Lesson 3: Trading Punches
Unless the results of the First Turn Freeze and the After The First Turn Freeze is the death of one of the opponents, battledomers are going to have to trade punches. There are varied schools of thought on the best way to go about this, but these variants generally reduce down to one of two basic approaches to the Battledome.
The first of these is a high damage fast attack capability (which I call the West Coast Offense after an American football strategy). This approach utilizes high damage reusable fast attack weapons, the purpose being to inflict as high an amount of damage as possible, but sacrificing the ability to defend. Weapons commonly used in this approach include the Lost Desert Dagger, Plastic Halloween Fork, Battle Ducks, Zaptwig, Mono Claw, Mystical Fish Lobber, and Faerie Slingshot. There are many other weapons that fit into this style of fighting. Combatants in this fighting style will generally rely heavily on Fierce and Berserk Attack, Heal, and Drain Life.
The opposite of this, and the second approach, is what I call the Old School Defense approach (again, borrowed from American football). This style emphasize the blocking of incoming damage, frequently to the detriment of outgoing damage. The goal is to inflict more damage than is blocked. Commonly used weapons in this style include Dirty Snow, Fire Snow, Radioactive Snow, Attack Fork, Metallic Sun Staff, Hand Painted and Winged Scarab, Tornado Ring, Rod of Dark Nova, and others. These are all weapons which block damage, but also do damage back. Variants of this school use “Shields” (weapons which only block) combined with West Coast weaponry (a Lost Desert Dagger, for instance; all attack, no defense) to achieve a similar effect. Combatants in this fighting style will generally rely heavily on Improved Defend, Burrow, Sink and Drain Life. – Jadeasahi