A Thorny Quix-tuation - Using the Dragon Splinter in Battle!

This week's Share Your Battle challenge features the Dragon splinter! This is a relatively easy category to find a battle for, because there are a few Dragon splinter cards that I use relatively often. I enjoy using Djinn Chwala in battle, the +1 armor from Drake of Arnak can be very useful at times, and if I happen to get a Dragon splinter daily quest then I'll usually have a good time taking Quix out for a spin.

The battle challenge was slightly tricky this week, on account of it coming out just after the new season started. With my collection power I start off the season in Bronze, which is notoriously tricky to get out of. While I can normally pull it off in a relatively decent amount of time, it is still a jungle out there! On the positive side, the rental rates for Quix were under 1 DEC per day - a relative bargain! And as it happens, I was able to find a battle that featured not one, but TWO cards from the Dragon splinter. In order to celebrate the occasion, I went a title with twice as many cringe-inducing puns as I usually do...you're welcome!

If you wanted to jump right to the action, the Battle Link is right here. Want to hear some more about the lineup? Read on further!

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First up: the ruleset. I have to admit that there isn't anything in particular that made me decide this was a good battle to bring a Dragon summoner to. But it did have a medium mana cap that wasn't bad for it, and I thought that it might be a good time to try out my strategy - a water composition with a twist!

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One of our co-guest stars this week, Quix is a great Dragon splinter summoner - the speed debuff is great against all lineups (well, except in reverse speed of course), and the ranged attack is a great bonus if your opponent happened to bring a ranged attacking lineup. On top of that, Quix is a legendary summoner. That means that even at level 1, it allows you to use Bronze level cap cards.

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I started my team with my tank and secondary tank. Our second quest star this week, Djinn Chwala, held up the front. With plenty of armor and thorns, my hope was that they would be able to put a serious dent in my opponent's front line. Torrent Fiend was thrown in as an added buffer - with a 0 mana cost Torrent Fiend should go in every battle where you have a free space, and that was the case here.

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I put in Djinn Oshannus as the co-big monster on my team, partnering with Djinn Chwala. Djinn Oshannus is great - speedy, durable, and 2 magic damage output is a great package. Based on the ruleset I wasn't really sure what to expect from my opponent, so Oshannus was my jack of all trades solution.

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I rounded out the back end of my team with a small amount of damage that Ihoped would be speedy and/or evasive enough to survive for a while and provide some additional buffer for the rest of my cards. Ice Pixie and Pelacor Bandit both have flying, and thanks to Quix being legendary I was able to play gold foil Pelacor Bandit at tis natural level 3.

With the lineup set, it's off into battle! When I see the selected teams I am not sure what to think. The good news is that my opponent has a fair amount of melee damage at the front, which means that Chwala's Thorns ability will be able to do some damage. On the other hand, Quix only debuffed one monster, and there are two sneak monsters which could start to hit my back line.

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After the first round of battle things are looking a little dicey - my Pelacor Bandit has gotten picked off, Chwalla's armor is done, and I have only put a little bit of damage in on my opponent's team.

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A slugfest ensues. Over the next couple of rounds , down goes both of our front tanks and my Ice Pixie. Luckily, Chwala's Thorns did indeed pay off and once combined with Oshannus' magic damage managed to let me finish off Living Lava.

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The carnage didn't end there - Djinn Oshannus had to slowly mow down the opposing lineup while getting attacked by Scavo Firebolt. One of my Dragon cards, Quix, actually paid off big time here - thanks to the debuff, it was only hitting for 1 damage per turn instead of 2! It took all of the way until round 9 to get to this final sitation, in which the Firebolt can't attack and is finally about to die. Not a battle for the fainthearted, but I'll take the victory! And again, if you wanted to see the whole battle for yourself, you can see it right here.

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Both of the Dragon cards I brought to this battle played important roles - Djinn Chwala held the front long enough and dealt out enough to knock down the front door of my opponent's lineup, and Quix slowed that pesky Firebolt down so that it wasn't able to finish my monsters off. This was definitely not one of my cleanest victories to date, but my overall strategy of bringing my water lineup plus a thorns tank did end up paying off.

This battle actually showed off another one of the strengths of the Dragon Splinter - in addition to your Dragon cards, a Dragon summoner also allows you to borrow the best cards from other splinters! While I may be cautious about bringing this specific set of cards again in the future, I am a big fan of Djinn Chwala, Quix the Devious, and the Dragon splinter in general - they'll both remain staples of my ranked play lineups in the future.

Thank you so much for reading all the way to the end. Interested in seeing some more of my writing in the future? Be sure to give me a follow! In the meantime, if you'd like to see some of my recent posts:

• Splinterlands Economics: Pareto Optimality - A introduction to pareto optimality, and how it can help you out in Splinterlands.

• Not Doing Much Carry-in' - Using Carrion Shade in Battle! - This week's battle challenge, featuring Chaos Knight!

• Splinterlands Economics: Common Goods - An introduction to common goods, and insights they can give us into Splinterlands.

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Thinking about giving Splinterlands a try but haven't signed up yet? Feel free to use my referral link: https://splinterlands.com?ref=bteim, and be sure to reach out to me if you have any questions!