This week's Share Your Battle challenge features Mycelic Slipspawn! I was happy to see Mycelic Slipspawn as the subject of this week's challenge, because it's one of my favorites - I love playing with the Earth splinter, and the Slipspawn fits very well into many of the different strategies that the splinter has to offer. In fact, for the battle this week I decided to show off a role that may not be the first one that comes to mind when you take a look at Mycelic Slipspawn for the first time.
Mycelic Slipspawn is a magic attacking monster in the Earth splinter. It is far from cheap, weighing in at a heavy 9 mana cost to bring into battle. Its utility is entirely worth it though. I invested in a gold foil copy of the Slipspawn, which means that I get to use it at level 2, where it pairs a respectable 2 magic attack with 2 speed and an incredibly chonky 11 health. Importantly, it also has the Taunt ability. This forces all of the opposing monsters to attack it, unless they happen to have the Scattershot ability.
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!
First up: the ruleset. I don't usually use Mycelic Slipspawn in a low mana cap battle, but in this case I thought that it might be a good time to give it a try. The Melee Mayhem ruleset allows melee monsters to attack from any position so I was guessing that my opponent would be likely to choose a lineup heavy on melee monsters, and perhaps some monsters with a Thorns or other anti-melee abilities.
As I just mentioned, I expected to see some melee attackers on the other side of the battlefield. Mylor Crowling is an amazing anti-melee summoner - he will give our entire lineup the Thorns ability, which means that any melee monsters on the other team will be taking a lot of damage in return whenever they attack.
I started my team off with my main monster and our guest star this week - Mycelic Slipspawn! Mycelic Slipspawn was my choice for my main tank in this lineup because I thought that there was a good chance that my opponent would decide to bring a monster with Thorns or Demoralize. Mycelic Slipspawn would be unaffected by either of those debuffs since it attacks with magic damage. With 11 health, my hope was that it would be able to survive a long time while dishing out magic attacks and Thorns damage. To top it off, it has Taunt to protect the rest of my lineup from any Sneak or Opportunity shenanigans. In this 16 mana battle, Mycelic Slipspawn took up over half of my entire budget so this was a little bit of a gamble, but it was one that I thought had a good chance of paying off.
With the Slipspawn taking up most of my mana, I had to be cost-effective with the rest of my monsters. Hill Giant is great because it costs just 3 mana, and has a relatively high amount health with 6 HP. Remember that my monsters all have Thorns thanks to Mylor's ability, so every point of health helps, since that allows them to take more hits and deal out more Thorns damage!
I was just about out of mana to spend at this point, so I finished off my team with Mycelic Morphoid and Fungus Fiend. Both of these guys get to attack even though they are in the back thanks to the Melee Mayhem ruleset, and if they happen to soak up a hit then they'll also be able to take advantage of Thorns.
With the lineup set, it's off into battle! When I see the selected teams I am hopeful - my opponent has indeed gone with a lineup heavy on melee damage. This means that I should most likely be able to do a lot of damage with Thorns. One unfortunate occurrence is that my opponent choose Thaddius Brood as their summoner which will reduce my Mycelic Slipspawn's attack, and that Cursed Windku at the back of their lineup looms large as a final boss.
In the first round of battle mayhem ensues. The entire enemy lineup besides that Cursed Windeku falls to a combination of Thorns damage and attack damage from my monsters. As expected, the Windeku is that last opposing monster standing. Quick note here - there may have been a bit of a display glitch as I was taking my screenshot, because my Mycelic Slipspawn actually had 4 health at the start of round 2.
Thanks to all of the Thorns damage this battle ended up being a quick one - it was over before the end of the second round! My monsters were able to (just barely) take down the Cursed Windeku with an assortment of monster attacks and Thorns damage. And again, if you wanted to see the whole battle for yourself, you can see it right here.
My strategy for this battle worked out perfectly. Mylor's Thorns ability meant that my opponent's monsters were basically hitting themselves for me, while Mycelic Slipspawn showed off its potential as a tank. Importantly, it was a tank which didn't take damage from any opposing Thorns abilities! In the end it was a close one but my team was able to pull off the victory.
I am a big fan of Mycelic Slipspawn, and while its most common use case is as an attacker in a heavy mag damage lineup, it also has other uses in a fight as evidenced by this battle. A big tanky monster is nearly always something that I'm happy to have on my team in battle, and Mycelic Slipspawn will continue to be a staple of my lineups in the future.
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: Demand - A look into Demand and how understanding it can help us in Splinterlands.
Striking Out - Using Tenyii Striker in Battle! - Last week's battle challenge, featuring Tenyii Striker!
Splinterlands Economics: Supply - A look into Supply, and how understanding it can help us in Splinterlands.
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All images used in this article are open source and obtained from Pixabay or Unsplash. Thumbnails and card images borrowed with permission from the Splinterlands team or made in Canva.