Double Strike Dragons (An effective rental strategy at 2.5 DEC!)

You know what I love? A bargain! And it seems to me that renting in the dragon splinter offers excellent value, and will allow you to put together an incredibly powerful team ready to absolutely dominate! Join me today and I will let you join me for my longest battle of the day, but also, one of my favourites.

To do this, I want to explore three dragons - and, I'll be honest, I havn't used these dragons often. I've rented CARNAGE TITAN once before, but I've never used DARIA DRAGONSCALE, or the new card DHAMPIR INFILTRATOR. I rented all these cards today at Level 1 to use in the SILVER league - and they only cost me 2.5 DEC - In anyone's language, that's a bargain - especially since they destroyed a GOLD team with Level 3 and 4 cards!

The focus I wanted to consider was the SKILL DOUBLE STRIKE - Let's start with this one to understand why it is so powerful. This skill is particularly impressive, as it allows you to attack once, and then to hit again! BAM - 2 hits in the one round! And so it occurred to me, if you played multiple cards with DOUBLE STRIKE, you're going to really achieve a massive impact!

The first dragon to introduce is DARIA DRAGONSCALE - who became my summoner. This little card is really useful because he gives each card in your deck +1 melee attack. This is a perfect choice of summoner to set you up for a signficant attack which seeks to win with brute force, and certainly, brute force was the strategy I choose to employ today. And, at a cost of just on 1 DEC per day, it's a no brainer to use this card to smash your opponents to bits!

But of course, any summoner needs a good line behind them - and I wanted to explore my first DOUBLE STRIKER. You of course would know the legendary card, the CARNAGE TITAN. I picked this guy up for about 1.5 DEC. This is a super card, you see - he has REACH skill which means you can put him in the off-tank position, from there, with his +1 benefit from DARIA DRAGONSCALE, CARNAGE TITAN will deal +6 melee damage per round! That's huge! And, with a well paired tank, you can certainly seek to destroy your opponent's opening position. Then, when CARNAGE TITAN moves into the first position, his stats are better than most tanks in the game - so you'll not just have an aggressive off-tank, you'll get yourself a second tank to take up the fight!!

And then, there is the new REWARD card, the DHAMPIR INFILTRATOR, who is a card I think I will use a lot over the months ahead. You see, again, this card has the DOUBLE STRIKE, and paired with DARIA DRAGONSCALE, he will be able to hit for +4 MELEE per round. That's enough to destroy a shield and health, as he also has the SNEAK skill, meaning he will be targeting the support line of your opponent. At 0.1 of a DEC, he's cheap - and, as a result card, I hope to be able to get my own in a chest one of these days.

So there you have it, that's my DOUBLE STRIKE x 2 duo, and it only cost me 2.5 DEC to put together the bones of an awesome team, but of course, I needed to flesh out the rest of a line-up, have a look at what I found:

I decided for my battle to play DJINN CHWALA out front as my tank - with DARIA DRAGONSCALE this means he will play +3 Melee damage, and will hurt my opponent with +2 damage from THORNS. While he isn't a 'DOUBLE STRIKER', he certainly has the ability to hurt my opponent's tank twice per round - and that's +5 damage which is HUGE! This card has high health and solid armour and is an absolute beast!

I also chose to play the NAGA ASSASSIN - it's a low mana card with HIGH SPEED, and I put this card last in my line-up in order to make use of her speed; she often dodges an opponent's attack and this will certainly frustrate any opponent trying to rip through my backline.

It raises the question, then, as to what ruleset I was playing, well, here it is:
This is actually the perfect ruleset for the DOUBLE STRIKE DRAGONS because it will mean I am playing extra hits each round - and in an equalizer battle which will be high health, I know from the get-go that I should be in an advantageous position with those extra hits each round. The team I am playing will have two ways of attacking:

1. Removing the tank from the front of my opponent's team.
2. Removing the rear support of my opponent's team.

Let's have a look at how the battle plays out - check out the full video of the battle below, then we'll analyse the key rounds together!

At the end of Round 1:
You can see that this first round is largely uneventful - but, I feel like I made some progress. You see, my opponent played LORNA which gave all of his cards DIVINE SHIELD, which meant that I had two wasted hits hits this round as I attack the tank and the rear guard. But despite this, I still was able to make some progress. I took all the armour from the heavy armoured LEGIONAIRE ALVAR and my opponent's DOUBLE STRIKE SILVERSHIELD ASSASSIN lost his shield and took his first damage - meanwhile, my NAGA ASSASSIN dodged all of the attacks on her, and my DJINN, while he lost armour, only lost two health to a magic bolt. Uneventful round, but I was feeling the more confident at this point.

Through Round 2:
This round really was quite decesive because I was able to remove my opponent's LEGIONAIRE ALVAR from the battlefield. This was one of his key attackers in this battle with +3 Melee, and his armour strategy was failing. Meanwhile, I've continued to hurt my opponent's SILVERSHIELD ASSASSIN - It won't take much to knock him over. This will essentially remove my opponent's two key cards from the field, and then it will simply be a case of getting through the health for the remainder of the battle. Let's see:

Halfway through Round 4:
The next round and a half started to see some CARNAGE (pun intended) in the battle. While my NAGA ASSASSIN dodged a number of attacks in the early round, she stoppe dodging, and finally lost all her health. Meanwhile, my opponent's SILVERSHIELD ASSASSIN frustrated me with a number of dodges, but then I finally got him. At this point in the battle, I will be hitting for +14 Melee each round, with my fiend's +2 buried. My opponent will hit for +4 melee and +2 magic. The numbers at this point are on my side as DOUBLE STRIKE begins to look very, very, very good.

Into Round 6:
And then the squeeze finally got my opponent in Round 6 - You see, his TIME MAGE was the fourth card in his line-up, but my tank facing cards took out his first 3 cards, while my SNEAK attack took out the two rear cards. This squeeze leaves the TIME MAGE in a position where he has absolutely no chance - and from here, it's a simple clean up.

Evaluation:
Using DOUBLE STRIKE will lead to a huge advantage, but in this battle, I wanted to ask how could I magnify that advantage with 2 X DOUBLE STRIKERS. The answer was really clear: it led to an absolutely massive victory again a team which was very competitive. This strategy is one I would play over and over again - and, while this was an EQUALIZER battle for health, the strategy would equally work well in a standard ruleset - because it's key is frequency of attack. When the battle opened, my opponent had 6 cards and 7 attacks per round. I had 6 cards with 8 attacks per round. Once I dropped my opponent's SILVERSHIELD ASSASSIN, this advantage got wider. I had 6 cards with 8 attacks per round, my opponent had 5 cards with 5 attacks per round. Purely from a numbers perspective, this strategy was always going to lead to a solid offense.

Now in the battle, I was a bargain hunter, and rented my cards for 2.5 DEC - which gave me these cards as Level 1. If I had these cards at a higher level, with a higher level DARIA DRAGONSCALE, this advantage would continue to magnify as the base stats of the DHAMPIR INFILTRATOR are raised, along with the CARNAGE TITAN. This is certainly something I will need for that time when I eventually move into the GOLD LEAGUE.

Thanks for joining me for this strategy chat!

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