Splinterlands Challenge of the Week: Naga Brute

This week's Splinterlands Challenge of the Week was to showcase the Naga Brute from the Dragon Splinter.

I didn't actually have one of these in my collection, as they're Dice cards which I haven't been buying, preferring to consolidate my existing collection instead for the time being.

However, I was tempted to give the Void Armour ability a trial run which only comes with Dice cards and given that a Level 1 Naga Brute comes with some pretty hefty shields I decided the princely sum of $0.09 wasn't too much to pay for a bit of fun...

He may be a no attack card with slow speed and expensive in Mana terms, but he does come with with some decent shields and health at base level - and 11 with void armour really means a guaranteed 11 protection points against everything, magic included.

Very weak against shatter, however, but that wasn't a problem in the battle below....

The Rule Set and Line Up

• Mana 27 - less than I would have liked for my 'repair strategy' but I went with it anyway.
• Equaliser - which helped nullify the lower than desired mana!
• Healed out - which led me to towards Void Shield - the logical thing is to play hefty magic to counter your opponent who you expect will play shields and repair in the absence of heal!

Summoner - Selena - marginal advantage given the one ranged attack I was playing

1. Naga Brute - The challenge card, kind of looking very out of place at level 1!
2. The golden chicken, typical sign of streetched mana!
3. The amoursmith - for repair.
4. Dragon Jumper - I needed at least one damage card.
5. Elven Mystic - I hummed and hawed over this or the Tower Griffen, but I opted for silence over more shields.
6. Scale Doctor - for repair, rust (which helped) and strengthen, that later can be VERY useful in equaliser don't forget!

Did my strategy work?

Yes oh yes oh yes! Very nicely! With the Brute still standing....

• Round 1 - No losses, both tanks take a pounding, my chicken takes a pounding from blast, but that's kind of what she's there for!
• Round 2 - My opponent loses his cube, while my Brute ends R2 on 1 shield (thanks to 8 points of repair so far) and 11 health. My chicken is actually worse off!
• Round 3 - No losses
• Round 4 - my opponent loses his Ooze, the Brute is still standing with 3 shields and 5 health at the end of this round - this is going better than I'd anticipated!
• Round 5 - I lose my Chicken to blast, a nice Stun on the Genie takes out a potentially nasty 3 damage
• Round 6, my opponent's Genie goes down - it's not looking good for him now!
• Round 8 he loses his Ruler of the Seas and now it's game over.

With only 1 attack monster left doing 1 damage, my shields get fully repaired by the end of the battle and I win by round 12 with 5 men still standing.

How important was The Brute?

He may have been the only level one card in the entire diamond league village but his void armour stood up damn well to those horrible magic attacks given the double repair I put as back up!

In fact the repair and the silence reducing damage worked very nicely to just make sure my Brute just about kept alive - with his shields being repaired just enough to soak up all the damage from one of those heavy magic attacks, leaving just one attack to drain his health.

The Stun from the DJ also played its part in the mid battle phase, allowing repair to build back up enough to keep The Brute alive until the end!

I did get a bit lucky, because of sheer happenstance by the time we got here (the next move is where his Genie goes down):

I was healing my Brute's shields up to four, and then the damage from my opponent was coming in the order of 1,2 and then 3 points, meaning ALL of it was soaked up by the Void Shields, had the order been different, he would have been taken down.

So this proved a great choice of card.

Having said that, my opponent did 'gift me' a lot of health by playing The Cube up front, with no means of actually healing himself, which was very much an error on his part.

Will I be levelling up the Brute?

He basically gets everything you'd want by Level 8 - and he looks quite good at that point...

BUT - look at the Sentinel below - OK it's an epic card, and it costs about 6 times as much, but you need about 4 times less of them to max this baby - and with 8 health and shield and void, he has more defence than the Brute. And not as weak against shatter. And it's neutral so you can use it much more often....

Personally, I'd leave the Brute and level up the Sentinel, he basically does everything The Brute does and it may not feel like it but it is better value for your DEC!

Or at least I would level up the Sentinel if I didn't already have a lord A, I still can't quite believe you used to get those as reward drops back in the day, how times have changed!

If you don't yet play Splinterlands, why not give it a go?

Anyone using my referral link will receive a free rare card!