CERBERUS, A BATTLE CHALLENGE ACCEPTED

This week's theme is puppies! Isn't she cute!?

Hello friends, acquaintances, and the yet unmet.

This here is my write up for the Splinterlands Battle Challenge - Cerberus. When did I acquire said card? No idea but I must have bought 3 because I find myself with a level 2 Cerberus at the time of this challenge and I have never opened a Beta pack so must have been a card market acquisition. That said, its a loner in the starter set so EVERYONE should be familiar with Cerberus and anyone can do this challenge at least at a Novice or Bronze level.

So, some basics about Cerberus, first we have the stats:

As you can see, Cerberus is going to have Heal at level 1 and Retaliate at level 5. As previously stated, I have a level 2 Cerberus so for the remainder of this post I will speak only to the low level version. So lets talk starter for a moment with those base stats:

Lvl 1 Cerberus

Melee Attack - 2
Speed - 3
Health - 5
Ability - Heal
Mana - 4

From the top, we have a strong start. A melee of 2 means she will always do some damage even if the defending monster has the shield ability. Next a speed of 3, this is faster than most in the starter set and definitely in melee and the fire splinter. Health of 5 gives her a bit of survivability but not a lot. The Heal ability though adds 2 health up to her base health at match start so that means as long as she makes it to her turn in the alive state she will get back 2 health. Finally, 4 mana is a pretty good price for the above. I feel like I use her quite a bit in lower mana matches, matches with the ruleset Little League as she comes in under that threshold, or any ruleset that allows her to attack from a later position in the lineup.

Because her normal state does not allow her to attack at range, I typically use her as a tank for a speed play with a low mana cap or else as a mid-lineup tank when I think she will have a better chance of surviving a round to make it back to her heal. Basically I am usually looking for opportunities to use her when she is likely to survive a round or 2 minimum and will be able to pump out some damage.

On to the match!

As of this writing, my stats are
Rating: 1,546
Power: 61,545
Ok so I've gotten a bit spendy since our previous challenge, Coral Wraith. I may or may not have opened a few packs and bought a few cards. Probably should have figured out renting but why not just jump into the deep end and learn to swim.

Match Rules

Rules: Stampede (mostly irrelevant in silver), Up Close & Personal (Melee Only)
Mana Cap: 22
Splinters: Fire and Death (like peas & carrots)

side note 1: @steemmonsters, on the tournament pages you can click the "vs." "jaws" icon and get a beautiful match summary window. Would it be possible to get that feature on personal battle log too? Maybe even a link to the popup for sharing purposes?

side note 2: This week we are trying a new format, rather than a lineup with analysis, I will go round by round with summaries and toss in some lineup thoughts there.

The Match, Fire vs. Fire, Speed vs. Damage

Round 1, FIGHT!

We pick up round 1 after buffs have been applied. Maybe we are both working on the challenge but I think my opponent misused Cerberus here. In position 2, the only purpose she serves Arcangel is as a shield against maybe a blast card. I on the other hand chose Cerberus for my anchor as a sop for sneak monsters. With a mana cap of 22 I expected my opponent to have maybe 1 or 2 but nothing too strong. If they had employed a third doing 2 damage my plans would have been spoiled but in this case my selection was pretty spot on.

In round 2 we find that my opponent has lost both of their sneak monsters due to their low health being targeted by my 2 opportunity monsters who were shielded by Cerberus. I snuck in Horny Toad in the #2 spot for a few reasons: maybe useful damage, a buffer for the opportunity monsters against blast, and banking on a W getting me some extra DEC for the gold foil. He achieved 2 of 3 here as his damage is negated by the shield ability of Living Lava. Note Cerberus has started the round with 2 health instead of 6. Cerberus' speed in this case meant that it moved before either of the opponent's sneak monsters. Unfortunately this element is pretty hard to plan for in my opinion, you have to hope either the opponent doesn't have the damage per round to knock out Cerberus or that Cerberus gets her turn midway through all the damage for a chance to heal and survive a round.

At the start of round 3 we find the opponent having lost another 2 cards to my opportunity monsters and my Cerberus up to 4 health but now mostly useless it comes down to a fight between Living Lava and Cerberus at the end. At this point I'm feeling mostly confident but with a little misgiving as my front 2 monsters are not actually able to do any damage against Living Lava meaning its a race to eliminate my opponent's Cerberus before he gets to my back 3 monsters.

Round 4 kicks off with my opponent's Cerberus down 2 health and my Serpentine Soldier without his shield. This is where things slow down a bit and the rollercoaster of emotion really kicks in.

Round 5, the opponent's Cerberus is getting ready to fold like a house of cards. Give him one more round. Critically, Living Lava had a swing and a miss against my Serpentine Soldier which will pay dividends later.

Uh oh, round 6 we're in a 5 vs 1 scenario but the first 2 on my team are just meat-shields and the Horny Toad is a really small meat-shield. Serpentine Soldier's shield ability is pretty great here as it is halving Living Lava's attack buying me more time. I just need more time!

Round 7, I suddenly don't feel so good. I realize now that heads up, Living Lava should lose to Cerberus but in this moment I see living lava just marching through my units.

Round 8, another miss. The game feature you truly love to hate. Like a razorblade, it cuts both ways.

Round 9 is where we finally get to say adios to our friend, Living Lava. He kept it interesting but those misses really were the difference towards the end here. My speed choice probably helped for the misses but I could have used Malric instead and still won in this scenario I think.

BUT, would I change anything if I could do it over?

Yes, I think I would switch to Malric for increased damage. Living Lava would have gone down faster had I made that choice. I think the build I used could be countered with maybe a death set with heals at the front end and maybe a focus on damaging my Serpentine Soldier and marching through from front to back.

Do I like Cerberus?

Yeah, I do. 4 mana for a quasi-tank is pretty amazing, a self healing quasi-tank is even better. More than that I think Cerberus levels up pretty well and I am hopeful that it will still be a competitive card for me once I get to higher leagues.

If you've read this far then you probably don't need to but, feel free to rewatch the match here, Cerberus Battle Challenge.

Do you play Splinterlands already? Gimme a shout.
Are you interested in playing? Gimme a shout.
Did I get something wrong? Let me hear it.

Where ever and when ever this finds you, be well and have a spectacular time interval.

Cheers,
MagooZ

PS - I previously talked about some stats tracking. After about 4 days I decided I wasn't getting what I wanted from the data I was tracking and tracking it was a bit of a pain so I scrapped it. I have since discovered a few sources of data which I will hopefully be able to put into an article in the near future. Stay tuned.

edit 1: fixed a detail in the note to steemmonsters