Another week, another few more exciting battles on #splinterlands
This has been my fifth entry so far for Battle Challenge on Splinterlands. I can't believe that it's been two months since I started playing this game, and I am looking forward to the upcoming season's rewards.
A few days back, I decided to put some more cash into my account, and got me some Dice packs. The results were amazing as there were a few gold foils and some legendary monsters, but the best reward was a second gold legendary for my collection.
With this card, I finally got to Gold 2 and a few thousand power shy from Gold I. I am considering renting or buying some more cards to be qualified for the next tier, but I need to make sure I can actually battle my way to Gold. There is no point in buying more cards if I can't reach the next league.
Anyway, that's enough bragging for the day. Let's get into this week's challenge with another fire monster.
EFREET ELDER
This is a great attacker with high health and speed plus the ability to go Super Sayan if he fights solo. That said, magic monsters don't fit well in fire team, and I haven't got my hand on this card until this challenge, so I'm not very experience with Efreet Elder.
Nevertheless, for this challenge, I went to the market and bought this card (it seems that people pay no heed to the reminder) with around 500 DEC—a nice price which will surely go up in the future as most cards do—so that I can present you with this battle.
However, keep in mind that this is a reward card, which means you will get it for free eventually if you play enough, so buying may not be a good option, especially when you are on a budget.
You can watch the full fight here.
This was a 99-mana battle. As such there was nothing stopping me from spamming my biggest, baddest cards, which usually means a battle with Zaku. Also, the Earthquake rule applied. I aimed to finish the battle as quickly as possible as I had no healer on my team. Dragging things out, I would lose.
Usually, you would put your mage before range monsters, but if you play Efreet Elder, you have to put him last for more chance for his ability to activate. That means you either avoid using range or have to expose them to early deaths. For this reason, Efreet Elder doesn't go well with fire team where there are lots of range attackers, much less when Zaku is the summoner. However, with Earthquake, I could actually position the elder as meat shield for my archers, as he was likely to survive longer than the others.
Anyway, I had Chain Golem as the tank, Naga Wizard in the backline who could survive the earthquake, and Efreet Elder in the middle, hopping to outlive the rest. And then I had Ettin Spearman, the range monster with the highest stats I could afford, Mantoid with Snipe, and Pyromancer. Usually with Zaku, you would want Mantoid over Pyromancer because for the same cost, the former has an extra ability. In this fight, I used both, because why not.
My frontline was decimated pretty quickly, with the opponent using high levels mages. It could have been worse if his second monster in line had been able to attack. That was a grave mistake on his part, and my victory was partially attributed to it. After the naga mage was killed, my backline was still able to deal substantial damage thanks to Zaku before Earthquake destroyed them, while my opponent was down to two range attackers. One thing I regretted was that my Efreet Elder could go Super Sayan before the battle ended, which was the whole point in putting him there.
Anyway, a win is a win, and I'm not picky as to how I win. Now I need to find out how I can make a better use of this card in the future.