Hey Everyone! This is Sinflair (IGN: project10back) here and this is my third weekly battle challenge! I hope you enjoy it! I know I did! I love dragons! This week I was able to use any battle with dragons. I made a video on it on my youtube channel. Watch it below!

My Experience with Dragons

So Dragons are known to be expensive to rent but very rewarding. When I first started playing splinterlands, I promised myself that I wouldn't buy any dragon cards. I thought they were extra and you could win without it. I held off from buying or renting dragons until I received my first dragon card: Djinn Chwala from a reward chest. This card could win games by itself. Once I started using Djinn Chwala, the floodgates opened. I was shown an entirely new game and playstyle by sprinkling a few dragons into the team. Now dragons are my absolute favorite splinter!

Dragon Stats

There are only 35 dragon monsters and 13 dragon summoners in the game. Every one of them has its uses. Most of the time if you can use the dragon splinter do it. It will increase your win rate and vary up your lineup. Every card has an upgraded dragon counterpart. For example, Deeplurker is a 6 mana melee water monster known for its signature ability: opportunity. If you are running water as a melee team, he'll be one of your go-to monsters. The only thing holding him back is his low speed at 2. It makes his high damage undependable. His upgraded dragon counterpart is the fan-favorite: Dragon Jumper. For one more mana more, you can increase the speed by 2 and add flying.

Ruleset

I loved this ruleset! The mana cap was high at 42 but not 99. So it would favor the person with better teambuilding skills rather than having more high mana cards. The Spreading Fury ruleset means that any monster getting damaged would have their melee and speed increased by 1.5 times. The ruleset also had explosive weaponry. This meant blast everywhere! The blast ability is given to every monster and it deals additional damage to the most adjacent cards by dividing the main damage by two and rounding up. I love blast! Blast makes everything seem so chaotic.

Prebattle

I would like to talk about the battle that I just won five minutes ago to get into silver 2 after the end of season. I treated as if it was a boss battle. All day, I steadily worked to get into Silver two and this battle would be my deciding factor. After the end of season, all of our ratings dropped. I still had a daily quest to complete and all this power that I didn't really need. My goal for the day was to push to silver 2 so I could use my leftover 40,000 power to open three reward chests. So lets get to this boss battle. Looking at my opponents previous teams, I noticed that he recently played a dragon summoner using life monsters twice. Life was not an option, so I instantly moved that information on the side. He previously ran 2 death teams but running quick math in my head, the total cards mana count would not be high to equal around 42. Next I saw something very revealing. I saw that he used a level 3 Xia Seachan using mostly melee monsters. Looking over his previous teams, it presented three key pieces of information. 1. If he is using a level 3 water summoner, he most likely has high level water monsters. 2. He does not use death or dragon for high mana cap games. 3. His cards are focused on the water splinter. So he will certainly entertain the thought of using water melee in his mind. Water can normally go one of two ways in silver league. Magic with Alric Stormbringer or melee with Kelya Frendul. If he were to use go with magic, he would have to go exclusively with magic as boosting magic with Alric Stormbringer would only benefit that damage type. Off the top of my head, there are only 2 high mana and high damage magic monsters, Djinn Oshannus and Phatom of the Abyss. If he were to go with Kelya Frendul, the speed boost would improve the dodge chance and hit rate of melee and ranged monsters. I didn't think that he would use any dragon summoners, since I was so sure that he would go with Kelya Frendul.

Layout

With the assumption that he would go with water melee, I started to get my team ready for it.

Summoner

I went with Camila Sungazer because, I couldn't fit Daria Dragonscale. I wanted to keep all of my monsters. Normally, you pick a summoner and fit the monsters to pair well with it. This time, I had a plan of what monsters I wanted to use and the summoner came as an afterthought. If I had Daria Dragonscale, the increased melee damage along with rage, the blast would put holes into the enemies backrow. Camila Sungazer was a nice 3 mana dragon summoner to go with. The only other option would Kretch Tallevor, but he doesn't offer any advantageous with his cost.

Tank

Again I was assuming that the opponent would go with melee with some ranged monsters to supplement it. The best way to counter that additional damage from the blast damage is to have a tank that can dodge the main damage in the first place. In the water splinter, the best option for that was the Serpent of Eld. With his high speed and his amazing dodge ability, I was expecting him to minimize most of the blast damage. The Dodge ability increases the dodge chance by 25%.

Reach Monster

I followed him up with water's version of Fineas Rage: Flying Squid. My goal with him was to absorb some blast damage and help a bit with the offense. That's all you really want with a reach monster. If you didn't know, the reach ability allows melee monsters to attack from the 2nd position along with the 1st position. It is really funny that he doesn't get the flying ability.

Support and Protection

After Flying Squid, I followed him up with an amazing dragon monster which is Void Dragon. His stats really fit him. For 5 mana most of the time, you get cards that either supports the offense like Wave Runner or Radiated Brute or support the defense like Peaceful Giant. He does both and excels at it. You get a ton of health for his cost at 7. He can take quite a lot of hits. His speed is incredibly high at 5. This is the 2nd highest base speed in the game. It does not need to be this high, he deals magic damage which does not factor in speed after all. His speed alone counters the melee and ranged damage types. His void ability covers the rest. Void is such a great ability by itself. There are 40 1 damage magic monsters. He automatically hard counters all of them. With an ability such as Silence, (which lowers all of the opponent's magic attacks by 1), you can add 35 monsters to that list. He is the best monster with void as of now. As soon as I saw this card's stats before the launch of Chaos Legion, I had a feeling that they would nerf it. So far they did not. Yeah, Void Dragon is my favorite monster in the entire game.

Opportunity Monsters

The best abilities to use in the blast ruleset on offense are Snipe, Opportunity, Scattershot, then Sneak. In that order. You're telling me I could use two of the best opportunity monsters in the game? Heck Yeah! Going with Deeplurker and Dragon Jumper were no-brainers. Pairing two opportunity monsters together make an incredible team. The Dragon Jumper would take out a shield, then the Deeplurker would finish the monster off. I put Deeplurker before Dragon Jumper to protect the high speed if it came to that. These two were incredibly important in my victory.

High Damage Output

In the last position, I went with my previous favorite card: Axemaster. I love that he deals so much damage! His ability double strike allows him to attack consecutively. This ability annihilates tanks without hesitation. He has 2 base damage so with the ability, he deals at most 4 damage in every turn. With the blast ruleset, his damage carries into the 2nd position. His speed is incredibly high at 4 so he is reliable. Many people say that Pelacor Arbelest is the better version of him. I wholeheartedly disagree. If you want to run Pelacor Arbelest, you have to use General Sloan or even better Selenia Sky. This locks you into using mostly ranged monsters. Pelacor Arbelest's Speed is horrendous as well. Sure the damage is huge but, it is so inconsistent and there are no easy ways to increase it. However, if you wanted to use Axemaster on the other hand, You would most likely go with Kelya Frendul, which makes melee and ranged way better.

The Battle

After explaining my decisions for my team layout, let's get into the battle! This was a highly anticipated battle for me. All of my previous battles led me to this one. It was destiny. Once I saw the battle animations start, I was surprised to see Alric Stormbringer of all summoners leading the opponent's team. That's fine. My team was made to soft counter melee with Serpent of Eld and Camila Sungazer.

BATTLE - Full Battle Replay

The Action

My opponent's Djinn Oshannus hit first and took a chunk out of my Serpent of Eld. Next, my Serpent of Eld, Flying Squid, Void Dragon, and Axemaster worked on cutting down my opponent's Sea Monster so it only had one chance to heal. Deeplurker and Dragon Jumper worked according to plan. They took out all of my opponent's main damage dealers before they could strike again.

Summary

I was entirely pleased with the outcome of the battle. Everyone worked hard and did their part. They took out the opponent's monsters with extreme speed.

That's all for my Battle Weekly Challenge with Dragons! If you enjoyed reading this article and/or watching my battle review, feel free to follow me and subscribe to my Youtube Channel! I focus on making tutorial videos on Splinterlands and the various tools supporting it. If you haven't joined the game, here is my referral link: https://splinterlands.com?ref=project10back