Splinterlands Share Your Battle Weekly Challenge - Dragon

over 2 years ago

Introduction
Hi everyone, it's me once again participating in the Splinterlands SHARE YOUR BATTLE Weekly Challenge.

This week's challenge is more generic compared to the challenges of the previous weeks. Before, there is a specific card that needs to be used in a battle but this time, players can use ANY Dragon card from any splinter with any ability or level.

Before I delve in with the card that I will use for this challenge, I want to share first my general approach for the "dragon cards". Normally, while there is a separate Dragon splinter and really useful cards that anyone can form a versatile battle team, I just use my Dragon cards as "fillers" to my other Splinters. But being "fillers" does not mean they don't play a particular role in the team, I just brought that up to say that most of the time, I use a Dragon card as a part of another Splinter team, and haven't really form an all-Dragon team for battles.

The Card

There are many Dragon cards in Splinterlands, but for this post, I will be focusing on the Serpentine Mystic. This card is a rare Dragon card from the Rewards pool of cards and also belong to the Dragon splinter. Every time I use a Dragon Summoner, this card will always be a part of my team. I think for three mana, this card is worth more than it cost to summon. Having a 1 Magic Attack and 3 Health is already a good deal, but its Affliction ability makes it better. With more cards having the Heal ability, this card is a good counter for team.

However, while it has 3 Health, I always protect it further since if the enemy has card with Weaken ability in the team. That makes my Serpentine Mystic a target of those cards with Snipe and Opportunity ability. In that case, I always partner it with Drake of Arnak which provides +1 shield to all friendly monsters.

Pros and Cons

General Strategy

My strategy is very much straight-forward --- to use Alric Stormbringer and boost my Magic Wielding cards an additional magic damage. Generally, Water splinter cards (many of them) are tend to be slower than their counterparts in other Splinters, so having a boost on Magic attacks can help eliminate the enemy's tank creature quickly. The only roadblocks in this strategy is when the opponent uses a tank creature with Void ability and/or the ruleset is Void Armor, in which Magic attacks damage the shield (if any) of the defending creature first, before it damages its health. In this case, it may help to reconsider the strategy or alter the team composition depending on how you think the opponent will form his/her defending team.

If the ruleset definitely prohibits the use of Magic attack creatures, then this strategy that I am talking about is out of the conversation.

The Match

The Lineup

Summoner

Slot 1 - Djinn Oshannus
Slot 2 - Serpentine Mystic
Slot 3 - Medusa
Slot 4 - Ice Pixie
Slot 5 - Venari Wavesmith
Slot 6 - N/A

Explanation of the lineup
When I was presented with the next battle, I saw that my opponent used Death splinter four times out of his/her last five battles, so there's a big possibility that the Death splinter will be used again. The common cards across those instances are Haunted Spirit, Undead Priest, and Death Elemental.

For this match, I decided to go with my Drake of Arnak/Serpentine Mystic type of team, but the rest of the team will be coming from the Water splinter. As mentioned, my summoner Drake of Arnak, which will provde additional shield to all my friendly monsters. This will be useful especially that my opponent will most likely use Undead Priest which will reduce my monsters' health by 1 because of its Weaken ability. For my tank monster, I summoned Djinn Oshannus which has relatively high health, good 2 Magic damage, and high speed. In this way, if my opponent use Haunted Spirit, it may miss hitting Djinn because it is faster.

Then comes Serpentine Mystic. It will be useful to counter that Heal ability of the Haunted Spirit, because if I can't make additional damages from my back monsters, Haunted Spirit will just keep on healing itself from Djinn's damage.

Medusa and Ice Pixie will also provide additional attacks to the tank monster. This is the same case with Venari Wavesmith though its greatest role in the team is to provide that additional shield to all the friendly monsters. So, additional shield from Drake and from Venari makes my monsters more protected from attacks especially from those Snipe monsters on the opposing side.

What I envisioned that will happen in this match (including what my opponent will choose) really happened. See the video below to see for yourself.