DESERT DRAGON

SHORTEN LORE:
The Desert Dragon is most commonly found east of the Jade Thickett, on the sandy plains of the Ixzoc.

EDITION: CHAOS LEGION

RARITY: LEGENDARY

ELEMENT: DRAGON

TYPE: MONSTER

MANA : 7

Desert Dragon is a Legendary rarity Chaos Legion edition monster.This is one of my favorite dragon from Chaos Legion Edition, and he is the first Legendary Chaos Legion monster that I buy from http://www.peakmonsters.com.

Desert Dragon is one of the best attacker in Splinterlands however he is not a good tank. He is slow, his health is not something that special, and he has no defensive ability. but for better perspective, let see his strengths and weaknesses first.

[STRENGTH] A HARD HITTER

Desert Dragon is a perfect hitter. He hit very hard with 4-6 melee damage, he has piercing ability too which can bypass opponent's armor and last, he has giant killer ability.

So if you need definition about how to hit hard, go ask Desert Dragon

[STRENGTH] KILLER ARTIST

Desert Dragon is a artist and he great in making kills. First He has TRAMPLE ability (When a Monster with Trample hits and kills its target, it will perform another attack on the next Monster on the enemy Team) and RETALIATE ability (When hit with a Melee attack, Monsters with Retaliate have a chance of attacking their attacker). These two abilities enable him to make some extra attacks in the same turn, which of course lead him to make more kills.

[WEAKNESS] HE IS NOT STURDY

The main reason why everybody are not convinced enough to use Desert Dragon because this dragon has low health point. 6 to 7 Health is not low for general, but for a dragon it is low. 3 Armor is not something that great too. To put this worse, he doesn't have any defensive ability such as void, void armor, shield or any else.

So in general, we can say this is a fragile dragon, which can be easily broken.

[WEAKNESS] SLOW

Speed is indeed Desert Dragon main weakness. He has only 2 speed from beginning up to his highest level. The problem is maybe useless you have a devastating heavy hitter if he dies first before killing any of his opponents.

BATTLE PREPARATION

• WEAK MAGIC ~ Magic attacks hit Armor before reducing Health.
• 19 MANA

This was the right ruleset to display our Desert Dragon. First WEAK MAGIC, I would not have to worry if my opponent chose to come with overloading magic damage. Desert Dragon armor would keep him alive longer.

19 mana was very supportive too. Most player would go with the most monsters they could have, so I could expect my opponent would use several small monsters that Desert Dragon could trample them easily.

So here was my simple lineup:

Position	Card	Ability	Plan and Strategy
Summoner		-1 range an -1 Speed	Quix the Devious is the first Chaos Legion Legendary Summoner. He is one of the best summoner too, because both of his debuffs are working well making your opponents weaker. If you check on https://summonerlab.com/ He is one of the summoner who has very high win rate
Main Tank		Trample, Piercing	Our main theme for this week, This is one of my favorite Dragon, Desert Dragon. A True Artist in killing his opponents, or more precisely bullying opponent's small monsters.
Second		Resurrect, Inspire	Without any doubt, Hellondale is the best water element support monster. He could resurrect which is a great defensive support ability and he has inspire ability (increase friendly monsters +1 melee damage) which is one of the best offensive buff / offensive support ability
Third		none	He was just a filler, I had 1 mana left and I could pick him to help defending the backline. Nothing special, he would die easily for sure but I hoped before he died, he could absorb some damage first to buy some time for Desert Dragon and River Hellondale to survive this battle

This was a dangerous approach, relying on 2 legendary monsters only. I was hesitated first, but I thought this should be fun as long I didn''t meet any THORN users.

HERE COMES THE BATTLE!!!

If you want to see the battle directly, you can see it directly here:

https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_4213588372f7cd9bbaa1cda4eeb275ec&ref=dewabrata

This was a Modern Silver league Rank Battle, a battle of Dragon vs water Element. My opponent came using Keyla Frendul as their summoner, he might want to kill my team fast by using fast annoying many small monsters and he might think having an extra armor could bring him a victory.

Well he was right. Having an extra armor point during WEAK MAGIC ruleset was of course a brilliant idea, however it's useless against Desert Dragon piercing melee attack.

Round 1

• The game started as both party buffing and debuffing their monsters and opponent's monsters.
• My team had 6 melee damage and 2 magic damage. Combined all, the damage became 8 per round.
• My opponent had 6 melee damage and 1 magic damage. Combined all, their damage per round became 7.
• Damage wise, both of us were on par, equal. Anything could happen now.

• The battle started by his Pelacor Bandit moved to hit my Hardy Stonefish, then both of us delivering damage intensely.
• His Uraeus killed my Stonefish first, however River Hellondale revived the fish back.

Round 2

• Desert Dragon started to show how dangerous he was. He killed Cruel Senthropod and Hardy Stonefish with his trampling move.
• Opponent's Uraeus killed my hardy stonefish again. Atleast the fish had done his job perfectly, buying time for Desert Dragon and protecting River Hellondale.

Round 3

• This time Desert Dragon made the trampling move again. He killed Venari Wavesmith and Pelacor Bandit
• 2 vs 1, I believed everything settled here.

Round 4

• This was the last round, Desert Dragon killed Uraeus before the snake had any chance to make a move
• good game

BATTLE DISCUSSION

Did My Strategy Work?

It was a very simple strategy however I was glad everything worked well as planned:

1. Buffing up melee attack. I used River Hellondale and his support abilities share same great contribution as Desert Dragon's in securing my victory. Hellondale Inspire Ability was very crucial here, adding extra damage to Desert Dragon Attack. Last and not the least, it was Hellondale Resurrect Ability which kept him and the dragon survive this battle.
2. Quix The Devious. I think it's valid to say he is one of the best summoner in Chaos Legion Edition. Not the strongest, but overall the best option we can get. Quix -1 speed debuff was the sole reason how my Desert Dragon managed to kill Pelacor bandit. If I used other summoner, that pelacor definitely would have dodge some of my attacks.

Desert Dragon As A Killer Artist

Did Desert Dragon manage to perform well? The fact was he killed all of opponent team members, not even giving River Hellondale a chance to kill any target.

This dragon is extraordinary dangerous, however it's fragile too. He is not your everyday everytime option to pick, however when the ruleset are right, he will be your best damage dealer and finisher in your team.

Thank you for visiting my weekly battle challenge, don't forget to leave your comments and feedback below. There are credits in this post for these people:

• splinterlands : for holding weekly battle challenge events
• carrieallen : for ultimate markdown tutorial
• kyo-gaming : for wonderful divider art