New Wavebrood Sustain Meta wins around 20 mana games!

Today, I like to share a new meta, wavebrood sustain build. I started encountering battles where the opponent uses wavebrood with double or triple heals with cleanse. I lost against them because I did not have enough damage.

Let's dive into example battles where this wavebrood build wins.

Example battles

20 mana, Silenced summoner, spreading fury ruleset
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_471df827cd5918c6bc2fdf30a3f43f24

I chose life sneak team and thought it's enough damage for a 20 mana game.

• Feral Spirit, 3 damage
• Elven cutthroat, 3 damage
• Silvershield assassin, 6 damage + 2 poison damage
  At most, my team did 14 damage per turn.

It turned out that it is not enough damage!
The wavebrood has an armor and medaari guardian repairs the armor. The first feral spirit's attack just removes armor, not hitting health. So my team is just doing 11 damage at most to the wavebrood's health.

Tank heal ability heals 1/3 of the max hp. So triple heal means it heals 15 health every turn.

It is also good to note that the ruleset is silenced summoner. That means summoners can't increase monster's attack. That makes it extra hard to do enough damage to wavebrood.

23 mana, silenced summoner, lost legendaries
https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_96b91be6b83c422b3b116fda81584329

Another silenced summoner match and lost legendaries this time. Legendary cards can have high attacks but they're lost. Another great time to use this strategy.

I pulled from play history of a top champion player, gnarkada1993. Since he is always on the leaderboard, I sometimes study from his battles.

The opponent, goldy146 is using rust but kelp initiate immediately restores that armor with cleanse at the start of the battle.

goldy146 does 13 damage to the wavebrood's health per turn. One melee attack gets blocked by armor. Again, it is not enough to take down wavebrood.

It is also good to note that gnarkada1993 chose elven mystic and reducing magic damage from coral wraith and stopping the heal of zenith monk.

The top water team is not doing much damage either, but it doesn't really matter because even if it goes to 20th round and fatigue kicks in, wavebrood has the highest health most of the time, so likely to win in fatigue as well (especially in silenced summoner ruleset where you can't use kitty's tank heal)

21 mana, No neutral ruleset
https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_5b43310d38f2cc5c3dd850dc49dafd16

Zeakio6 is another top champion player who is always on the champion leaderboard.
Interestingly, he used 2 cleanse and triages, kelp initiate and mermaid healer instead of 3 tank heals. Mermaid healer adds 1 more health to wavebrood, now wavebrood have 16 health!

He is using torrent fiend and reducing archery damage by 1.

The earth team does 7 damage at most. This is not even half of wavebrood's health.

Maybe zeakio6 expected that the opponent uses very popular earth set up (failed summoner, epona, queen mycelia), which often doesn't have a lot of damage output.

Key cards in this strategy

The main monster of this strategy.

Great healer with repair. Great combo with crustatian king who adds armor.

Another great healer adding armor. It also has 2 archery damage with occasional miss because of 1 speed.

Cleanse is a must in this strategy because poison is very popular thanks to Dr.Blight.

Cheap cost healer

Optional

Provides cleanse and +1 health.

When to consider this build

• Around 20 mana (at least 19 mana to have 3 tank heals)
• Silenced summoner ruleset: no summoner damage buff
• Lost legendaries: no legendaries can mean less opportunities to have high damage output
• Preferable: No dragon = No kitty to win fatigue or selenia sky to add more archery damage

How to counter this build

• Melee and archery damage are better than magic because wavebrood has void.
• More than 15 damage per turn at least. More if armor exists.
• 1 scattershot can win the game
• If it is not silenced summoner, use summoner to increase your attack
• You can try to win fatigue matches, with for example, kitty almo, lama kron, lama hydra, cube etc.

Conclusion

This build is definitely something that I usually don't expect. I was surprised to know that it is actually pretty hard to do enough damage to take down wavebrood in around 20 mana.

Let me know if this is something new to you or how you would counter this build in the comment section!

Special thank you to gnarkada1993, zeakio6, blueberr, who I learned the strategy from.

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