This week's featured monster : SPINEBACK TURTLE
SPINEBACK TURTLE belongs to the Water splinter with THORNS at its level 4. It has a good amount of HP and Armor which is good for a tank monster. It also has a low mana suitable for LITTLE LEAGUE ruleset.
Battle rules and strategy
- Armored Up : All Monsters have 2 armor in addition to their normal stat
- Noxious Fumes : All Monsters start the battle poisoned
- Allowed Splinters : Water, Earth and Dragon.
In every match, we need to select the best combination of abilities to win the game.
Armored Up increase the monsters armor by 2. We know that Magic damage can penetrate the armor so it will be better to have more monsters with Magic damage to burst the frontline.
Noxious Fumes poisoned all monsters at the start of battle. The best way counter it is by using monsters with Immunity ability as negative status will not affect the monster with this ability. Aside from that, we can also use Cleanse ability to remove the poison status from the first position monsters. We can also use Heal to counter the damage from being poison.
Line-up Selection:
We will now start selecting the Summoner suited in this battle ruleset. The best Summoners we can have with the allowed elements will be Scarred Llama Mage from Earth as it has a Cleanse ability, and Byzantine Kitty from Dragon as it has a Tank Heal ability. Unfortunately, I don't have these Summoner cards in my deck so I chose another one that can utilize the abilities of my monster's ability.
A level 2 Quix the Devious with a debuff of -1 range attack and -1 speed. A level 2 Legendary summoner can also summon upto level 5 Common monster, level 4 Rare, level 3 Epic, and level 2 Legendary monster.
Let's begin with the selection of our monster. First on the list is no other than our spotlight hero!
- SPINEBACK TURTLE -> It has a high HP and high armor which can absorb most of the damage coming from our opponent's monster. It also has the THORNS ability which returns 2 melee damage when taken a melee hit from enemies.
- SEA MONSTER -> A melee monster with high damage, high HP, and the self healing ability which is good to sustain the poison damage. I placed it in the 2nd position as a backup incase our SPINEBACK TURTLE got taken down.
- FURIOUS CHICKEN -> I placed it in the 3rd position to take damage coming from monsters with Snipe or Opportunity ability. This is important since I need to protect the backline.
- RIVER NYMPH -> This monster has the Cleanse ability which is vital in this match as it can remove the poison from the tank. As you can see in the video, SPINEBACK TURTLE is not affected by the poison damage at the end of each match.
- VENARI SPELLSMITH -> This monster has the Amplify ability which increase the damage taken from Thorns, Reflect, Return Fire and Backfire. Since our SPINEBACK TURTLE has thorns ability, it will increase the damage dealt to the enemy. It also has Dispel ability which will remove positive status effect from the target monster. It's a good strategy against line-up with heavy buffs.
- VENARI WAVESMITH -> This monster has the Protect ability which gives additional armor to our team. This gives added protection against melee and range attacks.
IMPROVEMENTS
To answer the question "What will you try differently next time?" will be to have a balance defense. In terms of defense, I do have a lot of armors which is good for melee and range attacks but useless for magic attacks.
One of the weaknesses in my line-up is the lack of defense against magic damage. A quick solution will be to replace our Summoner with Bortus from Water which has a -1 Magic damage debuff. Atleast a level 4 Bortus so we can maximize the level of our monsters on the battlefield.
And now, you can watch the full battle in this link below.
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_91fdb6015dd1d724747114c67494d0bc&ref=jpleron
Or you can watch it in Youtube as well.
If you like to participate in this event, you can check this link for more information.