Shorten Lore: Every army should have them, every artisan should hire them, and every noble should own one. If you need absolutely anything, then a supply runner will get it for you. For their size they can carry vast amounts, they’re incredibly fast and they’ll even defend your deliveries with exuberant relish. Not only that but their expertise with the catapult they carry is renowned across the land. Countless confrontations have been recorded in the history books of these hired hands coming to the aid of convoys beset by bandits or roaming patrols attacked by the enemy. They have swarmed the foe, firing their shot down upon them and running havoc amongst their ranks with their incredible speed. Most of these forays have ended with the enemy fleeing, but those that did remain and fight didn’t last for long.

Hi everyone, welcome back to my Splinterlands weekly battle challenge. This week we have Supply Runner as our main theme. This is a hard one, because Supply Runner is not a monster you can utilize on bronze league or when it's on lower level. We will have the discussion on later part of this page. But First let see our battle first, shall we?

Battle Preparation

I had this battle ruleset and I thought this might be an interesting one

• EXPLOSIVE WEAPONRY ~ All Monsters have the Blast ability.
• NOXIOUS FUMES ~ All Monsters start the battle Poisoned.
• 30 MANA With this amount of mana getting a 6 monsters team is feasible.

In a normal condition, I would go with Water Element. I have Level 4 River Nymph who will Cleanse the poison of my tank. However the EXPLOSIVE WEAPONRY ruleset looked very interesting to display a fast speedy team that would showcase how good Supply Runner was.

This trio would be the core of my team, and I had to think more about what to do to 16 mana left, how I could add 4 monsters to get a 6 monsters team that would act fast

So here was my speedy fast lineup that I could come up with:

Position	Card	Ability	Plan and Strategy
Summoner		-1 range and -1 speed	Quix was a great choice as summoner who controlled the speed. As a dragon summner, he could go for any element and got more monsters for his team selection.
Main Tank		Fly, Magic Reflect	My favorite tank in Life Element. I favored him over Blinding Reflector for a small mana tank.
Second		Reach	2 melee damage and 3 speed, I liked this one. He had 2 armor too, very helpful against blast damage
Third		Slow	Time Mage would be a disaster for my opponent. She would deliver 2 magic damage with a blast effect and she would make all her teammates move first before opponent could do anything
Fourth		Tank Heal	I felt empty if I had no healers in my team. 2 range damage and 3 speed were good enough to give some blast to enemy first
Fifth		Double Strike	Pelacor Arbalest was one of everyone favorite from Chaos Legion pack. In same cases, a double strike with a blast effect would be more fatal than one big damage with a blast effect.
The Last		Swiftness	Our main actor for this week. Let see how he would turn his team into a fast killing squad.

Let see how this battle went off

HERE COMES THE BATTLE!!!

If you want to see the battle directly, you can see it directly here:
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_756b4e7835588d2af1c63a0bdb471859&ref=dewabrata

It's an Earth element vs a Life element. I was quite upset with my opponent formation, because I believed he could go with a better stronger line up with this.

In general, He and I took same approach. We set a anti magic tank in front then tried to take advantage on EXPLOSIVE WEAPONRY ruleset by using fast monsters. What I believed he was wrong or his downfall was the two slow monsters behind. In my opinion it's an inconsistency in his strategy.

Round 1

• The game started as both party buffing and debuffing their monsters and opponent's monsters.
• My opponent had 3 melee damage from his Unicorn Mustang. Currently he could rely on 8 magic damage and 1 range damage.
• I had 2 melee damage from Sunkai, 2 magic damage from Time Mage, and 6 range damage from my archer team behind.
• The most notable condition was speed. My slowest monster was Pelacor Arbalest with 3 speed, and he was equal to opponent's Regal Peryton 3 speed. All my monsters might move first before their fastest monster move, this condition should be a fatal for him

• My first 3 attacks killed his Failed Summoner. His plan of having Unicorn Mustang starting on 2nd seemed good.
• His Unicorn Mustang withstood the rest of my team attacks, however his Child of Forest died from blast damage.
• His Goblin Psychic with 2 magic damage + blast effect managed to killed my Pelacor Conjurer and Sunkai Harvester. It's back to 4 vs 4 condition

Round 2

• With NOXIOUS FUMES ruleset, every monsters got the poison damage. The battle became 3 vs 2 with my advantage my team had 1 more monsters than his.

• The battle ended with my Pelacor Arbalest killed both his Regal Peryton and Unicorn Mustang.

Battle Discussion

To be honest my team was not that good and I got too fixated on Supply Runner Swiftness Ability. I should have lost this battle, however I came up as the winner due to these points:

• First I won because I had better leveled monsters. I should have Lost the battle if my opponent brought Level 4 Goblin Psychic and Lvl 3 Regal Peryton.
• If my opponent discarded those two slow mages and kept focus on speed, such as bringing Acid Shooter, Beatrix or Iza, This should be an easy win for him. You can't build up half assed speedy team, either you go faster than your opponent or nothing at all.
• Supply Runner is a good monster, a strong one, however it doesn't seem that special. I believe most people might find Time Mage works better than him. We will see the reason on next chapter below

QUICK INSIGHT ON SUPPLY RUNNER

When I saw this monster for the first time, I thought Supply Runner was a special one. As time has gone by, now I have played with Chaos Legion set for 4 months, my perspective has been changed. Right now I believe Supply Runner is a strong monster however he isn't a special one. Good but not great.

1. Swiftness Ability (+)

In term of speed control and manipulation, we have Swiftness and Slow Ability. There are many monsters which have Slow Ability, however only a few which have Swiftness Ability. Supply Runner is one of the monsters who has it at early stage (Silver League), but he needs to get level 5 first to have it activated.

Swiftness doesn't have any limitation, you can stack up to as many as u want, getting as high as possible, that's why I think it's better than Slow. Slow maximum reduce opponent speed down to 1, and that's it. You can't force them to have 0 speed, this is the limitation of Slow ability.

2. Neutral Monster (+)

The good thing having a strong neutral monsters, you can use it in other Element too unless you have a Taking Side ruleset. So rent a strong one, or invest to buy a strong one, then all of your 5 Element can get benefit from that monsters.

3. Chaos Legion monsters relatively cheap (+)

Either rent or buy, the price is very affordable. Maybe it's a good deal to invest on this monster, but do your own research first.

4. Supply Monster Doesn't Grow Well (-)

If you take a look on it's stats again, The growth from level 1 to level 10 are : 1 range Damage, 2 speed, and 1 health point. This number is awful. 4 point for 10 level. This make you feel that investing a lot in Supply Runner won't be rewarded fairly.

Until level 5 and Swiftness Ability is activated, it seems everything is ok... more than that... personally I won't invest more than that point.

5. Having Poor Compatibility (-)

This is what I get after I have rent level 5 Suppy Runner several times in past and I just rented it again only for this Battle Challenge. This monster looks awesome, seems a great support type, however mostly It doesn't work well with others

• First on bronze league, due to 6 mana, mostlikely we won't use this one. There are many far better monsters to be chosen if you have below 20 mana cap.
• Then on Silver league, sometime we have same issues as bronze league. When Mana cap is below 30, same as this battle, having firm and strong 6 mana or more is very crucial. Unfortunately Supply Runner is hardly compete for that position, many others come with better offer.
• Even if you have good mana cap battle, only maximum level silver league summoner can support Supply Runner with a Swiftness Ability
• Then on Gold League, I have played Gold League frequesntly... There are many monsters that get buffed up greatly on Gold League Level. Meanwhile Supply Runner is still the same as he is on Silver League... Sorry, this makes him s less attractive option.
• Let say you like General Sloan and you think it's a great combo with Supply Runner. You can't have 6 range monsters in your team without close range ruleset. Mostly you can only bring 3 range monsters, normally you will have Venary Crystalsmith with tank heal, Pelacor Arbalest with double strike, and Prismologist with blast. If you want to get Supply Runner into the team, you might have to get rid one of them. Not an easy choice right?

There are other reason too for this lack of versatility and compatibility, but I think I have said enough. I don't want to make this good monster looks so bad, because I know some players who can utilize this monster a lot better than me.

Thank you for visiting my weekly battle challenge, don't forget to leave your comments and feedback below. There are credits in this post for these people:

• splinterlands : for holding weekly battle challenge events
• carrieallen : for ultimate markdown tutorial
• eve66 : for wonderful divider art