First time joining the Splinterlands battle challenge: Naga warrior

After reading some of the other entries and finding out what exactly these challenges entail, today I've finally decided to join the fun and write my first battle report for the weekly challenge with in this edition: the Naga Warrior! There's actually a few "Naga" named cards so I was confused about what actual card it was as I've seen some of them in opposing teams but never used one myself.

As I don't own the card I quickly got myself a rental @peakmonsters and joined a rank battle.

Fun fact: NAGA is also the abbreviation of the North American Grappling Association, completely unrelated to Splinterlands but reminded me of that as it's the only other place I heard the name before :-)

The card

So this card belongs to the water splinter, one I actually like to play ever since the healing cards from the beta set became available for starters. Usually I like to place a Sea monster in the front as a tank and sometimes double up on that healing with the Crustacean King for good measure. As you can see, this is a lvl 2 version and has the retaliate skill which I really like:

Been using War Chaang and the Stonesplitter Orc with that skill and it can really boost your damage output although it relies on chance a fair bit.

Strategy

Whenever I play cards with retaliate I like to place them in the front as a tank or in the back to bait sneak attacks from other melee characters. Especially since War Chaang is a different kind of beast and also has a ranged attack output, using that in the back when you expect a sneaky opponent is double value. In the case of Naga Warrior though, as she's quick and sort of beefy on HP in low mana battles, I decided to go for the Front tank spot. Here's a look at my complete line up:

Now why did I go with Bortus for a magic debuff of the opposing team? Honest answer, no idea xD
Well at first I did have an idea for this, when I started the battle, all I knew was I was gonna use Naga Warrior and didn't think I'd be using much magic myself (where Alric would be the obvious choice). Turned out I would have gotten +2 magic damage from Alric while Bortus now did absolutely nothing for me as the opponent had one magic character already at 1 damage. Oh well, you win or you learn I guess..( or sometimes both ;-))

Now for the rules of this duel :

Mana: 22

1. Equalizer: all monsters start with the same HP as the monster with highest HP (either team)
2. Spreading Fury: all monsters have the enrage ability meaning when a monster is damaged their melee attack and speed increase

Pure luck but I think both these rules really helped my first time battling with Naga Warrior!

Let me explain:

1. Naga warrior has good attack and speed, but 6 HP as a frontline tank? Probably not the best idea for a mid-range mana battle. With equalizer however, the HP doesn't really matter that much anymore. In fact I like to spend my mana on anything but high HP in this ruleset. Think about it, the mana cost of a card considers everything it brings to the table, so paying a high mana cost for something you share with all other monsters more specifically ALL monsters of the other team is a waste.
2. All monsters get enrage and our Naga warrior also has retaliate, which means there's a good chance that extra melee damage is delivered immediately after being hit and then again when it's time for the regular attack,double trouble!

As you will see in the actual battle the healing abilities of the Crustacean King play a key role in this one too. Since all monsters share the highest HP there was a good chance this was gonna be high and as the line up already gave away, this number was 10 from the frontline tank of my opponent. This means that heal is also really strong and thus was a good choice here.

I added some magic and range damage to fill the other slots, but really these two cards made the battle I think..

Now let's have a look before I spoil everything:

Here's the link for the complete battle!

Conclusion

Well, that was a pretty exciting one I think! So close to losing Naga in the first round, which shows how invaluable heal can be. A few well timed retaliate triggers and a few more close calls to go with them, but after the first 3 monsters of the opponent where dealt with it was a done deal. Hope you enjoyed this one, let me know what you think or if I should've done anything different (other than the obvious summoner choice..).

Also, since this is my first time doing a post other than a simple season report, let me know if there's stuff I should consider/watch out for or should maybe change in my format, style anything really. All feedback is welcome and see you for the next one!

Cheers :-)

[Should probably place some kind of footer here, ideas?]