Crystal Jaguar - Battle Challenge

Hello everyone!

Welcome to another weekly challenge. This time we are playing with Crystal Jaguar. An amazing cards belonging to the Life Splinter.

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About Crystal Jaguar

Crystal Jaguar is a common Life monster that belongs to the Untamed edition. With only four mana cost he is an amazing pick in the Small League ruleset. The best things about Crystal Jaguar are his Thorns and Retaliate abilities on higher levels.

Lore

During the historic Obliteration of Light, a family of wild cats was napping deep in one of the caves of the Crystal Forest. They were spared by the wave of destruction, and over time, with no competition for food, the cats grew incredibly large.

The Battle

You can watch the whole battle on a link below. Further down I will try to explain why I picked cards that you can see in my team. I will not go through events that happened in the battle as you can see that easily by yourself. I hope that my point of view will help new players in tailoring strategy for upcoming battles.

You can watch the battle on this link.

My Lineup

If you don't want to watch my battle you can see my starting lineup below.

My Strategy

Life Splinter is not the strongest one at the moment. Water, Earth, and Fire are completely dominating meta and I hope that will change with the new Chaos Legion expansion. At least Life Splinter got the best card in the new rewards set, Venari Crystalsmith. My strategy was to go for high health monsters and buff them additionally with Djinn Renova's Strengthen ability. Both Crystal Jaguar and Djinn Renova do have high health so Venari Crystalsmith is there to heal them each turn. +1 armor was there to take an additional hit from enemy monsters. The plan was to outlast my opponent on the field.

Did it work?
Since I won and earned an I would say it did work. Strategy with high health monsters is good, especially in lower leagues where it is hard to set up a team with high damage. Abilities like Strengthen and Tank Heal can be very good as it gets really hard to kill tanks.

Would I change anything now?
The only thing I would like is that my tank got Thorns and Retaliate but he gets that at higher levels. It would be fun to see how much damage he can deal. Though Retaliate would be way better with the higher attack.

Cards that I used and why?

I already explained my strategy and now I will try to explain why I use each card. All cards have some positive and negative sides. In the end, the only thing that matters is if you win or lose. This is determined by the synergy between your cards. Every card has its role in the battle.

Tyrus Paladium - A simple summoner that gives +1 armor to all your monsters. I like this summoner as it gives additional protection to my monsters.

In case of ranged and melee attacks, my monsters can tank one extra attack due to +1 armor. Of course, this does not work against magic attacks. It is not as good as Divine Shield.

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Crystal Jaguar - I do like this card a lot but there is not a lot of use in the Bronze league. In this game I used Crystal Jaguar as a tank due to good health and some extra armor that will soak aditional attack.

Thorns - When hit with a Melee attack, does damage back to the attacker.

Thorns ability is amazing for this card especially in Small League ruleset. With this ability his attacks goes up significantly.

Retaliate - When hit with a Melee attack, Monsters with Retaliate have a chance of attacking their attacker.

On higher levels Crystal Jaguar also gets Retaliate. This ability could be better if he has better attack. Crystal Jaguar has 50% chance to attack enemy back. With Thorns and his attack his damage could go up all to 6 per turn wich is not bad for 4 mana cost monster.

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Djinn Renova - New reward card that I like a lot. With decent health she can easily be at second position as an off-tank. Two magic attack is amazing, especially on first level and that is one of the reasons why I picked her for my team.

Strengthen - All friendly Monsters have increased Health.

Strengthen ability is the main reason why I picked this card. I wanted to buff-up monsters health and then heal them with Venari Crystalsmith. On higher levels Djin renova even gets Triage that means she can heal your buffed back-line. Amazing card if you ask me, way better than Baby Unicorn.

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Venari Crystalsmith - One of the best cards in the new reward set, if not the best. Health is decent, speed is not only 1 but a slightly higher which I see very useful as heal will kick in earlier then some attacks.

Tank Heal - Restores a portion of the Monster in the first position's health each round.

This means that you tank could survive longer, especially if after heal there a a few more monsters about to attack.

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Feral Spirit - This card was picked to fill the team and to do some damage even though it has only 1 attack. Decent speed almost guarantees that Feral Spirit will attack first.

Sneak - Targets the last Monster on the enemy Team instead of the first Monster.

I like Sneak ability as it often clears annoying cards in the back of the enemy team. Sometimes those cards do have low health and then Feral Spirit can one-shot them.

Cards that would be good with this setup

Maybe I had a mistake with picking Feral Spirit. Should probably go for a monster that will attack the first monster in the enemy team. This way part of my attack was not that efficient. I should probably go for Enchanted Pixie or something similar.

Summary

I enjoyed this game. It was a close one and it could easily go in another direction. I like Crystal Jaguar and I will use this card more often in higher leagues. It seems that now is a good time to stock up on Crystal Jaguar as it cost only 0.7 USD. Every card will be scarce in the future and Crystal Jaguar is not an exception, especially as it looks really good at higher levels.

P.S.

Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed this content. If you would add something extra please let me know in the comments. I am trying to write this content so there is not only battle but also explained the strategy that will maybe help some players.

Have fun and see you on the battlefield!