Weekly Battle Challenge: Why oh why Crystal Jaguar

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(Edited)

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Hello fellow TCG enthusiasts!

This is my first entry into one of these weekly challenges but I really like the concept of it and think I'll start participating going forward in addition to continuing to provide you all insights to my lovely pets and thoughts on the mechanics of this game.

To start off, if this is the first you are hearing of the Splinterlands 'Share Your Battle!' challenge, check out the official rules and guidelines in this post. If not, continue on to read of my life splinter struggles and how Crystal Jaguar cost me my ecr, ranking, sanity, and sleep.

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Card Overview - Crystal Jaguar

Crystal Jaguar is a common Life card with a relatively low mana cost with no base abilities. He obtains thorns in Silver and Retaliate in Diamond.

In my opinion, he is terrible unleveled as he will only really serve as dmg up front for 1 round if lucky or a lucky sponge if played elsewhere. In Bronze, that means he should see little to no play time outside of the Little League ruleset. For higher leagues he does get thorns and higher health at level 4 and retaliate at 9 which significantly increases his value as sneak bait.

Battle Prep and Thoughts

Given I don't play life splinter often, and my summoners are level 1, I opted not to purchase him for this week which honestly made winning with him a grind. That said, as he is currently part of the ghost set, I was able to utilize him to successfully tank my ecr into the 40s.

Given all I had was a level 1 to work with, I tried countless comps before I found myself a W including running Dragons and playing with his positioning. I went 1/12 with crystal jaguar and at the end of the day, I only won due to luck and goodwill: ie my opponent chose poor cards for the ruleset, and a savior lvl2 Lunakari Mistress delegation from @wr41th. All of that said, lets get into the glorious fight that ended my struggle.

The Winning Combo

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On my 12th attempt I luckily ran into a 38 mana, trample, earthquake ruleset. In low level Life splinter play, high mana counts are typically your saving grace. Earthquake is also beneficial to life as many life cards come with innate armor which is good at absorbing a round of quake damage.

For each fight attempt I always debated between going with Tyrus for innate armor or a Dragon summoner to utilize my stronger non-life cards. Ultimately my win was with Dragons and Chwala as my tank. Given the earthquake rule I was also looking for cards with the flying ability which makes Luminous Eagle a natural choice given she also has Reach at lvl 1. As for the weakness in all of my comps, I didn't have a thorned version of Crystal Jaguar so I often just threw him into an off tank position. That said, the reason Life is good at higher mana caps is because of Shieldbearer. Given his Taunt ability at level 1 he is one of the best true off-tanks in the game for players with limited assets so of course I included him. I guess that makes Jag my off-off-tank.

I said earlier that Jaguar was the bane of my sanity. Lunakari Mistress on the other hand was my savior. Her base level ability Oppress thoroughly exploited my opponents poor card choices for this battle. For those of you not aware, Oppress allows a card to do double damage to an enemy without an attack. As you can see below, both my opponent's tank AND off-tank fit this description. Again, thank you @wr41th for saving the day with that delegation.

There was a Firefight!

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Battle Link

As can be seen above my opponent only had 1 card with a melee attack which meant my choice of tank was a bit sour but who would have known. At least he had high life and could soak damage for the backline to do its job.

Round 1

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Round 1 went about as expected: Shieldbearer did some work and absorbed plenty of damage including my opponents Silvershield Sheriff. Unfortunately though, I wasn't able to do much in terms of damage due to grandma back there healing Almo. Earthquake hadn't kicked in yet which still gave me hope as none of his cards had flying.

Round 2

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For Round 2, my opponent managed to kill off Shieldbearer and I still hadn't touched their backline. Luckily earthquake was doing work and took down all of their shields while most of my lineup stayed safe.

Round 3

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During Round 3, things actually started to look good for me. Mistress kicked into gear with another massive 4 magic hit (Oppress) on Almo knocking him out and giving me a chance. At this point, earthquake was also starting to dwindle their backline leaving grandma with too many in the nurses office for her nimble hands to tend.

Round 4

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Round 4 again left me worried. Mistress was taken out and my opponent's lineup was still going strong despite earthquake tearing them to pieces. I knew Jaguar and Chwala would go down in the next round and eagle would have to face the world alone. Jaguar sure did a lot didn't he...

Round 5

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As expected Round 5 left my team in dire straights with a banged up Eagle with little hope left in life. My enemy at this point had a for sure win... Or so I thought. There are other benefits to flying after all aside from earthquake immunity.

Round 6

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Everything came down to round 6. Eagle had 3 life left and Sheriff had a tasty 3 dmg ranged attack waiting to take her out of the sky. Alas, she managed to fly high and blind the Sheriff with the sun as a backdrop and watched as his deadly arrow flew by.

At this point Eagle was safe to watch as earthquake killed sheriff and leave the harmless "warrior" of peace to his slow demise.

That's a Wrap

Needless to say I was not impressed with Crystal Jaguar and he most certainly did not earn a place in my deck. I do see his value and I can imagine he would do quite well as a primary tank in a proper life composition for "Little League". Sayonara and good riddance!

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Post Tax

Those that follow me are aware I also adhere to the internet tax, ie pet pictures. I recently purchased a utility wagon to carry groceries between the store and home and thought it might also be an entertaining prospect to give Atlas a ride. He was quite pleased.

Splinterlands images owned by Splinterlands. All other images and content owned by me unless otherwise noted.

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5 comments
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i didnt enjoy using him either , i think he's decent with high lvl tho

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Yeah, if I had him at lvl 5 I imagine he is amazing for sneak counter.

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