Splinterlands: Great Bear Druid is great in Melee Mayhem and Back to the Basics

Splinterlands is a complex game, and it allows for various cards and strategies. Each fight is different as there are various rulesets applied, and this can give specific cards an advantage depending on how you use them. In this post, I talk about a great battle where I won because I used Great Bear Druid.

Featured cards

Great Bear Druid is a neutral splinter that costs 9 mana. This card starts with the duo magic and melee damage. Leveling this card increases its melee damage and speed by 1. As this is a frontier card, it can only be upgraded once. This was my first legendary card in Frontier, and it was also the first card that I maxed. At level 2, it has an extra speed and attack so it is more powerful.

Rule Set, Battle, and Plan

The rulesets this time are Back to the Basics and Melee Mayhem. This means that only melee monsters can be used, and all monsters lose their abilities. There is also 32 mana available, and I can use any [splinter](https://leofinance.io/@leoglossary/leoglossary-splinter) except for water, earth, and dragon.

This ruleset is interesting because of how limited the options are. Melee monsters can't attack from their position if they are not up front as there are also no abilities.

Splinter	Mana Cost	Position	Reason
Barthalamas	6	Summoner	+1 Speed
Frankarsgard	7	1st
Chaos Furybringer	6	2nd
Ember Roast Sow	4	3rd
Great Bear Druid	9	4th	Magic damage
Total Mana:	32
My summoner is Barthalamas for the +1 speed. My tank is Frankarsgard. My backup tanks are the rest of the monsters, with Great Bear Druid in the last spot, because it also has magic damage

The focus of this lineup is to keep my monsters alive while dealing damage and outlasting my opponent. Most of my monsters can't do much outside of dealing damage when they are up front. Great Bear Druid, on the other hand, will continuously help me deal 1 extra damage per turn.

Round 1

At first glance, I think that this match is my win. The extra damage that I have will add up over time. Despite having just 1 less monster, the amount of damage that I have is 2-3 versus my opponent's 1-2 per turn.

Round 9

A few rounds later, my opponent is down to 1 monster while I still have 3 of mine. At this point, there is no way my opponent can win.

I won that match later that round.

Conclusion

The battle this time did go exactly as planned. With Great Bear Druid out there, my damage per turn was 50%-100% what my opponent could do, and that made up for the 1 monster difference. Since monsters can't attack much from their current position, that extra damage was more useful. It depends on the rulesets, but Great Bear Druid worked out well due to it being a duo magic and melee monster.

You can see my entire match here.

What did you think of my match? Was there anything you would have done differently? I think it is quite interesting to see how different players use the same card.

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