra Resurrection ability meant that Ever Hungry Skull (if resurrected) could cause of a lot of problems for the opponent.
• Next card I went for was Haunted Spirit, because it has Heal. I realised Heal cards are one of the best cards to counter Reckless because they are able to reverse the damage dealt and restore their HP back to status quo. Not many cards have Heal and thankfully I had Haunted Spirit in my card collection.
• Venari Marksrat comes in next, to leverage on the Martyr boost, because there's Reckless after all. I am half hoping Venari Marksrat goes down quickly as well, so that we can get the Martyr boost twice (from Astral Entity's resurrection ability). And that would boost two important cards in the lineup, the Gladius card, and the card with Heal.
• My last three cards were carefully strategised as well. All three of them had Life Leech. While it might not counter the damage received from Reckless, having Life Leech meant they could at least "heal" 1 HP per round and survive a while longer.

Round 1: My team started with 6 HP while my opponent started with 7 HP. There wasn't much to go around in the first round.

Round 2: We managed to take down the opposing tank and thanks to Heal and Life Leech, we had more HP overall after two rounds.

Round 3: This lineup is looking very solid, but I did notice one downside of Astral Entity for Reckless battles. Having Dodge ability meant that the opponent would miss their hits more often, which then meant that their own adjacent cards would not get the damage.

Round 4: After 4 rounds, I still had 6 cards on the board. Nonetheless their Sneak attacks took out my Life Sapper but it was brought back by Astral Entity.

Rounds 5 to 6: It was pretty straightforward then on. Eventually my own cards succumbed to Reckless but I had enough cards to outlast my opponent! And we got the win!

You can view the battle here.

So to sum up:

New rulesets are interesting and give a little twist to the routine brawl battles once in a while. I think the Reckless one was the most unique ruleset and I am glad that I was able to finally find a solution from my card collection, and also finally got my first win for this ruleset. Have Heal and Life Leech cards helped a lot definitely. And getting this win also gives me a little sense of achievement too!

That's all I have! Let me know if you have any thoughts too!

As always, thanks for reading and have a pleasant day ahead!

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