This week's battle theme is Dragons! The Dragon splinter is unique in the sense that when you choose a Dragon summoner, you will also choose a secondary splinter. This allows you to use the Dragon summoner's abilities and dragon monsters with a second set of monsters (not summoners).

This can create some extremely powerful lineups that can perfectly counter the cookie cutter lineups that we sometimes run into.

Dragon Summoner Highlights

	Drake of Arnak is a Dragon summoner that is included in the starter set of cards. He provides all friendly monsters with +1 armor which can be great if you are anticipating a melee or ranged attack. Obviously, he's not the best choice if you're up against a magic deck.
	Brighton Bloom is another useful Dragon summoner that you'll definitely want to rent. She gives all friendly monster the flying ability which is insanely useful for those earthquake battles. You can also get creative and use her to increase your odds of creating a missed attack.
	Daria Dragonscale is a Dragon summoner that adds +1 to all melee attacks. Pair her with a deck that usually doesn't have strong melee monsters such as the Life deck and you can completely surprise your enemy.

Today's Featured Battle

In today's battle, I went with a Level 2 Drake of Arnak as my summoner, paired with the Life deck.

Battle Ruleset

• Target Practice : All Ranged and Magic attack Monsters have the Snipe ability.
• Lost Magic : Monsters with Magic attack may not be used in battles.
• 18 Mana Cap
• Fire, Life, and Dragon splinters only

Strategy Highlights

• Target Practice
  • Magic, ranged, and no attack monsters that aren't in the front will be susceptible to attacks
  • I typically try to use this to my advantage by placing no attack monsters at bait in key positions
• Lost Magic
  • Obviously you can't use magic monsters but neither can your opponent
  • This means the shield ability and armor is important
• 18 Mana Cap
  • Low mana cap which generally means you'll be facing 1 tank with support monsters in the backline

My initial thoughts were to use the Fire splinter and pack the lineup with quality, low mana melee monsters. A few opportunity monsters or sneak monster could take out the backline while the tank protected them.

The next step for me was to think of a counter to this lineup which was to bring in Drake of Arnak to use the armor as a buffer against melee and ranged attacks.

I felt that this was the safest route in case my opponent had the same idea with the Fire deck

The Lineup

	Djinn Chwala - Great tank, has fairly high health and armor (+1 from Drake of Arnak). Without magic, melee is the only suitable tank for most players so I put a monster with thorns up front to help dish out more damage
	Stitch Leech - Decent attack power with 2 melee. I put this in position 2 where it's protected behind the tank and where it can take out the enemy backline
	Armorsmith - Although this unit can't attack from the 3rd position, it is going to use its repair ability to restore the armor on my tank. This essentially helps negate one of the enemy attacks each turn
	Creeping Ooze - Great monster that only costs 1 mana. It has the slow ability which reduces my enemy's speed by 1, allowing me to attack first and potentially cause some misses. Since it has no attack, it will be the target of any ranged monsters if my opponent decides to use any
	Furious Chicken - No lineup is complete without adding the Furious Chicken. It is essentially used to absorb one of the enemy attacks and when paired with Drake of Arnak, we'll be absorbing 2 enemy attacks.

Let's Battle!

• My opponent went with my initial thought which was to use Fire and keep some attackers behind a good tank
• My counter to this lineup worked perfectly
• I was able to spread out their attacks which always helps keep your monsters alive
• My Djinn Chwala with the Armorsmith easily took out the Living Lava while my Stitch Leech single-handedly ate through their backline attackers

Did it work?

Yes! I was able to perfectly counter my opponent get walk away with the victory. One weakness that I can see is that my lineup isn't particularly fast. If some of my attacks to the backline missed, it might have allowed my opponent to take out some of my support units.

Final Thoughts

Dragon Summoners are some of my favorites because their abilities can be applied to any of the other splinters. This makes them extremely versatile and that's key when you're trying to build a strong deck. Instead of leveling up multiple different summoners, you could level up 1 Dragon summoner and use it with all of your other monsters, whichever ones are allowed according to the ruleset.

Dragon Summoners and Monsters are a bit more expensive, however. Rent a few and see how you like them!

Thanks for reading!

Referral link : https://splinterlands.com?ref=at.bui89