Splinterlands - Weekly Share Your Battle Challenge - Theme: Serpentine Spy

Hello Friends,

https://steempeak.com/splinterlands/@splinterlands/6oiuzj-share-your-battle-weekly-challenge-win-upvotes

Here I am with a blog for the Splinterlands Weekly Challenge of sharing the battle with Fire splinter monster, Serpentine Spy

@carrieallen and @splinterlands team are good in unearthing the gems of the splinterlands monsters which might have got lesser exposure and we see people using the monsters featured in Weekly Challenge on a regular basis after the challenge.

Ok, let me give a brief introduction about the Serpentine Spy.

A common Fire splinter monster, Serpentine Spy is not among those high health monsters, but definitely among those high influential monsters because of it's Opportunity ability and a minimum of 3 melee attack (2+1 for fire splinter) monster and can be handy when there are low mana cap battles with some luck required (luck in the form of no Opportunity monsters in opponent's lineup) to use this in our lineup.

Statistics of Serpentine Spy:

Melee Attack:

At 3 MANA cost, this monster gives a melee attack ranging between 2 to 4 and +1 from Fire splinter means, this can have a minimum of 3 melee attack starting from level 1 and can be a minimum of 5 from Eighth level onwards.

Levels 1 to 4 provides 2 melee attack, levels 5 to 7 gives an increased melee attack of 3 and remaining 3 levels gives 4 melee attack.

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Speed:

This is the best feature of this monster.

With minimum speed of 3 in level 1, this will be among the first few (definitely not to be the first given other monsters speed in Fire as well as other splinters) to attack.

This is the monster with highest speed among Opportunity monsters except for Dragon Jumper and Fiendish Harpy at level 1.

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Health:

This is something one should be vary of while summoning this monster into the battle.

A health of 1 in levels 1 and 2 makes it vulnerable against other Opportunity ability monsters unless we put a low health monster in higher position just to avoid this getting exposed.**

The health increases to 2 from Third to Fifth level and a max of 3 for all remaining levels till Tenth.

Abilities of Serpentine Spy:

This is the main point as for as this monster is concerned.

It has 2 abilities and Poison being the second one besides the already discussed Opportunity.

Let's have some more information on these 2 abilities.

Opportunity

The main ability of this monster, and this means, it can attack the lowest health monster which might be positioned in any of the Six positions.

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Poison
Poison ability poisons the enemy monster it attacks thus reducing the health of it at each round.

This ability is available with max level i.e. 10^th level only.

The Battle:

https://steemmonsters.com/?p=battle&id=7d0c1ebc1f0b756cd0bd4b8a03695f17796913eb

This battle included scenarios Super Sneak and Lost Legendaries and there was a cap of 23 MANA for this battle.

Supersneak enables all the melee attack monsters to attack from backend of the lineup.

Lost Legendaries enables only Common, Rare and Epic monsters to be used in the battle.

Lineup:

Since this battle was with a MANA cost of 23, I thought of using low MANA cost monsters using Fire Splinter.

My Lineup included below monsters:

1. CERBERUS:

My go to monster when there is a low MANA cap and I use this as first monster because of it's self healing ability and the retaliate when attacked by a melee monster.

With 4 melee attack, it will turn to 8 when retaliate is enabled.

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2. GRUMPY DWARF:

Since this was low MANA battle, I used this instead of Giant Roc and it's armors also helps to survive another round when there is any Retaliate action.

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3. EXPLODING DWARF:

Most of the Super Sneak battles will see this monster being used in battles and I used this. It's Blast, Piercing and Retaliate abilities are very much required in a Super Sneak battles.

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4. SERPENTINE SPY:

An Opportunist monster always looking for low health monster and finishes it off.

Has to place this in Fourth position just to getting exposed early.

Luckily, none of the opponent's monsters were with Opportunity ability.

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5. KOBOLD MINER:

One of the best Sneaking monsters, used it in Fifth position for it's attack of 3 for a MANA cost of 2 and also for shielding Serpentine Spy from getting exposed early.

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6. COCATRICE:

This is known to evade the sneak attack because of it's Flying and Dodgy.

Opponent's lineup included Silvershield Paladin, Feral Spirit, Silvershield Assasin, Elven Cutthroat, Furious Chicken and Cocatrice.

Battle:

Let's see how the battle went out with Fire splinter against Life splinter.

By the lookout of the opponent's lineup, Silvershield Paladin and Silvershield Assasin are the 2 major monsters with 2 sneaky monsters in Elven Cutthroat and Feral Spirit doing the support role and that lineup made me feel I may have a negative result here.

But, the Super sneak and no thorn throwing or retaliating monsters at the backend means, the Dwarfs (Exploding and Grumpy) had their chances and remaining ones supported well.

Round 1:

The first round saw end of 3 monsters for opponent(Cocatrice, Furious Chicken and Elven Cutthroat) and 1 from my side(Cocatrice) with Kobold Miner one hit away from losing it's life.

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Round 2:

As mentioned, my Kobold Miner lost with first blow in second round from Feral Spirit and Exploding Dwarf was next into the attack with speed of 6 and removed Silvershield Assasin without allowing to hit twice with it's Double Blow ability.

Soon, Feral Spirit was also removed leaving only Silvershield Paladin to fight it out.

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Round 3:

One blow each from Exploding Dwarf, Cerberus and Serpentine Spy took out the Silvershield Paladin and that was a short yet aggressive battle win for me!!!!

Did my strategy work? What will I try differently next time?

Well, I had doubts initially looking at Life splinter with those armors for each monster, but had a sigh of relief when Exploding Dwarf lived up to it's ability.

Yes, it worked well for me.

I don't think there is much space for any change here, so I feel this lineup looks pretty good and complete for the MANA cap.

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Do I use the SERPENTINE SPY often? Why or why not?

I have started using this more and more recently as I am also a lover of Opportunity monsters and I will definitely use this whenever suitable battle types are enabled.

This blog is going on and on and I don't feel I have said anything extra than what I wanted to say!!!

Thanks for reading this and coming till this line of words.

See you soon in battles, Bye, Take care.

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