Desert Dragon : The Real Melee Mayhem!!!

Hi, welcome my entry post for Splinterlands weekly battle challenge. This week we have DRAGONS theme, and as the first post of battle challenge I will pick the Desert Dragon as my main theme.

Shorten Lore: The Desert Dragon is most commonly found east of the Jade Thickett, on the sandy plains of the Ixzoc. Its long neck is banded red and black, with savage horns that sprout from its head and vicious fangs more wicked than scimitars that line its jaws.

In the past I have made a few Desert dragon post which all of the battles I posted had a STAMPEDE Rulesets. But This time I would use other ruleset which might show how good Desert Dragon is.

• TARGET PRACTICE ~ All Ranged and Magic attack Monsters have the Snipe ability.
• MELEE MAYHEM ~ Melee attack Monsters can attack from any position.
• 99 MANA

I found a battle which used this rulesets and I thought this should be a good opportunity to use Desert Dragon. 99 Mana was fantastic, it meant no limitation on picking up monsters and the most important one was the Melee Mayheem ruleset.

I was a bit uncertain whether my dragons to go with Water or Death Element. Deep Lurker or Cursed Windeku, big meat wall Nerrisa or Harklaw... My choice went to Death Element because I wanted to use all melee monsters which freed me from TARGET PRACTICE ruleset.

So here was my simple lineup:

Position	Card	Ability	Plan and Strategy
Summoner		-1 range and -1 Speed	Quix is one of my favorite summoner because He controls speed and defend his monsters from range attacks.
Main Tank		Thorn	One of the best tank from Dragon. Good Melee, high armor and health with extra Thorn Ability
Second		Shield, Immunity	Harklaw was quite OP as a defensive tank against melee and range. I needed him incase my opponent using melee monsters too
Third		Blast	I liked this monster, fast, high health and blast ability. A good tertiary tank
Fourth		Demoralize	Incase my opponent using a full set of melee monsters, I neeeded his demoralize ability
Fifth		Trample, Piercing	Our main actor for this week.
Last		Thorn	One of the best Melee Monster in Chaos Legion set, I set him behind so his Thorn could kill Sneak Attackers

HERE COMES THE BATTLE!!!

If you want to see the battle directly, you can see it directly here:
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_e3248cf6c23a9e0e305090d567dbed52&ref=dewabrata

It was a modern silver league rank battle of water vs dragon, Keyla vs Quix. My opponent came with a combination of Melee - Magic squad with a taunt monster behind. Nerrisa 3 magic damage and Deep Lurker 4 Melee damage were my biggest threat.

Both side came with a well balance team. None of us used small health monsters, maybe we had prepared for the worst case if opponents came with some trampling monsters. The fact was both of us brought one trampling monsters only.

Let see how this would go

Round 1

• The game started as both party buffing and debuffing their monsters and opponent's monsters.
• My opponent had 10 Melee damage, 5 magic damage and a range one, a total 16 damages this round.
• My team had a total 15 Melee damages
• My team had a higher average health and their team had a higher armor value. Everything seemed equal toe to toe.

• This round ended with no Monsters got killed. Actually my team managed to kill their wave brood but they revived him.
• Desert Dragon contribution : 5 damages to Wave Brood

Round 2

• Round 2 started by my Windeku killed their Wave Brood again.
• As the round progressed, I lost my Chwala from Flying Squid attack and my Disintegrator retaliated by killing their Diemon Shark.
• Desert Dragon contribution : 5 damages to Diemonshark

Round 3

• Round 3 started by DeepLurker Killed my Disintegrator
• Then Desert Dragon did his stuff... Killed the squid and delivered 5 damages to Deep Lurker

Round 4-5

• Round 2 started by my Windeku Killed their Deep Lurker
• Then again Desert Dragon did his stuff... Killed the River Hellondale and delivered 5 damages to Nerrisa.
• The final winning blow was delivered by my Windeku

The Key Winning Point are:
There were two points why my team could win this battle:

• First one was Speed. My team could catch up with Kelya speedy water team. Nightmare and Windeku moved first which you could see Windeku killed 2 opponents by moving first.
• Desert Dragon outclassed the other by maximizing the ruleset effect. This Dragon delivered 20 damages and killed 2 monsters in 4 rounds. This made the big difference between our team.

MY OPINIONS AND REVIEW

Desert Dragon is a great hitter and killer. It has high hit damage, Trample ability, Piercing ability, Retalite and a Giant killer ability. Those are awesome abilities to make this monster a great killer. However we should realize this dragon is a not a good tank. It has a so so health and doesn't have any defensive ability.

The PROs

• Stat-wise, Desert Dragon is a great. All abilities are easily usable to help it kills opponent.
• On certain rulesets, it will become a horrifying killer. Melee Mayheem is one of them.
• Price is relatively cheap, you can consider it as one of the good investment

The CONs

• Decent health point, it is not a good tank
• Speed is a major issue, He hits very hard, but that means nothing if he missed the target or gets killed first.

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