This week's Share Your Battle challenge features River Nymph! River Nymph is not the type of card that you will use in every battle, but it is an important utility monster to have, and when you do need it then more often than not River Nymph will be incredibly useful.
River Nymph's base stats aren't particularly impressive - at level 1, for 4 mana you get 1 magic attack paired with 2 speed and 3 health. What makes River Nymph interesting is its ability - it comes with Cleanse! Cleanse isn't something you need all of the time, but it is particularly useful in Poison rulesets, or if you suspect that your opponent will be bringing some monsters which will attempt to inflict conditions on your team.
If you wanted to jump right to the action, the Battle Link is right here. Want to hear some more about the lineup? Read on further!
First up: the ruleset. The two things that I first noticed about this ruleset were that it was a 99 mana cap battle, and that it had the Noxious Fumes ruleset. Water has a lot of high mana cost monsters and is great in high mana battles, and Noxious Fumes means that there are sure to be poison conditions for River Nymph to Cleanse! The Counterspell ruleset is an interesting twist to keep in mind as well, since magic attackers will be a little more dangerous to use.
I decided to go with Lir Deepswimmer for my summoner. Lir's abilities will complement the Counterspell ruleset very nicely - any magic attackers on my opponent's team will take damage whenever they attack, any ranged monsters will take hits from Return Fire, and both ranged and melee attackers will be more likely to miss thanks to being Blinded. The extra 2 armor on top of that is just additional icing on the cake!
A 99 mana cap means that I can splurge a bit on every monster in my lineup. Torhilo and Djinn Oshannus are two premium tanks - both of them have plenty of health and can stand up to Poison for a while, and both of them also come with the Void ability in order to reduce any magic damage. Void is particularly useful for Djinn Oshannus because it will reduce the counterattacks from the Counterspell ruleset to zero.
For the middle of my lineup I opted for another high cost heavy hitter in Nerissa, and our guest star of the week - River Nymph! Nerissa wasn't quite the ideal monster in this battle since she would be taking damage from Counterspell, but she has plenty of health and can afford to take a few counterhits and some Poison damage while dishing out some heavy magic attacks. River Nymph was my ace card for this battle - she would be able to Cleanse my front monster of any Poison and hopefully make it so that my team would be able to outlast my opponent's monsters.
I finished off my team with some more premium picks. Axemaster is an amazing source of ranged damage, Double Striking twice per turn for a total of 4 damage. His low health means that he may not be around for very long, but I was hoping that he would be able to put some serious hurt on the opposing team. Finally, Wave Brood was there as one final tank. Thanks to Taunt, the enemy monsters would be forced to attack it and leave the rest of my team (relatively) untouched.
With the lineup set, it's off into battle! When I see the selected teams I feel pretty happy with my lineup. My opponent hasn't brought any Cleanse into the battle, and their somewhat even mix of melee, ranged, and magic damage should be counteracted by Lir Deepswimmer's abilities and the Counterspell ruleset.
The battle starts off slowly - in the first round my monsters are able to deal heavy damage to the enemy Diemonshark. My opponent's backline monsters are taking damage as well, thanks to Return Fire and Magic Reflect. Things are about to heat up though, as the first Poison damage of the fight is about to kick in! Though on a side note, River Nymph does its job and Cleanses my Torhilo of Poison.
One more round and nearly half of the monsters are wiped off the field, thanks to a combination of monster attacks and counterhits. My monsters appear to have the upper hand, but this battle is turning out to be a little closer than I anticipated.
Luckily, after another round the game was nearly in the bag for me. By the start of round 4 my opponent was down to a heavily damaged Deeplurker, while I still had a (Poison-free!) Torhilo and Djinn Oshannus. A set of Poison damage and a quick magic attack from Oshannus sealed the win. And again, if you wanted to see the whole battle for yourself, you can see it right here.
My strategy for this battle worked out perfectly - my summoner and monsters worked with their buffs and the ruleset to outlast my opponent's team. While it was one of the cheaper and smaller monsters in this fight, River Nymph played a crucial role in the battle by Cleansing Torhilo, which was then able to stand up to my opponent's attacks.
The thing about cleanse monsters is that you don't want to overpay (or sometimes, dedicate an entire monster slot) for Cleanse. While River Nymph isn't the most cost effective monster ever, having it be able to pitch in a magic attack means that at the very least you can get some utility out of it even if Cleanse isn't absolutely necessary. And as you can see from this battle, when Cleanse DOES come into play then its effects can be game-changing. I am a big fan of River Nymph, and it has certainly earned its place in my deck.
Thank you so much for reading all the way to the end. Interested in seeing some more of my writing in the future? Be sure to give me a follow! In the meantime, if you'd like to see some of my recent posts:
Splinterlands Economics: Leverage - An introduction to the concept of leverage, and how we can apply it to Splinterlands!
Too Hot to Handle - Using Molten Ash Golem in Battle! - Last week's battle challenge, featuring Ash Golem!
Splinterlands Economics: First Mover Advantage - An introduction to the concept of first mover advantage, and how we can apply it to Splinterlands!
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All images used in this article are open source and obtained from Pixabay or Unsplash. Thumbnails borrowed with permission from the Splinterlands team or made in Canva.