SHARE YOUR BATTLE Weekly Challenge! LAVA SPIDER

© @splinterlands

When the Chaos Legion entered the Splinterlands through the great volcano in the center of Praetoria, they saw the lava spiders and used them to their advantage. Transporting these spiders into areas that need defense is a win-win for both groups. For the Chaos Legion, it is an easy barrier to ward off unwanted visitors. And for the lava spiders, they get free meals from the curious, the foolish, and the unwary adventurers that seek to strike at the Chaos Legion.

Hi, welcome back again to my entry post for Splinterlands weekly battle challenge. This week we have Lava Spider from Chaos Legion Fire Element for the battle challenge, one of a former underrated chaos legion monsters. Yes it's underrated in early phase of Chaos Legion general sale because its price was became one of the lowest for Fire Element, however people started to see this card as indeed a good one, and it's price has become better right now. Before we talk about how good it is, Let's see our battle, shall we?

• HEAVY HITTERS ~ All Monsters have the Knock Out ability. I am in Silver League, there isn't any notable monsters with STUN ability. So it's better I ignore this ruleset
• 38 MANA ~ With thIs amount of Mana, having a 6 monsters team is a must.

When you use TARSA, you want to bring all the melee hitters you have, maximizing all TARSA abilities. This sounds wonderful and most people love to do this, however it has two big problems when you really do this.

1. What if you meet Mylor? Everyone in his team will be given a thorn ability.
2. Most of heavy hitters has lower speed, what if you meet a bunch of speedsters?

These two questions made me split my team selection into 3 melee monster, 2 range monsters and a magician. So here is my plan:

Position	Card	Ability	Plan and Strategy
Summoner	Tarsa	+1 Melee , +1 Health	Well, that time she was my highest level fire summoner, hahahaha
Main Tank	Living Lava	Shield	I think Living Lava is one of the best free tank we can choose from the start. Decent health, a shield ability and high melee damage.
Second	Radiated Brute	Reach	A good damage dealer, combined with Tarsa ability, he can deliver 3 melee damage.
Third	Lava Launcher	Close Range	If Mana isn't an issue, Lava Launcher is a fire monster you must bring into your team. It has everythig, the best secondary/off position tank you can have.
Fourth	Djin Apprentice	None	2 magic damage, that's all I need from this monster. I can expect 4 melee damage from Living Lava, 3 Melee damage from Brute, combined 7 melee damage... However both of my front monsters have 1 speed only. I need a magician to cover them if somehow I meet opponent who use very dodgy Tank.
Fifth	Tenyii Striker	Sneak	He is one of the best sneak attackers in a bronze-silver league. Tarsa will make this guy a lot better with extra 1 damage
Last	Lava Spider	Snipe	Our main actor for this week, I put him behind for two reason. First mana cap, I have 3 mana left. Second I need a wall behind to guard my Tenyii Striker from opponent sneakers. For these two reason, Lava Spider becomes better ops than Serpentine Spy which everyone always pick first

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_ef3bdad95fb7a9705d94fe7b4f371268&ref=dewabrata

It is a Water vs Fire Element battle. It's quite a headache seeing two of my opponent's tanks has a high speed, the Serpent of Eld and the Flying Squid. I am glad my team has Lava Launcher and Djin Apprentice, else this would be a game over for me. Their team has a combined 12 damages and my heam has 16 damages in a turn.

Round 1

• It's a massive blast, somehow my 1 speed Living Lava managed to hit their Serpent of Eld, killed it instantly

Round 2

• Their supply runner killed my Living Lava. Now things got even.
• My Tenyii Striker managed to kill their healer, the Merdaali Guardian. My team was back at the leading one

Round 3

• Their Goblin shot down my brute.
• In return, my Lava Launcher finished their squid.

Round 4

• Their deep Lurker killed my Lava Launcher, things got even again

Round 5

• Their deep Lurker killed my Djin this time
• Lava Spider killed their supply runner and my Tenyii finally finished their deep lurker.

It's a game over for them, nothing Goblin Chariot can do now.

The Key Winning Point are:

• It's their bad luck having their dodgy Serpent of Eld got hit then died first.
• They put their main support, Merdaali Guardin on the last position. Sneak attackers will finish that first. It's the same reason I put Lava Spider on the last position. You can't put your most important support on that position.

MY OPINIONS AND REVIEW

I was quite surprised when the first time Chaos Legion cards general sale was launched, this card price was slumped. Luckily It bounced back and now it's not the cheapest anymore. So I tried to figured out why most people at that time failed to see the good in this card:

1. Low damage, 1 range damage.
2. General mindset of players, seeing fire element as a bunch of melee damage dealers based on their summoners: Tarsa and Malric Inferno.
3. Yodin Zaku is expensive to buy or rent, so not many people use this summoner.

I am going to show you 2 similar cards which are Lava Spider direct head to head and apple to apple range/magic sniper. so here there are:

As we can see, compared to 3 mana snipers from other elements, we can see Lava Spider has higher health point. This is the major competitiveness it has. Ok let sum them up in the pros and cons list below.

The PROs are:

• 3 mana, It can be used in Little League ruleset
• Good speed, its not some useless 1 speed range attacker
• It has a high health for small mana monsters. Good as a meat wall.
• You can consider to bring this monster when you have Noxious Fumes (poison) ruleset. It won't die first.
• Good combo with Yodin Zaku
• Reasonable price, maybe a good investment for you who want to pump your CP (Collection Power)

The CONs are:

• Some better subtitutes for higher mana cap, such as Mantoid and Ferexia General.
• For a filler 3 mana cap, there are many subtitutes too, from Serpentine Spy, Uraeus and Fire Beetle. In fact Fire Beetle almost similar to Lava Spider, so no wonder many people see this card as something so common, not something that is new and special

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
• @flauwy : for wonderful divider art