Hello everyone, in this week's challenge we will take a look at the lava spider
Card stats:
As we can see the lava spider is a range attack card with a good amount of health. It's snipe ability could give you an advantage based on the opponent's team especially versus heavy magic or range compositions. At max level, the spider has even greater health with more damage and speed but the main buff is the poison ability. And with only 3 mana you have a decent card with good health and not a lot of damage but the combination of poison and snipe ability could just give you the edge over your opponent since this card's main focus will be the damage dealers in the backline of your opponent's deck.
Battle details
The rule set is unprotected - monsters do not have any armor and do not receive any armor from abilities. The mana cap is 17 and there are only 4 splinters available for this game.
Line - ups
My team
| Summoner | 1st position | 2nd position | 3rd position | 4th position | 5th position |
|---|
| Tarsa | Tusk the wide | Scorch fiend | Serpentine spy | Lava spider | Radiated Scorcher |
VS
Enemy team
| Summoner | 1st position | 2nd position | 3rd position | 4th position |
|---|
| Tarsa | Living lava | Serpentine spy | Goblin fireballer | Radiated Scorcher |
Strategy
Based on the opponent's recent games, I expected him to play magic oriented team which led me to a conclusion to put Tusk as my front liner combined with his insane HP and void ability, he seemed as the most reasonable card to play. I put my scorch fiend in front of my spy just to absorb an opportunity hit in case my opponent played fire splinter on his own. The lava spider had a task to help the spy clear the backline of the opponent and then focus the 1st card position after his backline is destroyed. And last but not least the scorcher was in the last position just to absorb any sneak attacks.
Battle - you can see the full battle here
The game starts with the summoners giving their buffs and debuffs.
After the first round I already killed his Serpentine spy leaving him with no backline damage.
At the beginning of the 3rd round his Goblin fireballer was killed leaving him with only 1 card before my spy will attack the living lava. Sadly my lava spider did no damage to the living lava due to his shield ability, but in different scenario the spider might have actually been more beneficial if the opponent played more magic or range attack cards.
My tusk is dead but so is his scorcher and due to my cards having more speed than the lava they will attack first which will almost kill the living lava.
In the final round my spy have more speed and it will attack first which means the living lava will get killed and the battle result will be in my favour.
Did your strategy work? What will you try differently next time?
At the end my initial strategy to use the lava spider as a main force to finish off some magic cards at the backline of the opponent didn't happen but my plan B to pair it with the serpentine spy for a deadly backline damage combo did. With me being in a lower rank means that I can't use the lava spider to its fullest potential since I'm not able to use the poison + snipe combo but that doesn't mean the card in the lower levels is useless. In Splinterlands any card could be the difference between losing and winning and the lava spider definitely has the potential to carry most of your fights with its high HP and snipe ability but that doesn't mean it will secure you the win 100 out of 100 times. So next time I might not play the lava spider if I know that my opponent will use the fire splinter because the living lava can absorb every hit of the spider but if there is a magic or range oriented teams the spider will definitely come in handy.
Thank you for reading my post, I hope you all have a great day!
