_{Thumbnail for the weekly challenge provided by @splinterlands}

Ahoy! Last week I was too late to participate in the weekly battle challenge, but this week I am back to join.

This week the featured card for the battle challenge is the River Nymph. A Rare card in the Water splinter from the Chaos Legion set. I think this is such a cute card!! 🤩

I have this card at level 4 and I also have a gold foil which is still level 2 though. At level 4 my regular foil looks like this.

Starting at level 1 she already has the Cleanse ability. Great to help your monster in the first position to get rid of negative debuffs and also great to use during the noxious fumes ruleset so your first monster can get rid of that poison. At level 4 she gets the Amplify ability which increases the damage of Magic Reflect, Thorns and Return Fire by 1.

The increased Magic Reflect damage is exactly why I was bringing the River Nymph in the battle that I wanna share today.

In the battle I want to share today I was using the River Nymph in my lineup with Alric Stormbringer as the summoner. He increases the magic damage so gets to do a little bit more damage. This battle took place today in the Wild format. Here is a picture of your lineups with the buffs and debuffs already applied.

And here is a link to the battle if you'd like to check it out: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_5f7eee5e514974dcf8daea2e6d787777&ref=athunderstruck

In this battle the Fire, Water and Life Splinters were the only available choices. It's a 44 Mana cap game with two rulesets.

• Briar Patch: All Monsters have the Thorns ability
• Fire & Regret: All Monsters have the Return Fire ability

Team Setup

Alright so all Monsters will have both the Thorns and the Return Fire ability. This makes it a bit hard to play Melee and Ranged Monsters. Sure if they have a lot of health, or a self heal ability, they could still be great picks as they can sustain. However due to these rulesets it would still be much more interesting to go with Magic attacking Monsters. Which makes Alric Stormbringer a great choice as he provides +1 to all Magic Attackers.

I decided to place Lord Arianthus in the front, followed by the Prismatic Energy. Both of those cards have Magic Reflect which makes them great frontliners if my opponent decided to go with a Magic attackers lineup. Then I have Djinn Oshannus up next as another high health monsters to tank some damage with his Void ability. Up next I have the River Nymph so she can provide a bit of extra damage. Her most important reason for being here is the Amplify ability to boost both of my front liners Magic Reflect damage.

Then I brought the Venari Wavesmith for some Armor in case my opponent does bring Melee and/or Ranged Monsters then they have to hit that Armor first. Last but not least I have the Phantom of the Abyss, a really fast Magic Attacker and I placed him in the back because of Flying and Dodge abilities in case my opponent decides to actually bring Melee or Ranged Attackers with Sneak. If he brings a Magic Attacker with Sneak then it would still be really vulnerable though.

My opponent had a bit of a similar idea in mind. But immediately starting with Prismatic Energy in the front followed by Djinn Oshannus. Which makes sense in their case because their Prismatic Energy is a higher level where it gets the Void ability. Which makes it better than me Lord Arianthus because it serves the same purpose here, but their Prismatic Energy can also attack on its own which my Lord Arianthus can't. That level 3 Ruler of the Seas is looking quite deadly at first too as it's silencing my Alric Stormbringer team buff.

Strategy Successful?

Yes, my strategy worked quite well! At first this battle looks quite scary. That Ruler of the Seas in my opponents team looks like a big threat because it takes away the magic buff that my Summoner Alric Stormbringer applies.

However I have a Magic Reflect Monster in the 1st and 2nd position. So that Ruler of the Seas will take damage from Magic Reflect twice due to his Blast ability hitting the 2nd Monster too. With this Magic Reflect he would normally take 1 damage from the Prismatic Energy and 2 damage from the Lord Arianthus.

This is where the River Nymph comes in and steals the thunder of the Ruler of the Seas. Her Amplify increases the Magic Reflect from Prismatic Energy to 2 and the one from Lord Arianthus to 3. A total of 5 damage and that Ruler of the Seas has 5 Health. So it got taken out in round 1 by Magic Reflect and the River Nymph's amplify ability. Which then also gives all my Monsters their damage buff from Alric Stormbringer back as the Silence ability from the enemy team is gone now.

My whole team is required to take out the opponents' Prismatic Energy in the first round due to that Void ability which makes it take less damage. This causes my whole team to take damage from its Magic Reflect, except for Djinn Oshannus because of his Void ability. My tank also dies in the first round.

One unfortunate thing is that both my Magic Reflect Monsters died before the Magic Reflect could help take out their Venari Wavesmith. So they do keep some more of their damage output. Especially Runemancer Kye, she takes Magic Reflect damage but because of her Life Leech it's not that bad for her.

In the 4th round my Monsters take out the Merdaali Guardian and Venari Wavesmith before any of my opponents' Monsters can attack. Their Runemancer Kye then takes out my Djinn Oshannus. At this point I still have 3 Monsters left though, two of them would die in a single attack from Runemancer Kye, but my Monsters have enough damage output to take her out before she can do that. A great victory!

Do I like the River Nymph

I absolutely like this card! First of all her art is amazing 🤩 As a card itself she is also quite good! Her Cleanse ability is really awesome for debuffs and to use in the noxious fumes ruleset to clear the Poison. At level 4 that Amplify ability she gets can be really strong as I demonstrated in this battle.

Conclusion

Having moved into Gold today for the last days of the season I am expected to encounter people with higher level Summoners than mine, as mine are currently only at Silver league levels. In this battle that was the case as you can see my Level 4 Alric Stormbringer against my opponents level 6 Alric Stormbringer. Because of this it was impossible for my Prismatic Energy to have the Void ability. My Legendary Monsters can also only be level 2 due to this whereas my opponents' can be level 3.

I made a great choice in bringing the double frontline with Magic Reflect and then further boosting that damage with River Nymph's Amplify ability. This combination causing the Ruler of the Seas to take itself out and getting my Magic Attack buff back was really great! Otherwise I may have been unable to take out the Prismatic Energy in the first round and then things could've looked quite a bit different.

That Runemancer Kye in my opponent's team was also a great pick with the Life Leech. I don't have that card right now, but eventually I definitely want to get it as it seems like such a great card!

That's it for my battle challenge this week. Thank you for reading!

If you haven't signed up for Splinterlands yet and want to check it out, you can do so with my referral link at: https://splinterlands.com?ref=athunderstruck