[ Kulu Swimhunter ] - Share Your Battle! Weekly Challenge
My first challenge of the week!
Theme and card of the week is Kulu Swimhunter.
Thoughts: This is a card I find hard to place in a Water deck. I often associate the Water deck now as a melee attack oriented, using more abilities such as Opportunity and Sneak to attack from anywhere and at the critical areas. Hence, I find it somewhat hard to place a ranged attacker at the back which only targets the tank. Perhaps I am still unexperienced with the card and haven't found the win potential in it yet.
A similar card I know of would the Fire deck's Scavo Firebolt, which also have the same stats and (lack of) abilities.
Card Showcase
| Theme | Kulu Swimhunter |
|---|---|
| Edition | Chaos Legion |
| Rarity | Common 🔘 |
| Element | Water 💧 |
| Attack | Ranged 🏹 |
| Abilities | - |
Battle Rules
| Symbol | Effect |
|---|---|
 | Standard: No modification to the standard gameplay rules and mechanics. |
Mana cap: 22
Usable elements: | ALL |
Team Composition
Role: Summoner
A generally great summoner to be used. With a (+1) to speed and (+1) to armour, it is versatile and often the favoured choice over Bortus, its other free Fire summoner.
Giving 1 armour to an unarmoured card may be more impactful than one may think.
Role: Tank
The first in position, beefy tank that also has speed. With the Trample ability, it has potential to wipe out enemy team that are riddled with low health cards.
If only I have enough mana, I would have tried to pair it with the Demented Shark to give it more damage to do its trampling.
Role: Opportunity / Backline Hitter
A great card with 3 melee damage that can obliterate the enemy team with Opportunity if they can't resolve your tanks by then.
It is very useful against decks that make use of glass cannon attackers like Pelacor Arbalest. However, the opponent may play with Gaps / Fodders to pull aggro away from the damage dealers.
I typically try to place him near the backline to last longer in the battle.
Role: Ranged Attacker, Backline
The card of the week. Coming at a decent mana cost, you get a card with all around decent stats for its cost.
I placed it at the back of the lineup for it to continue attacking due to ranged attacker restrictions. It does have decent health to doubly tank for backstab too.
Play by play
Opposing Summoner - Tarsa (4)
Opposing Cards - Radiated Scorcher (1), Living Lava (7), Serpentine Spy (3), Tenyii Striker (5), and Scavo Chemist (2)
> Round 1:
(Round 1 battle log)
(+) -- My cards / Positive outcomes
(-) -- Opponent's cards / Negative outcomes
(+) Diemonshark dealt 2 direct damage to Radiated Scorcher!
(+) Kulu Swimhunter took down Radiated Scorcher!
(+) Deeplurker took down Serpentine Spy!
(-) Tenyii Striker broke the armour of Kulu Swimhunter!
(+) Diemonshark dodged an attack from Living Lava!
> Round 2:
(Round 2 battle log)
(+) -- My cards / Positive outcomes
(-) -- Opponent's cards / Negative outcomes
(+) Diemonshark dealt 1 damage to Living Lava!
(+) Kulu Swimhunter broke the armour of Living Lava!
(+) Deeplurker dealt 3 direct damage to Scavo Chemist!
(-) Tenyii Striker dealt 3 direct damage to Kulu Swimhunter!
(-) Living Lava dealt 4 damage to Diemonshark!
> Round 3:
(Round 3 battle log)
(+) -- My cards / Positive outcomes
(-) -- Opponent's cards / Negative outcomes
(+) Diemonshark dealt 1 direct damage to Living Lava!
(+) Kulu Swimhunter dealt 1 direct damage to Living Lava!
(+) Deeplurker took down Scavo Chemist!
(-) Tenyii Striker took down Kulu Swimhunter!
(+) Diemonshark dodged an attack from Living Lava!
> Round 4:
(Round 4 battle log)
(+) -- My cards / Positive outcomes
(-) -- Opponent's cards / Negative outcomes
(+) Diemonshark dealt 1 direct damage to Living Lava!
(+) Deeplurker dealt 2 direct damage to Living Lava!
(-) Tenyii Striker dealt 3 direct damage to Kulu Swimhunter!
(-) Living Lava broke the armour of Diemonshark!
> Round 5:
(Round 5 battle log)
(+) -- My cards / Positive outcomes
(-) -- Opponent's cards / Negative outcomes
(+) Diemonshark dealt 1 direct damage to Living Lava!
(+) Deeplurker took down Living Lava!
(-) Tenyii Striker dealt 3 direct damage to Kulu Swimhunter!
> Round 6:
(Round 6 battle log)
(+) -- My cards / Positive outcomes
(-) -- Opponent's cards / Negative outcomes
(+) Diemonshark dealt 2 direct damage to Tenyii Striker!
(+) Deeplurker dealt 3 direct damage to Tenyii Striker!
(-) Diemonshark dodged an attack from Tenyii Striker!
> Round 7:
(Round 7 battle log)
(+) -- My cards / Positive outcomes
(-) -- Opponent's cards / Negative outcomes
(+) Diemonshark took down Tenyii Striker!
Strategy Talk
There were quite a number of lucky moments in this battle which allowed me to smoothly overcome the opponent with fewer number of cards.
Looking at the opponent's history, I noticed him playing a mix of Death and Water decks. Seeing the mana cost cap was at 22, I decided to just try out the Water deck again in hopes of not meeting a Earth magic deck.
In this battle, I tried to focus on the survivability of my backline. I made sure I had a really beefy or evasive tank such as Diemonshark to lead the deck. I only had enough mana to pull out a good tank, the important damage dealer - Deeplurker, and the card of the week Kulu Swimhunter.
I had triumphed today with my lineup. I think in this battle, Kulu Swimhunter did a pretty decent job already. It played a good part in dealing nice damage to help take down the opponent frontline.
While we talked about Kulu, we should also mention the summoner I used in this battle - Kelya Frendul. If you look past the fodder the opponent put down, our lineup seems to have some similarity. However, what gave me the edge was the speed and the armour it managed to gave my cards. The speed given has shown to give me more evasion, which allowed my cards to dodge at least 3 times this battle. The 1 armour gave my cards (Deeplurker, Kulu...) a whole additional turn to strike the enemy, hence you can see why its so impactful.
A good position you would really put Kulu Swimhunter would be at the back of the deck. As it uses ranged attacks, you would want it to be away from the frontline as it won't be able to attack from there. It also has decent health to take some hits if backstabs ever came. A dilemma you might face would probably deciding whether to place Deeplurker or Kulu further at the back of the lineup as Deeplurker is definitely a damage dealer which you want to survive as long as possible.
Thanks for reading!
That was a pretty long strategy talk 🤔
Although, it was fun to theorise and also play the card I don't usually play.
We keep on going. Cheers.
Link to the battle: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_c8b95924969724939dff08875de8ac4b&ref=tertius
Thanks for sharing! - @alokkumar121
