Can you crack the shell of CRYPT BEETLE?

This is my entry to the Splinterlands Share Your Battle featuring the CRYPT BEETLE. If you want to join in this challenge, you can check this link. Alright, let's start first with the monster's lore, then deep dive into its compatible summoners, monster's stats & abilities, and the highlighted battle.

CRYPT BEETLE

Any explorers that delve too deeply into the crypts, mausoleums, and necropolises of the world will find a foe they are unprepared for. Not undead, not liches, and not other monsters that can be found in the deep. Instead, tales are told of the crypt beetles. Enormous insects that are found feeding on the corpses within. Most explorers think they are a mere nuisance and will try to scare them away from whatever tomb they are choosing to rob.

But things don't end well for those explorers. These large beetles will defend themselves and their food aggressively. And any explorer that makes it back out alive will have impressive scars to show from the crypt beetle's bite.
Within the darkness of the necropolis, the large crypt beetle scuttled across the stone floor. It made its way through the lines of tombs, searching for its next meal. Retracing steps it often took in the emptiness and silence of the underground.

The crypt beetle stopped at one tomb, reared back on its hind legs, and shoved the lid off. It fell heavily to the floor with an echoing slam.

A small scream of surprise and horror sounded from across the room. The crypt beetle turned. A human stood there, face aghast, staring at the insect. As the beetle fully faced this intruder, the human turned and ran away in fright.

The crypt beetle returned to its meal.

CRYPT BEETLE is one of the newest additions in the Death Splinter with low mana and a Shield ability. This monster is good for low mana battles against melee and ranged attacking monsters.

STATS and ABILITIES

Crypt Beetle is a 3 mana monster. At its initial level, it has a 1 melee attack, 1 speed, 1 armor, and 2 HP with the Shield ability. For a 3 mana monster, this is good monster against melee and ranged monsters, but not with magic monsters.

Leveling this card will only provides an increase stats but there won't be any new ability to gained from it.

At max level, it has 3 melee attack, 2 speed, 4 armor, and 5 HP. Leveling this card is also worth it.

Abilities:

	Shield Reduced damage from Melee and Ranged attacks. The attack damage of enemy monsters get halved (rounded up) before damage is dealt to this monster. - Attack damage of 1 deals 0 damage. - Attack damage of 2 deals 1 damage. - Attack damage of 3 deals 2 damage. Thorns and Earthquake, which deals 2 melee damage, will also gets reduced when monster has a Shield ability.

SUMMONER COMPATIBILITY

Summoners in Death Splinter are great in providing debuffs to enemy monsters. Reducing melee, ranged, and even magic damage.

• THADDIUS BROOD the only Summoner from Chaos Legion edition (as of now) reduces the magic damage and HP of all enemy monsters by 1. As I mentioned earlier, one of the weakness of Crypt Beetle is magic damage. By reducing the magic damage from enemy, it will greatly help its survivabiltiy.

• MIMOSA NIGHTSHADE reduces the ranged damage of all enemy monsters, provide Afflicgtion status to all enemy monsters, and provides all friendly monsters with Void ability. Void ability works the same way as with Shield ability but for Magic damage. Granting Void ability to Crypt Beetle will also helps survivability against magic attacking monsters. Void ability is better than just reducing the magic damage of enemy monsters.

• CONTESSA L'AMENT on the other hand reduces the ranged damage of all enemy monsters. Shield ability works with Ranged attack so further reducing ranged damage may allow Crypt Beetle to nullify their damage.

• ZINTAR MORTALIS reduces melee damage for all enemy monsters. If we have a ruleset that allows only melee monsters to be used, then this Summoner's debuff and Crypt Beetle's Shield ability will be a great combo.

• CRYPT MANCER works the same way as ZINTAR MORTALIS with the added debuff to Speed and HP. With a 5 mana summoner, I think it is the best Crypt combo (Crypt Mancer + Crypt Beetle)

There are just some of Summoners but there are other Summoners you can use.

FEATURED BATTLE

Battle Condition
Rule #1	Equalizer: The initial Health of all Monsters is equal to that of the Monster on either team with the highest base Health.
Rule #2	Stampede: The Trample ability can trigger multiple times per attack if the trampled Monster is killed.
Mana Cap	38
Allowed Splinter	Fire, Water, Earth, Life, and Death

MY LINE-UP

CARDS	Description
	Thaddius Brood reduces the magic damage and HP of all enemy by 1. In case our Opponent uses a heavy magic line-up, we can somehow negate it using our Summoner's debuff.
	Crypt Beetle, our featured monster in this week's challenge,* has a Shield ability and a good armor. It has a low HP but the Equalizer rule works best for Crypt Beetle. And with the Equalizer rule, enemy monster with Opportunity ability will also attacks this monster since all of our monster have the same HP.
	Venari Bonesmith has a Life Leech and Poison ability. It can accumulate HPs while Crypt Beetle tanks the damage. The Poison is also deadly once its triggers.
	Gargoya Devil has a Close Range, Flying, and Deathblow ability. With the Close Range, it can attack even at the first position.
	Magi Necrosi a 6 mana magic monster with Snipe and Camouflage ability. It also has a high speed that can kill backline monsters easily.
	Supply Runner is a Neutral monster with SSwiftnees ability. This gives our friendly monsters with additional speed, allowing to have advantage on attack order.
	Dhampir Stalker is a ranged attacking monster with True Strike ability which allows it to never miss an attack. It also has a high damage which makes it more deadly.

ROUND 1

Crypt Beetle was able to absorb a lot of damage with the help of its Shield ability to reduce melee and ranged attacks from enemy monsters. Our enemy's line-up is more of a melee and ranged combination that didn't worked well against our tank, Crypt Beetle. Even though Diemonshark has a lot of armor compare with our Crypt Beetle, at the end of round 1 both monsters has the same amount of HP left.

ROUND 2

At the end of round 2, we eliminated Diemonshark and damages Supply Runner with Snipe attacks while our Crypt Beetle absorbed a lot of attacks before being taken down.

ROUND 3

In round 3, we were able to take down enemy's Flying Squid while Venari Bonesmith survive with the help of Life Leech.

ROUND 4

In round 4, we we're able to finally kill enemy's Supply Runner using Magic Snipe attack. At the same time, eliminated Deeplurker with the help of Poison ability from Venari Bonesmith.

ROUND 5, 6 & 7

This was the end of the matched. With enemy left with ranged monsters, this is a sure win already.

Check this link to watch the full battle replay:
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_3e17114517bbffefa7d2879ccf2937a4&ref=jpleron

SUMMARY

Did your strategy work?

• My strategy is to counter a magic line-up with the help of debuff from Thaddius Brood, while countering the melee and ranged line-up with the use of Crypt Beetle's Shield ability.

• I also utilized the Equalizer ruleset by placing monsters with high damage but low HP like Dhampir Stalker and Gargoya Lion. Crypt Beetle also has a low based HP but with the effect of Equalizer, this was answered already.

What will you try differently next time?

• Using monsters with Tample ability is also good to use in this match because of the Stampede ruleset. Monsters like Diemonshark or Disintegrator (lvl5) has this ability.

VERDICT | Is Crypt Beetle a good card?

• Crypt Beetle is a good card. It may not be the go to tank when using Death Splinter but definitely it is worth leveling up. It will shine in some specific rulesets but not all the time.

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