This week's Share Your Battle challenge features Cursed Windeku, and Cursed Windeku is one of my favorite Death cards. Unfortunately I am traveling this week and when I went through the process of finding, selecting, and preparing my battle (which takes a bit of time) I didn't know that. So my battle today does not include Cursed Windeku. But I would like to take a second here to shout out Cursed Windku - it is a super solid tank for Death, and its Thorns ability makes it usable at both the front offensively OR the back defensively of a lineup.
Moving onto the battle for today - you probably already know that Death is excellent in low mana battles. However, it also has some cards which shine in high mana ones - especially when paired with a bit of a supporting cast, and that is what I would like to showcase this week. Oh, and just like Cursed Windeku, this battle features Thorns!
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!
These were the rules for our battle. It is a little bit of a nasty combination - Briar Patch gives everything Thorns, and Up to Eleven increases that Thorns damage. Needless to say, any melee monsters entering this fight should be very, very careful!
The high mana cap for this fight made me think that it might be good to go with a Dragon summoner, because the Dragon splinter has plenty of strong high cost monsters. Quix seemed like a good choice because given the ruleset, it was likely that my opponent would either be bringing a team heavy on magic or ranged damage - Quix would be great for reducing any damage from enemy ranged attackers!
I started my team off as I normally do, with a Tank and secondary tank, This battle was a little awkward because tanks tend to be melee attackers, and melee attackers are a little bit of a liability in this battle due to Thorns and Amplify. Harklaw is a decent monster in this situation because Shield will reduce the Thorns damage, so Harklaw can still sit at the front for a while and do his tank-y things. Corpse Fiend was thrown in as a meat shield for the rest of my lineup...I didn't want to spend too much mana on a monster that wasn't great for the ruleset and most likely would not have much of an impact.
While I didn't want to spend too much mana on my tanks, I DID want to splurge on my magic and ranged attackers. Void Dragon was there as a semi-tank, which is resistant to both magic (thanks to Void) and ranged (thanks to high speed and flying) attacks. Chaos Dragon is super tanky, super hard hitting, and also super expensive - good thing we have a lot of mana to work with this game!
I put some serious ranged damage at the back end of my lineup. Raa hits twice per turn for 3 damage per hit, resulting in a potential SIX ranged damage per turn. Runic Skyclaw only gets 1 attacks per turn, but makes it count - with 6 speed and Snipe, Runic Skyclaw is likely to be able to land its single attack, and also has the potential to knock out some of my opponent's weaker monsters at the heart of their lineup.
With the lineup set, it's off into battle! When I see the selected teams I am hopeful - my opponent has gone with Thaddius Brood as their summoner, which will reduce my magic attacks but leaves my more potent ranged attackers able to hit at full power. From first glance it looks as though my team should be able to have a higher damage output, which will hopefully result in a favorable result.
In large part due to both of us bringing plenty of damage reduction, the battle starts off a bit slowly. However, by round 3 we appear to be making some progress. Unfortunately, I am losing the battle at the front, as my Harklaw has gone down while my opponent's copy is still in the fight. On the bright side, thanks to a lucky Scattershot from Raa I have managed to take out the hardest hitting monster on my opponent's side - that pesky Dhampir Stalker. From here on out it is a matter of whether my higher damage output will be able to finish off my opponent's bulkier monsters fast enough.
It took a couple more rounds before the outcome became clear, but by the beginning of round 5 the writing was on the wall - and it was some good writing! My higher damage output managed to win the day, with Chaos Dragon holding the line as my unexpected tank while Raa and Runic Skyclaw were able to close things out with their crazy high damage output. And again, if you wanted to see the whole battle for yourself, you can see it right here.
This battle ended up being much closer than I would have liked, but my strategy of devoting most of my mana to my magic and ranged attackers at the back of my lineup in order to have as much damage as possible paid off. Raa and Harklaw both did an excellent job in this fight - Harklaw bought valuable time at the start of the fight, and Raa was a superstar as they dealt out the most damage out of all the monsters on my team. I am a big fan of both of these monsters, and they will certainly continue to be staples of my teams as I play out my Splinterlands battles!
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: Purchasing Power - An overview of the concept of purchasing power, and how we can apply it to Splinterlands!
Taste the Rainbow - Using Prismologist in Battle! - Last week's battle challenge, featuring Prismologist!
Splinterlands Economics: Hedging - An introduction to the concept of hedging, 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: https://splinterlands.com?ref=bteim, and be sure to reach out to me if you have any questions!
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.