Battle Challenge with Whelp Herder!

Hello folks,

we have a new Battle Challenge for this week and it's theme are Dragons. In this battle I'll show you my strategy with one of the new Riftwatcher cards, the Whelp Herder!

You can watch the full battle here!

The Card

The card I want to highlight is the Whelp Herder, a melee dragon card from the newe Riftwatchers set.

At level 1 it already has Opportunity, at level 5 it gains Snare and at level 10 it gets Dispel. In terms of stats it's a very cheap card for only 3 mana, with decent health but not the best attack and very low speed. At level 3 it gains a second attack, which makes it a lot better in my opinion and therefore mandatory to at least level it up to level 3.

When I first saw this it reminded me of the Serpentine Spy, which is a very powerful card, so I immediately maxed out a copy for silver. As I've been playing a bit with it, I realized that it's a bit too slow, but you there's ways to work around that and overall I think it's a very good card.

In terms of price it's definitely not the cheapest card, since it's a common and you need quite a few copies to level it up. But compared to older cards like Serpentine Spy it's definitely cheap. A max copy for silver (level 5) is currently cheaper if you buy it in Gold Foil, than regular foil, which always fascinates me, lol.

The Ruleset

The rulesets for this battle were Close Range and Lost Magic, with a mana cap of 36 and every splinter available.

The Line Up & Strategy

Since the ruleset allowed me to play pretty much anything, except for magic, I decided to try something new and fun. I went for a Quix, because he's my only leveled up dragon summoner as of now and paired him with water.

For my tank I chose Diemonshark, because it's just such a beast and with no magic its 8 armor can tank quite a few hits. In the second spot I went with Carnage Titan. I feel every time I play dragon and have enough mana I must play him. With these two in front I felt like I had some pretty good tankiness, so I filled the back row up with the triple sneak attack threat. Dhampir Infiltrator, Pelacor Bandit and Uraeus. Together these three would hit the last spot of my opponent for 8 damage! I then threw in the Whelp Herder, because when the majority of attacks is focused on one position, chances are that monster in that position will be low health a lot and Whelp Herder will attack it as well with opportunity, practically giving me another sneak attack for 2 damage.

I didn't really care too much for my defense, other than having two good tanks in front and the debuffs from Quix. I did put Uraeus in the very last spot though, because of his armor, just in case someone brings a sneak attack as well.

Round 1

My opponent went for a General Sloan team and brought all the staple cards you play him with. Uriel as the tank in front, Crystalsmith for damage and heal, Arbalest for insane amounts of damage and Supply Runner for damage and speed. Then they also put a Pelacor Conjurer in the last position to protect against sneaks, which is pretty smart, since it has some health and can dodge attacks very well. Lastly they also brought a Scavor Hireling for some repair to keep Uriel alive longer.

Here's what happened: Diemonshark takes a ton of damage, stripping away his armor entirely and even damaging his health, therefore also triggering his Enraged ability. Uriel takes Diemonshark's and Carnage Titan's hits, but because of the heal and repair he gets away just fine.

My three sneak attackers all hit their attacks on Pelacor Conjurer, sending it to the Shadow Realm, only the second attack from Dhampir Stalker misses the Supply Runner. Finally my little Whelp Herder with his Opportunity takes out the Scavo Hireling, which is absolutely huge, because now it can't repair Uriels armor.

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Round 2

Round two looks like this and since I haven't lost a single monster and already killed two of my opponent's I feel pretty comfortable.

We start off with the enraged Diemonshark taking away Uriels remaining armor and then taking a hit from Supply Runner. Venari Crystalsmith heals Uriel for 3, but misses her attack on Diemonshark. Carnage Titan lands one attack and misses one on Uriel, who in return heals back up to full health and takes out Diemonshark with a whopping 9 damage attack.

My sneak attackers take out Supply Runner and leave the Arbalest with 1 HP, which Whelp Herder then takes care off (this is what I meant with him functioning as another sneak attacker essentially).

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Rounds 3 & 4

Rounds 3 and 4 are quite unspectacular. I take out the Crystalsmith with my sneak attacks, before it can do anything and land a bunch of hits on Uriel, taking away his Flying ability with the Snare from Whelp Herder. Even though Uriel survives the third round and manages to heal back up I take him out immediately in round 4, before he can do anything.

Conclusion

My opponent's line up was good overall, but in the end it was a quite easy victory. I think some more damage instead of the Pelacor Conjurer at the back might have been better.

My strategy worked really well, even though they somewhat protected against sneak, it was just too much. The Whelp Herder did an amazing job of "sniping" the weak support card, taking away the repair for Uriel and then finishing off the Pelacor Arbalest later. I didn't have a problem with it's speed at all, in fact it was really good that it attacked last each round, so it could take out whatever's left.

Diemonshark and Carnage Titan also proved to be two very strong tanks, with all their armor and damage.

Overall I'm really happy with how this turned out and want to test this triple sneak + opportunity strategy some more!

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Disclaimer

None of this is financial advice. This content is for educational purposes only and might fall out of date as both Splinterlands and the Crypto Market in general are subject to constant change.

Referrals

Start playing Splinterlands today!

Thanks to Carrie Allen for the amazing Markdown Tutorial
and to Chris Roberts for this Thumbnail Tutorial
Background Thumbnail image is from Pexels
Free image editing software used Canva

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Older Posts

Check out my 5 tips for new players series: Part I, Part II, Part III

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Check out my Bronze league strategy guides: Part I, Part II

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Hope you enjoyed the read. Have a great day and until next time!

Pinkman45