Hi everyone, welcome back to my Splinterlands weekly battle challenge. This week we have GARGOYA SCRAPPER as our main theme. Due to too many battle challenge I have shared for 1 mana monsters, I will pick CAPTAIN'S GHOST as our replacement main theme.

QUICK INSIGHT ON CAPTAIN'S GHOST

Modern Format Water Element has two outstanding rare Reward Cards, first the famous Venari Wavesmith and the second is this Captain's Ghost. Wavesmith has a Protect Ability, giving 2 armors to her allies. On the other hand, Captain's Ghost has a Affliction Ability, cursing his target making them unable to be healed. So one is defensive monster and the other one is offensive monster. Both are an interesting pair.

In my opinion, Captain's Ghost is a must have card in your collection. It is an excellent monster for Bronze-Silver league because he has Affliction from the start. When you meet strong Tank, high HP with healing ability or having a tank healer in the back, you really need Captain's Ghost to break that wall.

So overall this is my points of him:

1. Good magic damage and good health point from beginning. He is definitely not a monster who grows to be a super strong one, but on Bronze to Gold League, I believe Captain's Ghost is strong enough to compete with others.
2. Affliction is the keyword. He will break opponent's healings . Don't bother to use him if we have a Healing Out Ruleset.
3. his speed is slow, so don't expect any from his speed.

Battle Preparation

I had this battle ruleset and I thought this might be an interesting one

• HOLY PROTECTION ~ All Monsters have the Divine Shield ability.
• KEEP YOUR DISTANCE ~ Monsters with Melee attack may not be used in battles.
• 27 MANA

I thought these rulesets were good for Captain's Ghost. With no melee monsters allowed, I was predicting that I would meet some magic and range monsters with a healer behind them. So this was the situation I was looking for, making their healing locked down by the Captain's Ghost Affliction Ability.

So here was my line up that I could come up with:

Position	Card	Ability	Plan and Strategy
Summoner		-1 magic damage	Honestly the reason I picked Bortus because He was the only lvl 4 Summoner I had in my selection. The rent price went crazy due to no liquidity, so I didn't have many choice that time.
Main Tank		Void, Slow, Strengthen	Because of Summoner Bortus and Keep Your Distance Ruleset, Only Baakjira and Djinn Oshannus which were the top of the list. I picked Baakjira because It had lower mana requirement and that would help me to bring more monsters into my team.
Second		Affliction	Our main theme today. He would make my opponent unable to be healed
Third		Triage	I needed the triage to heal my backline monsters incase opponent used some Snipes or Blast Damage
Fourth		Tank	My main tank healer, she would make Baakjira became very hard to be killed... The wall that opponents couldn't break
Fifth		Heal	My backline wall, He would keep healing himself in order to hold opponent's sneak attackers

My line up basically was like having a healing party, and this Captain's Ghost would shut down opponent's Healing to make them jealous unable to join up the healing party

HERE COMES THE BATTLE!!!

If you want to see the battle directly, you can see it directly here:
https://splinterlands.com?https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_676f8ca9ec077121011f5a899f5164a3&ref=dewabrata

It's a Water vs Dragon, both of us used a similar strategy. We used a tank with Void Ability to hold of opponent's magic attacks. I used Meardalii Guardian to heal my Baakjira, my opponent had Byzantine Kitty. OVerall I believed I had the advantages due to the Water Elemental 3 range damage.

Round 1

• The game started as both party buffing and debuffing their monsters and opponent's monsters.
• My opponent had 3 magic damage with a blast effect. Bortus was very strong against magic opponents, so this was my biggest key winning point.
• My team had 2 Magic damage, and 4 range damage.

• We exchanges damages however none of the monsters died in the first turn.
• Captain's Ghost managed to curse the Dragon, Affliction was on!!

Round 2-3: The Death of Void Dragon

• Void Dragon was very agile, without getting healed, It kept dodging the attacks.
• On the 3rd round finally my team managed to kill Void Dragon and Chaos Agent. This was very crucial because I needed to stop that Chaos Dragon Scatter blast attacks.

Round 4-7 The Battle of Heals

• This Chaos Dragon was an OverPowered one, He kept dodging all my range attacks thanks to Kitty +2speed buff
• His 10 health point made him got +3 heath per turn from Kitty tank heals ability. Technically my team was having trouble to kill him.
• Luckily I had Angelic Mandarin with the Triage Ability, It healed Captain's Ghost everytime He got the Blast Damage
• In the end of 7th round, Finally Chaos Dragon got the Affliction

Round 8-9 The End

• Without healing, my team only needed 2 turns to finish a Chaos Dragon and that little chicken

Battle Discussion

I like this kind of battle which both of us comes with a good team selection, not just 1-2 level monsters as formalities. There are several key points we can learn from this battle:

• Chaos Dragon is a very strong monster, definitely works well with Byzantine Kitty. However for a less than 30 Mana battle, It's existence might force you to have a less competitive allies in the team
• In term of Summoners, I believe both of our Summoners are excellent. Bortus is always strong againts the magic team and Kitty... always make her teams solid and sturdy unbreakable.
• The distinctive factor is CAPTAIN'S GHOST. When we have a battle against defensive team which depends on healing, Affliction is the key to shut them down. This battle should be an intense one but due to Captain Ghost Affliction, It has become one sided and It looks like my team is slaughtering them.

If you like to play simple such as spamming water element using Alric, you need to bring Captain Ghost too. He can shutdown the Unicorn Mustang or any strong anti magic tank with Void Ability. This is one of the main reason that sometime I value Captain Ghost above AxeMaster or Deeplurker. He shutdowns opponent defensive meta, not just a monster that deals damage only.

Thank you for visiting my weekly battle challenge, don't forget to leave your comments and feedback below. There are credits in this post for these people:

• splinterlands : for holding weekly battle challenge events
• carrieallen : for ultimate markdown tutorial
• kyo-gaming : for wonderful divider art