Weekly Battle Challenge with the SPINEBACK TURTLE

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Ahoy! Every week Splinterlands hosts a weekly battle challenge featuring one specific card. I usually completely forget to enter 😅 I also don't always play with the featured cards that often, though that's not an issue as you can share other battles too. I would just personally prefer to use the featured one.

This week the Spineback Turtle is the featured monster. As the Water Splinter is one of my favourites, it seems really fitting that the first time I actually enter one of the weekly challenges it will be with a Water monster.

I own a Gold Foil Beta level 4, which looks like this and has the following stats.

The Thorns ability is gained at level 4. Which can be quite neat to use on it as a 4 mana monster. With that combination I often like to use the Spineback Turtle in the Little League ruleset where 4 Mana is the max you can use per Summoner and Monster. I especially like a combination of Daria Dragonscale with Spineback Turtle upfront followed by Manticore with Reach.

In my specific battle that I'm sharing with you this week, it didn't matter that it had this ability. Because the rules for this battle were:

• Back to Basics: Monsters lose all abilities
• Taking Sides: Neutral Monsters may not be used in battle

Which caused the Spineback Turtle to lose its Thorns ability. In this battle only Water, Life and Death element could be chosen.

Here is a screenshot from the start of the battle where you can see my line-up and my opponents line-up

And the link to the battle: https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_40eb420d240158430928716aa8df22a0&ref=athunderstruck

I'm using Alric Stormbringer giving +1 to all my Magic attackers, which is immediately cancelled out by my opponent using Bortus giving -1 to all my Magic attackers.

I chose to put the Spineback Turtle in the front position because I suspected my opponent to potentially use a combination of Melee, Ranged and Magic Attackers. Where I expected him not to rely on only Magic Attack. With that thought the Spineback Turtle felt like a great fit. It could take some Magic Attack to the face, while any Melee and Ranged Attacks would first hit its Armor before those would also start damaging its health.

It managed to survive the whole first round, allowing my Lobstradamus, Angelic Mandarin, Mischievous Mermaid and Spineback Turtle to deal a full round of damage to my opponents Djinn Oshannus. Unfortunately the Pirate Archer missed its attack.

After the first round it immediately died to Djinn Oshannus attack, but it lived long enough for my choice of putting it as the tank.

The Kelp Initiate served as my secondary tank, not living very long but taking some damage. With the Lobstradamus and its high health serving as an additional tank with a bit of damage. Which proved to be just enough health to tank my opponents attacks long enough until their Axemaster reached the first position. From there it couldn't attack anymore because Ranged Attack Monsters can't attack from the first position unless the rules allow it to. That's when the victory became secured for me.

My overall strategy for this battle worked great.

Here is once again the link to the battle: https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_40eb420d240158430928716aa8df22a0&ref=athunderstruck

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