[ Lava Spider ] - Share Your Battle! Weekly Challenge (2)

Second challenge of the week!
Theme and card of the week is Lava Spider

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Thoughts: Lava Spider was a card I thought to be a little less desirable in this current meta, or rather, there are better cards to be placed in the deck. It had a similar counterpart - Fire Beetle, which I previously used a lot. Before the Chaos Legion update, it was used pretty often, when there was low mana or you want to play quantity.

Now, with the addition of Tarsa the Summoner and other synergy cards to be played alongside her, Lava Spider ended up neglected.

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Card Showcase

Theme	Lava Spider
Edition	Chaos Legion
Rarity	Common
Element	Fire
Attack	Range
Abilities	Snipe

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Battle Rules

Symbol	Effect
	Standard: No modification to the standard gameplay rules and mechanics.

Mana cost: 26

Usable elements: All

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Team Composition

Role: Summoner

A generally great summoner to be used. With a (+1) to melee attack and (+1) to health, it is versatile and often the favoured choice over Pyre, its other free Fire summoner.

I chose Tarsa since we were given 22 mana, which is a decent amount, this means if I went for more melee attack cards, I stand to gain a lot more benefits from her.

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Role: Tank

The first in position and pretty much the mainstream tank you will see and with good reasons. With 'okay' health and 2 armour, along with the Shield ability, it is already a good tank, especially against melee and ranged attackers.

With 3 melee damage, it will further gain a (+1) boost from Tarsa, making it a scary foe.

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Role: Gap, Snipe Block

This is a card I recently learnt to make use of after doing a couple of these SYB challenges.

At a decent cost of 2 mana, you get a 2|3 Gap to stop opponent Snipes from targetting your damage dealers. If unlucky, if no Snipes are around, it can act as a damage sponge for a few hits.

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Role: Backline Hitter

I rented this card to relive the moments when I used the Fire Beetle (who had the same stats and ability as Lava Spider)

This is a cheap card of 2 mana which also has the Sneak ability. It also does melee damage, which synergises well with Tarsa the summoner.

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Role: Damage Dealer, Opportunist

Probably the favourite card of any Fire deck players. Played alongside Tarsa, it hits with 3 damage - probably hitting the enemy damage dealers.

At such a cheap cost, you would be able to wreak havoc in the enemy back lines and possibly win the round when the enemy do not pay attention to it.

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Role: (Front) Backline Hitter

Our card of the week and a Backline Hitter. You can't get enough of cards that handle all the backline cards.

Being a card that uses ranged attacks, it provides a wider range of attacks so in case you encounter some Thorns like Earth decks with Mylor.

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Role: Damage Dealer, Backline Hitter

A great card that does just as great amount of damage to straight at the back of the enemy backlines. With great stats all around, it functions as both a damage dealer and also a backline shield against enemy Sneak attacks.

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Play by play

> Round 1:

Start of the battle. (Skipped the summoner buffing the team). My opponent, too, used up all 26 mana to put out Summoner Thaddius Brood (4) leading the Cursed Windeku (6), Riftwing (4), Silent Sha-vi (5), Death Elemental (3), Undead Badger (2) and a Xenith Archer (2) in corresponding order.

The enemy Death Elemental made first contact on the Scavo Chemist while Cursed Windeku sliced off a chunk of Living Lava's armour. Serpentine Spy took this opportunity to rid the board of the Undead Badger.

Silent Sha-vi took a shot at the back of Tenyii Striker for 2 damage. Lava Spider fires a shot at Riftwing, seeming like his job to keep Riftwing's Scavenge ability in check. Tenyii Striker then retaliated by taking out Xenith Archer, who hasn't made a move yet.

Kobold Miner swung down on Death Elemental, dropping him out of the board in just one hit. A last exchange in the round came from Living Lava giving Cursed Windeku a good 4 damage smack, who countered with Thorns, removing Living Lava's armour.

> Round 2:

Half the enemy board is gone. Windeku starts the round off again, dealing just 1 damage to Living Lava. Shavi backstabbed Tenyii Striker again to leave him at low health of 2. Serpentine Spy came down on Windeku, as he had the lowest HP and was at the frontline. This, however, caused the Spy to be taken out due to Thorns.

Living Lava removed the last threat on the board which was Windeku. The reflected damage from Thorns did only 1 damage which was not a concern. This resulted in Riftwing (now with 10 HP) taking the frontline now.

> Round 3 (and 4):

With Riftwing being the only enemy card on the board and being unable to deal any damage....

My team just took turns to lay down blows (with a half of them missing) on Riftwing.

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Strategy Talk

Fire decks are some of the decks I like going back to as I find most comfort in using their cards. However, I was having difficulties trying to put Lava Spider in my teams as I often found other cards to have a higher success rate or I just don't know a good deck to make use of Lava Spider properly.

Looking at the opponent's history, I noticed him playing 2 Death decks, 1 Earth deck and 2 Dragon (with Death subelement) decks. I figured my Fire - "Hit your backside" deck would work pretty well against these Death Thorns decks hence why I played with this deck.

In this battle, I tried to focus on the number of cards utilised. Stuffing in many Backline hitters of Kobold Miner, Serpentine Spy, Lava Spider and Tenyii Striker, I was confident I could take down the damage dealers quick. With a strong tank available at my frontline, I quickly made work of the enemy backline hitters quickly.

Lava Spider was a card I had wanted to make more use of. I brought in Kobold Miner to relive the (Kobold Miner x Serpertine Spy x Fire Beetle) moments before the Chaos Legion update. I think there shouldn't be singular gameplay or choices. Fire decks should give you a bigger dilemma over which summoner to play. Now, it mostly is just Tarsa.

Lava Spider is really useful for taking out low HP (front) backline attackers. It is also really useful to take out fodders that players put in to treat as a decoy to prevent Opportunist attacks. In this battle, Lava Spider did not prove to be useful as Riftiwing was shielding against all attacks from the backline.

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🤗

Thanks for reading!

It was fun to revisit this card again as I had been wanting to make more use of it. We keep on going. Cheers.

Link to the battle: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_15d9ec787fe7dddebc9625842567f880&ref=tertius