Splinterlands - Double Sneak and Double Snipe

Hey Everyone,

I've been crazy busy the last few days but I wanted to make a quick post explaining a strategy that you should be aware of for picking a team in Splinterlands (aka Steem Monsters) blockchain trading card game. This is part of the toolkit of every experienced player. I'm sure you've already read the title, the technique is to employ two monsters on your team that both have the Sneak ability and/or two monsters that have the Snipe ability. Don't confuse this with using one monster with Sneak and one with Snipe. While that can work depending on the composition of your opponent's team, it usually results in having your attacks dispersed and weak rather than concentrated on picking out specific opposing monsters and then moving on to the next. Let me break it down for you:

Sneak

Monsters with the Sneak ability will attack the last person in your opponent's team. Using the Double Sneak strategy will have a pair of monsters on your team that are both going to be chipping away at the back of your opponent's team while the rest of your monsters will usually be selected to focus on the opponent's tank (i.e. the monster they have in first position.)

Snipe

Snipe is a bit more complicated. A monster with the Snipe ability will target enemy monsters that have ranged, magic or no attack (i.e. non-melee monster) and who are not in the first position. Sometimes this ends up being the last monster in your opponent's team, like with Sneak, but sometimes it's the second monster. It depends on the team your opponent chooses. But if you recruit two monsters on your team that both have the Snipe ability you can usually pick off monsters from the middle of your opponent's team. Often this ends up being your opponent's healer. Meanwhile the rest of your team can focus on taking out the enemy tank.

Combining Double Sneak with Double Snipe

Another strategy you can experiment with is to use two monsters with Sneak as well as two monsters with Snipe! The rest of your monsters will focus on the tank. Be careful with this because it might just disperse your forces too much. It's easier to pull off in battles with a high Mana cap so you can create a large team.

https://steemmonsters.com?battle=a3ce81ef970e6b186f2e7f58ce89c1f52267771a&ref=jeremycrow

Click the link above to watch the replay of a battle I recently had in which I successfully employed this strategy. You can watch this even if you aren't a current player. The screenshot at the beginning of this article shows the team selection if you just want to take a glance at that.

My team consisted of three mini-teams of two monsters each: The turtle and crustacean take on the enemy tank together, with the crustacean as a non-melee monster who can heal my tank. The shark and the elf form the Sneak team, working on the enemy at the end. Finally I had the pirate and the centaur forming the Snipe team.

On the opponent's team we can see they had three monsters focused on my tank, including one non-melee monster that can heal their tank. They had a goblin with Sneak and the centaur with Snipe. It turns out they spread their forces a little too thin in this match. In the play through of this battle we can see that they almost took out my healer, and probably would have if they had chosen a second Snipe monster instead of the goblin.

Creating mini-teams is a powerful strategy, especially if your opponent isn't aware of it. One thing to note, generally each splinter (magic type) in the game has one Common grade monster with Sneak and one with Snipe, so to get a double Sneak or double Snipe you'll usually have to employ a neutral monster. You'll notice that the elf and centaur, while both are Common grade cards they're more pricy than the average Common card. It's because they are so useful for whatever splinter you choose if you want to employ the strategies explained in this post.

Bonus Tip - Add Blast

One way to augment a Double Sneak or Double Snipe mini-team is to also employ a monster with the Blast ability. This will generally hit the enemy tank with the brunt of the attack and then cause some small damage to the next monster in line. This will usually help the Double Snipe mini-team a bit more than the Double Sneak but is a welcome addition to the team in either case.

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