Djinn Chwala, I Choose You - Using Dragons in Battle!

This week's Share Your Battle challenge was a relatively broad one - use any Dragon card! I don't play with the Dragon splinter very often, but when I do I often enjoy using Djinn Chwala. It was one of the first epics I ever got on account of it being in rewards chests, and it has won me quite a few battles over the past seasons, so I made it my mission this week to share a battle that showcases Djinn Chwala.

Djinn Chawala is a melee monster in the Dragon (duh) splinter. At level 1 you get a whole lot of bulk with 5 armor and 9 HP, along with an average 2 attack and 2 speed. Most importantly, Chwala also has thorns. That makes it great as a frontline tank. I'll go into more detail about how I used Chwala below.

If you wanted to jump right to the action, the Battle Link is right here. Want to hear some more about the lineup and my strategy? Read on further!

First up: the ruleset. This is a good ruleset for using Djinn Chwala because 16 mana is a relatively low number, which hopefully means that my opponent won't be bringing anything extremely tanky that can live through thorns, or have enough ranged or magic damage output to quickly take down Chwala. Finally, the Dragon splinter is allowed, which is fairly important.

As previously mentioned, I don't play the Dragon splinter very often. Drake of Arnak was actually my summoner choice by default, because it was the only Dragon summoner I had on hand. Luckily, the +1 armor buff synergizes well with Djinn Chwala - with more armor, that's more bulk to absorb punishment and counter-hit with Thorns.

No beating around the bush with this lineup - I started right off with our star of the week - Djinn Chwala. As previously mentioned, Djinn Chwala combines a decent damage output with outstanding tankiness which is improved even more with the extra armor from our summoner. My plan is to put them up from and hope they get hit a lot by my opponent's melee attacks - thorns damage will definitely add up over time!

Djinn Chwala is pretty expensive and I didn't have much mana left to spend after taking my tank and summoner into account. I added in a Chaos Agent to try and spread out my opponent's damage a bit, and to add a buffer for my Life Sapper. Also, since it's gold I can get some extra DEC if I happen to win this battle! You may notice that it's level 1, even though gold foil commons are level 3. That's because my summoner is only level 1 so it gets (temporarily) downgraded.

I filled out my lineup with a bit of magic damage in Life Sapper. It starts of a little squishy but can gain a lot of health if it has some time to get started. My hope was that Life Sapper could provide a tiny bit of extra damage in case Djinn Chwalla wasn't quite able to do the job alone.

With the lineup set, it's off into battle! When I see the selected teams I feel pretty good about it - my opponent picked a lineup heavy on melee creatures, which means great things for Djinn Chwala's Thorns. On the other hand, my opponent's combination of Sneak and Opportunity abilities probably meant my back line was going to have a rough battle.

When the battle begins there are no big surprises - I'm able to take out my opponent's front monsters very quickly. My back line looks like it is about to get taken out soon, but the extra armor from my Drake of Arnak summoner did help to buy me a little extra time.

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Another round in and the battlefield is quickly shrinking Chwala continues to work away at my opponent's front monsters, but their indirect damage takes out my Chaos Agent and Life Sapper. By the start of this third round, Djinn Chwala stands alone on my side of the field.

round 3.png

Up until this point my opponent's monsters were mostly hitting my back line, But now, they have no other targets and Djinn Chwala's strengths start to come into play. Serpentine Spy bites off a mouthful of Thorns, Chwala's attack finishes off the Ooze, and suddenly we're down to a duel.

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Djinn Chwala's Thorns ability really won it here - it was essentially an extra attack each round, and in the end the battle wasn't particularly close, even if it DID come down to 1 monster remaining on each side. Again, if you wanted to see the whole battle for yourself, you can see it right here.

round 5.png

My strategy of having Djinn Chwala sit in the front and dish out Thorns damage while my back line does their best to support worked out well. I was lucky that my opponent didn't bring magic damage or have a leveled up Radiated Scorcher (Shatter would have made Chwala dramatically less effective), but I came away from the battle with the win.

Djinn Chwala really shone in this battle, and nearly singlehandedly took out the entire opposing team. My weak Dragon deck make Djinn Chwala a slightly less common pick in my battles but fights like this one show just how strong of a card it can be, and any time I'm choosing the Dragon splinter, there will be a very high chance that I'll be bringing Djinn Chwala!

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: The Gini Ratio - An introduction to the Gini Ratio, and insights it gives us into Splinterlands.
Something Lingers in the Shadows: Using Shadow Snitch in Battle! - This week's battle challenge, featuring Shadow Snitch!
Splinterlands Economics: Competitive Advantage - An overview of the concept of competitive advantage, and how we can apply it to Splinterlands.

Thinking about giving Splinterlands a try but haven't signed up yet? Feel free to use my referral link right here: https://splinterlands.com?ref=bteim, and be sure to reach out to me if you have any questions!