Share Your Battle Challenge - Wave Runner

In this week's Splinterlands Share Your Battle Challenge, we have been tasked to fight a match with Waver Runner which is a good, well-rounded Water Splinter monster with the reach ability that allows it to attack from first as well as second position. Will Wave Runner lead us to victory or will we end up lost at sea?? Find out in this post.

This match was played with 14 Mana and no modifications to the standard ruleset which allowed Wave Runner's "Reach" ability to be on full display. In general, I like playing the Share Your Battle matches with a standard ruleset as it allows each monster to demonstrate its true, unencumbered abilities. That being said, I would have liked a bit more Mana to be able to field a strong supporting team for Wave Runner, but they wouldn't call it a challenge if it was meant to be easy😄

The Lineup

In first position, I decided to place Frozen Soldier. Frozen Soldier is a strong first position monster that has good armor as well as a decent attack, but it really stands out thanks to the "Shield" ability which reduces the damage it takes from the opponent's ranged and melee attacks.

I decided to put Wave Runner in second position so that it could use it's "Reach" ability to help support Frozen Soldier in the fight. In contrast to normal melee monsters which can't fight until they reach first spot, "Reach" capable monsters like Wave Runner can attack from second spot as well and "double team" the opponent's first position monster.

I finished off my lineup with Furious Chicken. Although it certainly isn't the most powerful card in the game, its one of the best in my opinion as it costs zero Mana to play and can easily absorb one of the opponent's attacks and protect my "real" monsters and keep them in the fight longer.

The Match
Low Mana cap matches can always be difficult because I find that my opponent almost always plays a "healing" capable monster that can regenerate damage it takes. In lower cap matches, it is VERY difficult to defeat a healing monster as most low Mana monsters simply can't deal enough damage to overload the opponent's healing potential. In an ideal world, I would have played Sea Monster(Heal capable) in first position and put Wave Runner in second, but there simply wasn't enough Mana for it in this match, and I went into a battle at a disadvantage. As soon as I saw that my opponent had played Haunted Spirit, I knew that its healing ability would be able to easily heal whatever damage I was able to deal each round. At the end of the day, I have to give my opponent credit for playing an optimal strategy and taking the victory.

Analysis of Wave Runner
As always, I think that it is important not to judge a card's usefulness based simply off the outcome of a single battle. Although we did loose the match, I still think Wave Runner is a good card; this just wasn't a good situation for it to shine. Wave Runner has a good attack and good speed, and for only 5 Mana, I think it compares favorably with Orc Sergeant of the Earth Splinter as it has both a higher attack and quicker speed which compensates for its lower health. In pretty much every Share Your Battle Challenge, I finish the article by saying that each card has an ideal niche role that it fills, and Wave Runner is no exception.

Summary
Win or loose, it is always nice to enter into the challenges and try new strategies and cards. Although the primary purpose of this post is to share my battle, I always like to remind players that Splinterlands rewards players for EVERY SINGLE match that they win with cryptocurrency. Players also win from daily quests, end of season rewards, and even get free airdrops of the SPS governance token based on their card collections. It's not financial advice, but if you like trading card games or just earning crypto and NFTs, then feel free to check out Splinterlands or watch my battle replay here.