This is my third article reviewing setting for steemmonster battles. If you want to check my opinion about :

• Earthquake setup, check out my first article
• Equalizer setup, check out my second article

This time I will review the "True aim" setup, which makes all melee and long range attacks always hit their target.

Tactic 1 : Don’t go all in with long range attack

At first glance this setup encourage you to give up magic monsters to deploy long range units instead. However you should not shift for only a melee and long range mix.

Long range units are ineffective, when they are on the first line. Therefore once your tank will fall the attack power of your battle line will degrades. It is better to have few magic units behind your tank to have a more gradually lost of attack power as your units die out.

Also going all in long range attack make you vulnerable to disturbance from your enemy :

• The Contessa L’ament summoner will decrease all long range attacks
• The monster with the "Headwinds" ability like the Naga Windmaster will do the same
  That is why I recommend to always have a mix of the different attacks types in your battle line.

Last but not least focusing solely on melee and long range will make you vulnerable to shield ability.

Tactic 2 : Shield up

With true aim setting you can expect your opponent to invest in monsters with the shield ability, which ignore half of the long range and melee damage.

My favorite splinter for this setting is Fire, as I can deploy :
Living Lava on first line
Naga Fire Wizard on the second line
This double shield can buy precious time for the long range units I deploy in the back, to deal heavy domages.

Fire splinter is also interesting because it has 3 monsters, which can deal 3 long range damages. The Ettin Spearman, has obviously 3 attacks power. But the Fire Elemental and Pyromancer also virtually have 3 attacks strength thanks to the blast ability.

The only way to defend yourself against shielded monster is to have few monster with magic attacks. Magics attacks indeed ignore the shield and can help you finish of those annoying monsters.

Tactic 3 : Speed doesn’t matter much…

It is usually preferred to have monsters with high initiative, as they have higher chances to dodge attacks. In true aim setting, that doesn’t matter anymore. Initiative still matter a bit as it make you attacks first and might allow you to knock-out one enemy before it even attacks… But overall the initiative become a secondary criteria in the monster choice. In a true aim setting, your monster choice should focus on HP/mana & Strength/mana ratios.

Also the true aim makes irrelevant the "fly " and "dodge " abilities. I think that the Serpent of eld is the perfect example to show how this setting redistribute the cards. The serpent of eld is usually a rely good tanks as it combine dodge ability and high speed, which gives it a reasonable resilience. In True aim setup the low HP count of the monster become an issue.

Recommended splinter

As I mentioned before my favorite splinter for this setup is Fire.

If fire is not available I would then recommend the Water or Death splinter as they can both decrease the enemy long range attack strength. Further more those 2 splinters offer a monster with 3 long range attack strength.

Life splinter is a reasonable pick if you have a Silvershield Paladin to shield your front line. Also Warrior of peace over the lvl 6 could be handy. It has the Headwinds ability to destabilize your enemy, plus it is a nice HP count and can therefore be used to protect your rear gard for several turns.

The dragon splinter is of course nice to use too as it can bring some complementary cards to the Fire or Water splinters. However keep in mind that the flying ability is useless in this setup.