Splinterlands Weekly Challenge Battle! SPINEBACK TURTLE

Every week there is a Splinterlands challenge to share a battle using a specific card and on this week's post it is the Spineback Turtle card. I also encourage Splinterlands players to partake in the challenge because you get to try different strategies and earn some crypto in the process.

Featured Monster: Spineback Turtle

Spineback Turtle is a water splinter card. It starts with no skills and learns thorns when it reaches level 4. It doesn't have very high attack but it has a decent amount of health and armor. So it makes for a very good low mana tank. I use to have access to this card before Chaos Legion was released and I do miss it. So I decided to rent a level 4 Spineback Turtle out for a day to play around with for 0.696 DEC.

As I choose a level 4 card, it also has access to the thorns ability. So if I run into a low mana match, I can use this with my Bortus summoner to deal extra damage to physical monsters. Unfortunately a level 1 legendary summoner can't use the level 4 version so it won't be used as much with my Lir Deepswimmer. I can still use it as a tank even without the thorns though.

Rule set, Battle and Plan

The rule set this time is back to the basics and rise of the commons. We are only allowed to use common and rare cards. At the same time, no cards will have their abilities but the summoner abilities will still take effect. We have 29 mana available and you can use all splinter types. This type of rule set really limits some of my choices as I can't use a kraken up in front because it is a legendary card.

The summoner I choose to use this time is Lir Deepswimmer because summoner buffs can still be used. With this, I do not have to worry about losing the thorns ability on the spineback turtle because it can't have it regardless. I mainly used this summoner because +2 armor, return fire and blind are amazing buffs under this rule set. It will definitely cripple my opponent if they are using ranged monsters.

My plan is to have a few high health cards up in front tanking the hits. The extra armor should make my cards more tanky and that spineback turtle is able to tank quite a few hits before it will go down. For my second or third slot, I can't use a sneak monster so I will opt for a higher health magic monster. So this means I do not have much mana left so I will pick ranged and magic monsters to deal some extra damage.

Round 1

It's Yodin versus Lir this time around. While I have an advantage due to return fire, I still think it is possible for me to lose. I am glad that my first two monsters both have 7 health and the extra armor is going to help because they are not using a magic build.

Round 2

It's not looking good for me but return fire has been doing an amazing job. Every time a ranged monster deals damage, they take at least 3 damage back due to return fire. Unfortunately both of my tanks are already almost dead because that blast ability has been wrecking my line up. It does look like I still have a chance of winning this match.

Round 3

Return fire killed off another monster on my opponent's side and that blind ability worked quite a bit a my pixie dodged two attacks. From what is left, I don't see any chance of me losing because of the return fire ability because my opponent still has to destroy my armor.

It took an extra round but I fast forwarded it to the end of the match as my return fire ability killed off his other ranged attacker.

Conclusion

The battle this time around went as I expected. There were some mishaps happening but my strategy of having two decent high health cards in front with ranged attackers won the match. Spending an extra 4 mana to use Lir was a good choice because I was fighting against his Yodin line up. All three abilities (+2 armor, blind and return fire) from Lir was cruticial towards me winning this match because I don't think I would of survived the blast damage otherwise. The Spineback Turtle may of only lasted 1 round but that one round could of made the difference between a win and lost. In the case of this battle, I think it was definitely a large contributing factor as my return fire ability dealt damage.

I think my opponent's line up was good and I don't see much that I would change from it. The only thing he did not expect was probably me using Lir as a counter towards ranged monsters. If I had to say what he could of changed in his line up, I would of replaced Living Lava with a better armor/health tank. It just doesn't have the shield ability so I find it a little lacking when there is the back to the basics rule set.

You can see my entire match here.

What did you think of my match? Was there anything you would of done differently? I think it is quite interesting to see how different players use the same card.