The Haunted Spider is a very efficient Ranged monster, dealing 2 Damage per turn and only costing 3 Mana to play. Learn how to use this card in your battles!
This post is an entry to the SHARE YOUR BATTLE Weekly Challenge - Haunted Spider.
The Haunted Spider
LORE
The second form of a Dark Eternal is determined by the state of the soul. Some of the more twisted souls take insect form, and the Haunted Spider is the favorite.
The projectile venom and massive, armored thorax make the Haunted Spider a formidable (and intimidating) enemy in any battle.
CARD DETAILS (Level 1)
Mana Cost: 3
Splinter: Death
Edition: Alpha & Beta
Rarity: Common
Ranged Attack: 2
Speed: 1
Armor: 0
Health: 2
The Strategy
Splinterlands is a game that favours the player who plays monsters that can contribute every turn to the victory, be it by directly attacking the enemies, giving a buff to your own monsters (extra Armor, extra Health, Healing, etc.), or even a debuff to the opponent (penalty on Speed, Damage, etc.).
If you have a monster that won't be actively helping your team to win on each turn (like a Melee monster that's in the backline and won't be able to attack for a few turns), a rule of thumb is that you would probably be better switching it for another card.
The main strenght of Ranged monsters is that (like Magic monsters) they can attack while not in the first position. This makes them invaluable to win a match: you can place them in your backline, behind your strong Melee tanks, and they'll shoot enemies turn after turn.
Because of this versatility, Ranged monsters are usually weaker and more expensive to play then Melee monsters. While there are 3-mana Melee cards with 2 Attack (mainly in the Melee-oriented Fire Splinter: Kobold Bruiser and Serpentine Spy), 3-mana Ranged monsters have only 1 Attack (Water Splinter: Pirate Captain; Fire Splinter: Fire Beetle; Forest Splinter: Earth Elemental, and Child of the Forest)
But the Death Splinter has the Haunted Spider!
With an incredibly small Mana Cost of 3, the Haunted Spider has 2 Ranged Attack. There is no other Ranged/Magic monster, in the starter deck, with 2 Attack: the Spider is unique.
Even between 4-Mana monsters it isn't common to find Ranged/Magic cards with 2 Attack. There's only 3 of them: the Spark Pixies on the Fire Splinter, and both the Twisted Jester and the Dark Astronomer on the Death Splinter.
As you're seeing, the Death Splinter have a good number of strong-and-cheap Ranged monsters. This is its main strenght, and we'll use it to achieve victory!
Source: TVTropes
But you have to be careful! The Haunted Spider and these other ranged monsters are Glass Cannons: they have strong attacks, yes, but they're also very fragile and can be killed fast if you're not able to defend them.
That's why the Haunted Spider is even better when played on matches with Rulesets that makes frail monsters stronger or more difficult to be killed, like Armored Up (all Monsters receive +2 Armor), Equaliser (all Monsters have the Health equal to the monster with highest base Health) and Fog of War (Snipe/Sneak abilities are gone, culminating in a safer backline).
The Battle
This match had two two special rulesets: Equaliser and Reverse Speed.
With Equaliser, low-health monsters that would usually die quickly can now sustain more damage; thus, Equaliser is a GREAT rule for the Haunted Spider: its Health increased 4.5x, from a measly 2 to 9! Talk about a beefy, chonky spider!
Reverse Speed (monsters with the lowest Speed attack first and have the highest chance of evading attacks) is also incredibly good for it due its Speed of only 1. With this ruleset, it'll now attack first and will be able to evade lots of attacks.
The team was built in a way that every monster was able to attack every turn:
The frontline tank was the classic Haunted Spirit, with his strong Heal ability allowing him to stay alive for several turns;
The 2nd place was the Horny Toad. This Neutral, 3-mana card has the Reach ability, allowing him to attack while directly behind the tank;
Maggots was played in the 3rd place: his Opportunity ability would also allow him to attack every turn. And, if both the Spirit and the Toad dies, he'll still be able to protect the Ranged backline.
Finally, the Ranged monsters were placed: Gargoya Devil, Haunted Spider and Mantoid. Have in mind that the Gargoya Devil is the 4th in line because he's the only one with the Close Range ability: if all the Melee monsters die and the Devil ends up in the 1st place, he'll still be able to shoot, while the Spider and the Mantoid wouldn't.
As you can see, the opponent built his team in a similar manner, with 1 strong Melee unit in the frontline and 3 Ranged monsters in the backline. Given the fact that both players followed the basic rules of team building and didn't done any huge mistake, the match was fair and balanced, and each team was able to kill several monsters from the other.
But, in the end, the battle was a Success!
The main reason for this victory, in my opinion, was the smart strategy of using lots of low Speed monsters. All my monsters had only 1 or 2 Speed and, due the Reverse Speed ruleset, all of them attacked first: the opponent's Shieldbearer wasn't able to stay alive for long.
Without the main tank protecting the frontline, the rest of the enemy team proceeded to be slowly killed by our attacks.
Conclusion
The Haunted Spider is a very cheap card with a high offensive power and you'll be playing it in lots of games due its high versatility.
Low-mana matches? Throw in the Haunted Spider to decimate the enemy weak monsters!
High-mana matches? Build your team full of powerful, high-mana monsters and, then, throw in the Haunted Spider to use up the mana that's left!
But the Spider is a high-risk, high-reward card. Without any special ruleset, it has just 2 Health, no Armor, and the lowest Speed possible. If you play it without having a good strategy on how to keep it alive, it'll die in the first few turns and you'll end up losing the match.
Also, if you're an experienced player that's already using high level cards, a Level 4 Haunted Spider (12 cards) receives the powerful Poison ability: each Attack gets a chance of applying Poison to the enemy monster, making it receive 2 damage at the beginning of each round.
As the Haunted Spider lacks abilities to attack backline monsters (like Snipe or Sneak), it'll end up always attacking the enemy frontline. The Poison means that the strong tank with large healthpool will receive an extra 2 damage/round, making it easier to kill and not giving the opponent extra time to do tricky shenanigans like Healing the tank's Health or Repairing the tank's Armor!
Thanks for reading this Battle Report, and until next time!
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