All Armored Up - Using Nerissa Tridawn in Battle!

This week's Share Your Battle challenge features Nerissa Tridawn! I was extra excited because Nerissa is one of my very favorite monsters in the game. That's right - not just out of the Chaos Legion set, or the Water splinter, but out of the entire set of cards that I have had the opportunity to play with. She is tanky, she hits like a truck, and she's even got a cool trident - what is there to not like?

Nerissa is a magic attacker in the water splinter. She isn't cheap, costing a whooping 9 mana to bring onto the field, but she has the stats to justify the price. At level 2, which is the level I'm working with this week, she pairs an impressive 3 magic damage and 2 speed with a whooping 10 health - quite a lot of stats, especially for a magic attacker.

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. Splinterlands was updated this past week to include 3 rulesets per battle in some of the matches, and this was one of them. In fact, this is my very first Share Your Battle challenge to feature 3 rulesets! And we have an interesting combination here - Healed Out, Earthquake, and Tis But Scratches. Looking at these rules the most impactful ruleset seemed to be Earthquake - any monster without Flying would be taking damage each turn and would most likely not survive long into the battle.

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My summoner of choice for this fight was Kelya. Normally in an Earthquake ruleset I would try to go with a splinter with a lot of monsters with Flying, but unfortunately none of the three available really fit that description. So I went with the net best thing - extra armor to buy my monsters a bit of additional time before taking health damage. Kelya gives everyone an extra point of armor, and a bit of extra speed which is nearly always welcome.

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I started my team with my tank and secondary tank. Serpent of Eld and Flying Squid both hit hard and have decent amounts of health - particularly important since they will be subject to Earthquake damage in addition to enemy attacks. Serpent of Eld's Dodge ability will give it some extra evasion, and Flying Squid's Reach will allow it to contribute some damage even from the second position.

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The middle of my lineup contained the "secret sauce" that I was planning on using to counteract the Earthquake ruleset and hopefully allow my team to pull off the win - I already had some extra armor from Kelya, and I wanted even more of it! Arkemis the Bear and Venari Wavesmith both come with the Protect ability, and the pair of them combined with Kelya will give my entire team 5 additional armor. On top of that, Arkemis has plenty of bulk to act as a third tank, and Wavesmith will be able to pitch in a bit of magic damage.

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I anchored my team with the heavy hitters - Djinn Oshannus and our guest star of the week, Nerissa Tridawn! Both of them will put out decent magic damage, and both of them have plenty of health to survive Earthquake damage or any additional attacks that may happen to sneak through. My strategy was for this pair of magic attackers to sit at the back and deal heavy damage to the opposing team, while the rest of my lineup would battle it out and hopefully buy enough time with their melee attacks and extra armor.

With the lineup set, it's off into battle! When I see the selected teams I feel okay about my chances. My opponent has also brought some extra armor to the fight but will be receiving just 3, compared with my team's 5. My monsters also will be dishing out significantly more magic damage than the enemy team. On the other hand, the melee monsters on the other side look fairly intimidating, and River Hellondale with its Resurrect ability always has the potential to throw a wrench into my plans.

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As you may expect in a fight where both teams are packing a ton of extra armor, this battle starts off slowly. But by the start of the third round both frontline tanks are gone. I'll chalk that one up as a small win for me, since my team actually had to kill my opponent's tank TWICE, thanks to resurrect.

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One more round and the tides are slowly turning in my favor. My magic attackers at the back are dealing some serious damage to my opponent's front line, and the Earthquake damage is beginning to take its toll - all of my opponent's armor is gone and their monsters will soon be taking health damage.

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The battle ended up finishing in short order. By the start of round 5 the writing was on the wall - the start of round Earthquake damage plus a combined 7 damage from my remaining monsters was enough to seal the deal! And again, if you wanted to see the whole battle for yourself, you can see it right here.

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My strategy for this fight worked out perfectly - my team's large amount of armor was able to protect them while my hard hitting melee and magic attackers knocked out the opposing team one by one. Nerissa did an outstanding job as a magic attacker in this battle. 3 magic damage at a Bronze cap level is a LOT of damage, and the combination of Djinn Oshannus and Nerissa was too much for the enemy team to handle. I am a huge fan of Nerissa Tridawn, and she will remain a staple of my Water lineups going forward.

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: Confirmation Bias - An introduction to the concept of confirmation bias, and how we can apply it to Splinterlands!

• Tank You Very Much - Using Legionnaire Alvar in Battle! - Last week's battle challenge, featuring Legionnaire Alvar!

• Splinterlands Economics: Diversification - An overview of the concept of diversification, and how we can apply it to 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!

All images used in this article are open source and obtained from Pixabay or Unsplash. Thumbnails borrowed with permission from the Splinterlands team or made in Canva.