Hi, welcome to my Splinterlands weekly battle challenge. This week we have DRAGONS theme, so here is my DRAGON for this post:

Naga Assassin is a rare rarity Reward edition monster that we can use her on Modern Format battle. Due to her 2 mana requirement, well that's very small for sure, we can not expect she will be some gigantic game maker that make opponents tremble in fear. So is she a good selection for our team? lets see her Strength and Weakness first.

[WEAKNESS] She Hits Like A Girl

She is a girl, of course she will hit like a girl lah

1 range damage is not something that attractive, barely dangerous for your opponent. however for a 2 mana monster, it's good. But still, not dangerous one.

For this sole reason I believe many people do not like her because they see her as a harmless non threatening monster. So I can understand if she is not favorable and tend to be underrated. However I believe her low attacking damage is the sole weakness she has.

[STRENGTH] A GROWING 2 MANA MONSTER

Now we get into her strength part. Her first strength is her 2 mana requirement. Any monster below 3 mana is great, giving you extra mana advantages in order for you to get bigger monsters or to form a better team in low mana cap.

There are plenty of 2 mana monsters however only some of them grow well as you rise their levels up. Fortunately Naga Assassin is one of them, who grow stronger as her level going up. On Broze level cap she is only a regular fast archer. On Silver league level cap, she gets BACKFIRE ability (If an enemy misses this Monster with an attack, the attacker takes 2 damage) and this is where she becomes dangerous, for a backline position of during EEQUAL OPPORTUNITY ruleset (All Monsters have the Opportunity ability.)

On Gold Level cap she gets an extra hit damage, and on her highest level there is SWIFTNESS ability (All friendly Monsters have increased Speed) which makes her a great team support.

BATTLE PREPARATION

• LOST MAGIC ~ Monsters with Magic attack may not be used in battles.
• 30 MANA With this amount of mana cap, we should be able to form a 6 monsters team.

There wasn't anything special on this ruleset, in fact I thought this was another regular battle. I needed that 30 mana cap so I could form a 6 monsters team with combination of some big monsters and naga assassin as the small one.

What I needed to worry in this ruleset was if my opponent came with Mylor as their summoner. I gambled by bringing in too many melee monsters in my team, and I hoped I would not meet mylor here.

So here was my simple lineup:

Position	Card	Ability	Plan and Strategy
Summoner		-1 range an -1 Speed	Quix the Devious is the first Chaos Legion Legendary Summoner. He is one of the best summoner too, because both of his debuffs are working well making your opponents weaker. If you check on https://summonerlab.com/ He is one of the summoner who has very high win rate
Main Tank		Thorn	This is one of my all time favorite tank, Djinn Chwala. The first strong tank I have purchased in Splinterlands, and one of the cheapest too. He has high health point and high armor, such a great attributes that are needed by any good tank.
Second		Sneak	I will be honest here, I like Sunkai Harvester alot because he is very cheap to be bought and overall he is not that bad either. On higher league he will be useless, but for a silver-bronze league, he is a good addition for your team. A fast reach melee monster.
Third		Slow	Frankly speaking, She is my favorite monsters from all Chaos Legion Life element monsters. Not a strong one but would make her team became strong
Fourth		Tank Heal	Many people have not realized yet that Venary Crystalsmith is one of the core Life Element monsters in Modern Format. She is the only Life element tank healer you can get in modern format that's why she always be my main support monster. It feels bitter if I build up a Life Team without her.
Fifth		Flying, Opportunity	Celestial Harpy is an amazing 2 mana monster from Chaos Legion edition, her opportunity ability often becomes a game changer. She is very strong on Silver league level because with 2 mana, she can give you a 2 opportunity melee.
Last		Backfire	Same as Harpy, Naga was a great choice for a 2 mana monster. Our main theme this week will show us why she is dangerous, she might be the first monsters to move and her backfire might finish at least one of opponent 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_a3f9281a20086f9ee1829d7636a5b458&ref=dewabrata

This was a Modern Silver league Rank Battle, a battle of Dragon vs Death Element. My opponent came using Thaddius Brood as their summoner,he might want to kill my team fast by exploiting Thaddius debuff -1 health and Lira the Dark opportunity range attacks.

I liked this battle and I believed I would win easily because my opponent because my team was built well balance, alot better than him. I hoped in this battle, Naga Assassin could perform well and shined above the other.

Round 1

• The game started as both party buffing and debuffing their monsters and opponent's monsters.
• I had 10 melee damage and 3 range damage. Combined all, the damage became 13 per round.
• My opponent had 7 melee damage and 2 range damage. Combined all, their damage per round became 9.
• Damage wise, I believed my team had the advantages and the battle should be one sided favoring my team.

• The battle started and my Naga Assassin moved the first, giving a small injury on opponent windeku.
• We exchanged damage toward each other, and in the middle of this brawl, My Harpy killed their windeku however the thorn damage took my harpy out too.
• This round closed by his Uraeus trying to sneak attack my Naga Assassin. Uraeus missed this attack and got 2 backfire damage.

Round 2

• Again, my Naga Assassin made the first move and she took out Arachne Thug last armor point. Now their last tank was defenseless.
• Dumacke Exile joined in the party, he killed Lira The Dark. Everything was locked, no way opponent could make a come back.
• Djinn Chawala didn't want to miss this party, he killed opponent defenseless Arachne Thug.
• Uraeus tried to sneak attack again, and failed again. He took 2 backfire again and this time he died.

Round 3

• As usual, my Naga Assassin made the first move again. She was the fastest of all
• There wasn't anything interesting in this round, opponent had lost their tanks and damage dealer, so they became a sitting duck waiting my team to finish them all.
• good game

BATTLE DISCUSSION

Did My Strategy Work?

My strategy worked very well. There were 2 strategy on my formation:

1. Speed control. I used Quix The Devious to suppress opponent's speed and It worked very well. My team overall faster than their team which ultimately negated their main strategy using Lira The Dark to kill my weak backline monsters. To put this worse, almost all my monsters moved first everyturn, this made them like a sitting duck, waiting to be beaten half dead first before making any move.
2. Defense mechanism. Both of us use defense tactic which was the THORN ability. We expected opponent to die due to this ability. The difference was my opponent only use one thorn ability on Windeku, and when windeku died, no more protection on them. My team had 3 defense system. first the Thorn on Djinn Chwala, second was Venari Crystalsmith tank heal and the last was backfire ability on Naga Assassin. 3 vs 1, of course my team was able to outperform them.

NAGA ASSASSIN Managed To Perform Outstandingly

Did Naga Assassin manage to perform well? Yes she did. in 3 turn, she delivered 3 attacks and gave a total 3 range damage. Meanwhile as a backline defender, she delivered 2 backfire attack to Uraeus, giving him a total 4 backfire damage and killed that Uraeus. A 2 mana monsters delivering 7 damage in 3 turn, that's great.

I really hope my post here can convince some players/readers that Naga Assassin is indeed a great 2 mana monsters. Don't look at her price, she is very cheap, but in certain condition, she will become a disaster for your opponents.

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