This is my submission to the Splinterlands Weekly Battle Challenge. This time it is featuring the "Lone Boatman".

About the Card

The Lone Boatman is a card very typical of the Life splinter in that it is focused on armor. Sure, we now have summoners like Mother Khala that allow for different strategies with the Life splinter but traditionally when you play Life, you choose a strategy to prevent your opponent from reducing your monsters’ HP by hiding them behind a wall of armor from buffs of the Peakrider summoner or Tyrus Paladium.

Before the Lone Boatman was released the Armorsmith was the only option to restore that armor once it had been damaged. This has lead to awkward teams in terms of placement, where an Armorsmith, which is a melee monster without Sneak, Reach or Opportunity, would be placed in the middle of a team, unable to attack for the sole purpose of restoring armor.

If you have only 2 mana left in a life team, I still believe that this is a viable strategy but with the Lone Boatman you now also have the option to use a monster that can actually attack from the back row for restoring your armor. When maxed out the Lone Boatman also gets the Shatter ability, which destroys an opponent’s armor on impact.

While this is great, it is a somewhat awkward combination with his Snipe ability. Shatter would be ideal to destroy a tanks armor, clearing the way for other ranged attackers. But Snipe causes the Boatman to aim at the first Ranged, Magic or no-attack monster that is +not in the first position+. Destroying that monster’s armor is still a good thing but I feel it would be more effective to aim at the tank.

Personally, I don’t use the Boatman as much as I would like to because I feel that a mana cost of 5 is somewhat high for the card. They probably wanted to make it more expensive in terms of mana then the Centaur as it has more abilities but when compared to Naga Windmaster it feels to me that the Boatman would have fit into that four-mana category just as well.

Card Use-Cases

Did I mention already that with the Lone Boatman it is all about armor? You cannot repair armor, when you don’t have armor, so apparently don’t use him in a “No Armor” ruleset. Also make sure to use him in combination with Tyrus Paladium or The Peakrider as a summoner, so that each of your monsters actually does have armor that the Boatman can repair.

If you own a maxed out version of the Boatman, he is especially well suited for the “Armored Up” ruleset where each of your opponents’ monsters would get an additional two armor points. The Boatman will shatter these with one hit clearing the path for other melee and ranged attackers.

With Shatter he is also a good choice for “Weak Magic” rulesets if you are using him alongside magic monsters, whose attack would otherwise be blocked by the opponent’s armor. Note that Weak Magic is generally a great ruleset for Life Splinter as its shields are put to maximum efficiency.

If the mana restraints allow it, I like playing line ups like: Tyrus/Peakrider as summoner, Silvershield Paladin/Lord Arianthus as tank, Prismatic Energy in the 2nd slot and then monsters that support the armor like Lone Boatman/Armorsmith/Defender of Truth/Truthspeaker. This way the opponent will either despair trying to overcome your high amount of self-repairing armor or if he tries to outwit you, damage themselves with magic reflects.

This week's match

Click on the video ^ to play or view the original match on Splinterlands.

This week’s lineup:

1. Lord Arianthus: Using a Life team with heavy focus on protection from armor, I wanted to have a tank with void and magic reflect to compensate for the team’s weakness to magic attacks.

2. Halfing Alchemist: I put the Halfing Alchemist in the second spot, so that he would die quickly by either blast damage or by reaching the tank position. Dying would trigger the Alchemist’s redemption ability, which is more effective when it is triggered near the beginning of the match. (More enemy monsters are alive at that time -> More total damage dealt by Redemption).

3. Highland Archer: A solid Ranged monster with a powerful 3 ATK points and 5 HP for just three mana.

4. Peacebringer: Just like the Highland Archer, the Peacebringer was used for blunt power. Its 4 ATK points are strong for its 4 mana cost.

5. Centaur: Another considerably strong ranged monster. My strategy was to stall my opponent with Lord Arianthus as long as possible, while my ranged monsters dealt heavy damage to their team.

6. Lone Boatman: And in the last position we have this week’s special card. The Boatman is sitting neatly in the back row and can comfortably repair the tank's armor from this spot. Should the opponent have a sneak monster on their team, the Boatman would effectively stall that monster’s attacks by simply restoring its own armor every turn.

Conclusion

This battle is a perfect example of how mighty the repair ability can be. Despite my opponent using a mighty Kraken with 6 ATK (after it was enraged), that monster could not do a single HP of damage to my Lord Arianthus. It was the fastest monster in the game, so all it did was destroy the armor again and again and again that was neatly restored by the Lone Boatman at the end of every turn. Meanwhile, Lord Arianthus could use his Magic Reflect and Thorns ability to passively take out the other monsters on the enemy’s team.

Want to join the fight?

Create an account at the Splinterlands today and fight me in next week's battle challenge!

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