Weekly Share your Battle: Lava Spider
I'm not a huge user of ranged units. Unless the ruleset prefers life with General Sloan, I often go to melee or magic for the silver and bronze matches I'm usually playing. Snipe should be a very useful ability vs low level magic and ranged, but it just often doesn't work for me. I will occasionally play a Sniping Narwhale in water, but not that often. I frequently find it takes me some time to get through snipe daily quests. For example, as I write this my last three quests were earth, snipe and fire, which took 7, 25 and 10 battles respectively to complete. Perhaps I'm not using it well enough, or I need to use more snipe units at the same time to take out the backlines faster, but it isn't a strategy I've mastered.
All that said I'm well aware that the beta card Fire Beetle is popular with those playing long enough. The Lava Spider looks in most respects to be equivalent to the Fire Beetle but adds more abilities at higher levels at the expense of 1 damage. The snare ability, gained at level 6 is general considered weak, but the poison at max level is valuable.
The Lava Spider is also very comparable with very comparable to water Pirate Captain and neutral Centaur units.
There is a little more utility here with a single damage unit as there are only a few rare ranged, magic and non-attack with the shield ability, so you waste fewer hits that get fully blocked. However with only 1 damage it takes multiple rounds to make a big impact in most cases. I actually had a bit of trouble making much progress on my fire daily with Lave Spider...
Click for full battleThat went poorly. Th low damage and low health of the ranged attackers we no match for the buffed opportunity and sneak attack typical of a Tarsa team. Often it's a bad Idea to force yourself to use a unit if there are better plays for the ruleset or summoner.
Here we simply have too few units to oppose the opportunity & sneak life team. Since they had a line of units with Protect + repair, it took too long for the Lava Spider and Serpentine Spy to get though before the opponent's backline attack prevailed.
Let us try a new strategy. We need more damage and longer survival. Let's double the damage and add a few more with blast. How about another health point too? I'm off to rent a Yodin Zaku.
Lets try some more matches.
That helped the opponent didn't even last 2 rounds. With Yodin Zaku, this unit really shines. Blast is more as effective for a snipe unit since you will likely hit a backline unit with units on both side so 2 units receive blast damage whereas attacking the first position will only blast the second position. A blast aimed at the front of the line is only going to add damage to the second character. In this battle the snipe first went for the low-health Scavo Hireling taking it out in one hit and sending damage to the Serpentine Spy and Disintegrator. In one hit we removed the opponent's repair strategy. This unit love to work with Yodin.
How about another
Magic in Bronze can be hard to overcome without planning to counter it (i.e using Silence or Reflect.) Here our opponent plays Obsidian to buff magic attach and Myscelic Slipspawn to mitigate the snipe ruleset. Unfortunately for them the blast goes right around the Slipspawn and starts taking out other units within the first round. Since the blast skips speed and flying considerations, Regal Peryton goes down easier than normal. Looking back I might have done even better if I had placed the Molten Ash Golem in the second position to absorb more hits, but I have no complaints winning in 2 rounds.
I could go on, but switching from Tarsa to Yodin for summoner moved me form barely any wins with Lava Spider to a 70% win rate.
A few more examples of Yodin destroying bronze players, if you are so inclined.
Yodin over Brood
Yoding Over Sloan
Yodin Over Tarsa
Yodin isn't perfect. I did lose one...
Click for Full Battle
This shows what can happen when using Yodin with too little Mana and agains a tank fast enough to get misses. The opponent's magic hit too hard and the heals were too much to overcome with only some of the ranged attacks hitting. I also could have put the meat shield Scorcher in the second position and relied on Spark Pixies's Speed and flying to protect it.
It was fun to rent a legendary summoner to give Lava Spider a fair shot. It turns out it was too expensive a rental as I only managed a rare reward card from my fire quest and the DEC winnings were nowhere near enough to pay for the rental. It was fun.