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Hello everyone! Pozdrav svima!

This week I'm going to show you one of my battles featuring Gem Meteor - great Neutral ranged attack card. It was introduced to the game with Chaos Legion edition.

THEME: GEM METEOR Edition: CHAOS LEGION Rarity: EPIC Element: NEUTRAL Attack: RANGED Abilities: Scattershot

~~ LORE ~~

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Lorcan peered up at the night sky. Pulling the shemagh away from his mouth, he breathed in the cold air. The stars were unusually bright this night and he could trace the plough easily in the blackness between them. Glancing back at the spice train behind him, he waved them on and started down a long dune. The trading post was close.

He wasn’t even halfway down the slope when a cry arose from behind. Men shouting for people to take cover and to look out from above. He crouched beside his camel and stared wide-eyed at the sky, desperately looking for any danger. But all he could see was a shooting star, trailing above them. Then to his astonishment it turned in the air and started to descend on their position. Moments later the crystal shards came and all chaos was let loose.

Explosions lit up the trading caravan, bright flashes of light as crystal missiles were indiscriminately flung in all directions. Screams of the wounded and dying filled the night air, and panicked animals struggled to break free of their harnesses to escape the disorder. Lorcan managed to glimpse two white burning eyes and a mouthful of long fangs as the hostile creature flew by. And then it was gone again, as quickly as it had come, flying away through the night sky until it was merely a shimmering line across the blanket of night. But when Lorcan looked to his people again, they were in complete disarray, many of them lying dead on the cold sands.

~~ STATS ~~

This card is as great on paper as it's great on battlefield. For 5 mana you get 1 ranged attack at level 1, but it goes up very quickly as you progress through levels and its 4 at level 6 and that's quite decent for 5 mana card. It has 5 health on all levels and 4 speed at level 1, that goes up to 5 at level 2 through 6.

But what makes this card special is the Scattershot ability that makes this monster's attacks hit a random enemy target.

This ability is very very useful. Ok, it hits a RANDOM target, so there is a lot of RNG (luck) involved, but this ability *ignores Taunt and it is not susceptible to rulesets like Equal Opportunity, Fog of War, Super Sneak and Target Practice.

I found this graphic (below) that someone posted in official Splinterlands discord.

(I'm not the author of this graphics, I got got it from official Splinterlands discord)

As you can see, this is the only target ability that is not effected by any of these rulesets, it will always work as intended. For example, it is very powerful in **Explosive Weaponry ruleset because it ignores Taunt*, so if you're lucky it can hit some weak target in back line and do a lot of damage.

How to counter *Scattershot ?

• You can't really counter it because of it hits random targets. All you can do is hope it doesn't hit your squishiest monsters first.

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At level 5 it gets *Piercing ability - If Melee or Ranged attack damage is in excess of the target's Armor, the remainder will damage the target's Health.

This is a nice ability to have when facing a team with full of monsters with armor. Don't you hate is when an enemy has 1 armor and low health and then you have to waste two hits to kill it? Well, this ability fixes that problem for you, because all the surplus damage you do over armor goes then to enemy health. To make use of this ability in full potential it's recommended to have high attack so that surplus of damage actually happen.

How to counter *Piercing ?

• One of the counters to this ability is having a lot of armor so the attacks don't go through on first hit.

• The other counter is totally ignoring armor and load up with health, or use monsters with no armor but high health, so this ability becomes useless.

~~ BATTLE ~~

Today's battle is a nice example of how powerful Gem Meteor is, or better say how powerful *Scattershot is, paired with Blast ability.

If you want you can see the whole battle, play by play - click 👉 HERE 👈

~~ RULESET ~~

Ruleset in this battle didn't really help me much, but it didn't hurt either. I had just enough mana to squeeze in the right cards in the line-up that I needed for my plan to work.

I will try to explain each part of the ruleset, so you get the better understanding what was I thinking when I picked my line-up.

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All Monsters have the Magic Reflect ability.

Try to avoid using magic attack monsters because they will get their damage reflected back to them.

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Legendary Monsters may not be used in battles.

There are no special tricks for this ruleset, legendary monsters are off the table. Legendary summoners are still available.

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This is midrange of available mana where we have to balance between cheaper and pricier cards.

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For this match we had Fire, Earth, Life and Dragon splinters available. My opponent and I both chose the Fire splinter.

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~~ STRATEGY REVIEW ~~

When I saw the mana cap, no legendary cards ruleset and Fire splinter available I knew I could try my luck with Yodin Zaku summoner with some interesting Ranged attack possibilities. Counterspell ruleset insured I won't be troubled by magic attack monsters, which I usually have trouble against with this set-up, so I could focus on optimizing my damage output. My opponent had more standard approach - Fire splinter line-up with Tarsa summoner and combination of Sneak and Opportunity attacks.

~~ LINE-UP ~~

You can see the line-up from both teams in battle screenshot right after this section. I will go through my line-up and explain why was each card picked and put in that spot.

SUMMONER

YODIN ZAKU Fire splinter legendary summoner that increases friendly ranged attack and health by 1. It also gives Blast ability to all monsters in the team. I chose this summoner because I wanted to go in with heavy ranged attack when the ruleset favored those attack types, with a little "spice" on top of that. Yodin Zaku is one of the strongest summoners, because of its Blast buff.

1st POSITION ("TANK")

RADIATED SCORCHER Great spot filler, or in this case cannon fodder, used as a shield between opponent attackers and my main tank. Costs only 1 mana, but at level 3 he acquires Shatter - great ability that destroys enemy armor on hit. I put him in the first position to take the first hit from opponents, and maybe if it takes the turn shatter enemy tank's armor

2nd POSITION

LIVING LAVA Great rare Fire splinter card. Amazing tank because of his Shield ability. His only downside is his 1 speed, but that can be an advantage in Reverse Speed ruleset. I chose him because I predicted my opponent won't use magic attack monsters because of the ruleset and I put him in the second position avoid the first hit on him.

3rd POSITION

FINEAS RAGE Another great rare card from Fire splinter. Great attack, speed and health in combination with Reach ability makes him an excellent 2nd position card. He gets even better at higher levels with Oppress ability at level 5 and absolutely awesome at level 8 with Retaliate ability. I put it in third position which is effectivly a second position because of his Reach ability and high health.

4th POSITION

GEM METEOR When you have Blast ability, its best if your attacks hit some monster in the middle of enemy team so it damages both left and right of that monster, thus doing damage to 3 monsters at once. Scatter is one of the best ways to do it. That's why this great card found place in my line-up. I put it in fourth position, to be protected from both sides since it was my one of main damage dealers.

5th POSITION

BLOOD MAKER Another great card with Scatter ability, this time a common card from Fire splinter. He's probably in 90% of my line-ups when using Yodin Zaku summoner, primarily because of the Scatter and his decent ranged attack. I put it in fifth position to make best use of his damage.

6th POSITION

HALFLING ALCHEMIST Very useful cheap Epic Neutral card. It costs only 2 mana but has a great Halving ability that cuts enemy attack in half. His only downside is very low health and speed, so he usually dies first. I hoped he would get at least one shot away and reduce enemy tank's attack. I put it in the last position, to protect the back from eventual Sneak attacks.

~~ COURSE OF THE BATTLE ~~

This was not a long fight, because when you have Blast and Scatter enemies drop like flies.

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Round 1

Our hero of the day - Gem Meteor - opened the battle with his first shot which landed in the 2nd position, just how we wanted. As I expected their first hit landed on my Radiated Scorcher, but at least my tank didn't take that damage. My other scatter shot, from Blood Maker, landed on the last position, which was not ideal, but it did some damage. My Halving Alchemist didn't manage to take a shot so their was left there standing with full attack.

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Round 2

First scatter shot of the second round landed on the worst position - on their tank, doing almost no damage. But the second scatter shot rectified the situation by killing their Serpentine Spy and doing nice damage to monsters next to it.

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Round 3

Going into round 3 I was left with only 2 monsters versus 4 monsters on the other side. Game over, you probably thought? Wrong! My guys were just getting started. The first Gem Meteor's shot landed on the sweet spot, right in the middle of their back-line, damaging 3 monsters at once, killing one in the process. Second hit, from Fineas Rage, damaged the tank and killed Tenyii Striker who was behind him. Like a cherry on the top both Uraeus and Living lava missed ther targets, because of speed difference between them and my guys.

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Round 4

Last round was just a formality. I was just a question who would get the killing blow - that honor went to Fineas Rage. (no poetic justice for Gem Meteor 😝)

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Made using egzif.com

~~ RESULT ~~

The battle result was never put into question. And a nice rating and RP/SPS gain from it.

~~ CONCLUSION ~~

*Did your strategy work?

• Yes, my strategy worked out perfectly. Putting 2 monsters with Scatter* in the line-up was a winning move.

What will you try differently next time?

• Probably just change put Radiated Scorcher all the way in the last position so it takes one hit away from Halving Alchemist.

Do you like GEM METEOR? Why or why not?

• I like this card, but only in certain situations. It's not a card you can use all the time, everywhere. But when the conditions are favorable its a super useful card.

Link to the battle itself can be found 👉 HERE 👈

If you still haven't tried Splinterlands try it out 👉 HERE 👈

Thank you for your time, and please vote if you like this post. 👍

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Credits

Special thanks to:

@carrieallen for ultimate markdown tutorial. @rqr4 for text dividers used in this post. @splinterlands for images used in this post and for making this great game.