Pirate Captain, the Blue Sniper - Share your Battle Weekly Challenge

Learn how to use the Pirate Captain, a very strong Ranged Monster, to beat your enemies as the Water Splinter!

This post is an entry to the SHARE YOUR BATTLE Weekly Challenge - Pirate Captain.

Pirate Captain

LORE

The Pirates of ΛZMΛRÉ are not to be trusted. Their Captains are among the most cunning (and dangerous) creatures in the Splinterlands. Armed with muskets of secret ΛZMΛRÉan make and prepared for any situation, the Pirate Captains sail the seas looking for treasure.

CARD DETAILS (Level 1)
Mana Cost: 3
Splinter: Water
Edition: Alpha/Beta
Rarity: Common

Ranged Attack: 1
Speed: 2
Armor: 0
Health: 3
Ability: Snipe (Targets enemy Monster with Ranged, Magic or no attack that are not in the first position.)

The Strategy

If you're playing with the Water Splinter, you already probably realized that its main strenght is the several Magic Monsters that are available. Using Alric Stormbringer as the Summoner, all those magic-wielding Monsters become incredibly powerful.

Not only that, but the meta of playing the Water Splinter with the Venari Wavesmith became INCREDIBLY popular in the lower leagues of Bronze and Silver, being almost impossible to beat.

But why I'm talking about all of that?

There is an EASY strategy to beat the Venari Wavesmith combo: playing the Water Summoner Bortus together with a Monster with the Void ability. If you want to see the details of this strategy, take a look at this guide of mine.

And, since you'll be playing Bortus as your Summoner, you'll need strong, non-Magic monsters to play with him. And those are hard to come by on the Water Splinter!

That's where the Pirate Captain comes into play!

He is an incredibly efficient Monster to play: costing only 3 Mana, he has a reasonable amount of Health (3) and the powerful Snipe ability, allowing him to bypass the enemy tank and hit directly the weak Monsters in your enemy's backline.

As he only costs 3 Mana, you'll end up playing him on Low-Mana Matches, as on High-Mana ones you probably will play more expensive, stronger Ranged Water cards like the Giant Squid (5 Mana, 2 Ranged Attack), the Water Elemental (5 Mana, 2 Ranged Attack, Heal ability) or the Sniping Narwhal (5 Mana, 2 Ranged Attack, Snipe ability).

And, in terms of team composition, the Pirate Captain should be placed in the backline, protected behind your Melee and Magic Monsters. Remember: if a Ranged monster ends up in the 1st place, he will NOT attack anymore! So it's better to put them well behind the rest of your Monsters, to guarantee that he'll attack as much as possible!

The Battle

My opponent was coming from a streak of 4 matches playing as Alric Stormbringer, using the already-told Venari Wavesmith combo.

Because of that, I played my counter, with Bortus as my summoner and Torhilo the Frozen as my main tank.

But, as you can see, I was wrong 😥 My opponent decided to play with a different summoner, playing with the Life Splinter. Because of that, I literally lost my Summoner ability (-1 Magic Attack to all enemy monsters, and he didn't played any Magic Monster!).

So I've started the match with two disadvantages: my Summoner ability was useless, and my Tank ability (Void) was also useless.

This match also had the Equalizer Ruleset (all Monsters start with the Health of the Monsters with highest Health!), making it very interesting: on Equalizer matches, Monsters with low health become more powerful, as their low health won't matter as everyone will start with the same healthpool!

As I said before, I built my team thinking that I was going to battle against a team full of Magic Monsters. But I also tried to follow the common basic rules of teambuilding:

• The frontline tank is Torhilo the Frozen, the classic Water tank with high Health, high Armor, and the Void ability, halving any incoming Magic damage.

• The second Monster is Venari Wavesmith. The Wavesmith became almost an obligatory card to be played with the Water Splinter, as it gives +2 Armor to all your Monsters. It's a very powerful ability, and very difficult to counter.

• The rest of the team was all Ranged Monsters: Pirate Captain, Sniping Narwhal, Mantoid and Water Elemental. I put the Pirate Captain in the 3rd position as he was the weakest monster in terms of attack; so if he ended up on the 1st place, it would harm me less than any other monster.

The idea of my team was simple: Torhilo, due the Protect ability from Venari Wavesmith, would end up with 9 Health and 6 Armor! Almost impossible to kill! He would protect the rest of the team while they would attack hard, causing havoc on the enemy team!

The real hero of the match was Torhilo the Frozen!

The truth is that my teambuilding wasn't good, as I was expecting to play against a different Splinter. Because of that, all my Monsters were killed by my opponent.

After a few rounds, my only Monster alive was Torhilo, while my enemy still had 3 different Monsters in-game. But because of his incredibly high Armor, Torhilo was able to sustain the incoming damage and kill everyone.

Conclusion

The Pirate Captain is a very versatile card, costing very little Mana while having the useful and powerful ability Snipe.

Because of that, you'll end up using him a lot while playing the Water Splinter, especially if you're not playing Alric Stormbringer as your Summoner (he just favour Magic Monsters too much!).

More and more players are learning how to counter the Alric + Wavesmith combo, so it's good to learn other strategies with the Water Splinter: the Pirate Captain is a great alternative to be played!

New Player Bonus Offer

If you're a new Splinterlands player that still haven't bought the 10$ Summoner's Spellbook, you can help both you and me by creating a new account using my Referral Link HERE. If you create an account using my link and then buy the Summoner's Spellbook, leave a comment here and let me know.

I'll send you some cards for free to use on your first weeks in the game to help you progress faster through the Bronze League! Using my Referral link doesn't cost you anything extra and will make both of us stronger 💪!

Thanks for reading this post, and until next time!

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