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Ahoy! This week the @splinterlands battle challenge is featuring the Lava Spider.

It's a Fire Splinter Common Monster from the most recent Chaos Legion set. I currently haven't combined it yet, so it's still sitting at level 3 for me. At that level it has these stats and the Snipe ability.

Its Ranged Attack increases to 2 at level 4, but with my level 1 Yodin Zaku the highest I can play it at is level 3, so I haven't levelled it up yet. For me personally its best usecase seems to be in a team with Yodin Zaku as the Summoner. Of course in something like Little League or where Melee Attack Monsters can't be used it could also be great in Fire Splinter setups.

The battle I want to share for this week's challenge is with Yodin Zaku. This is the lineup for the battle I want to share.

Here is the link to the battle: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_05d9e1f892e45c825674a2765a3e5742&ref=athunderstruck

For this battle the Fire, Earth and Life Splinters were available with a 40 Mana Cap. The rulesets were:

• Back to Basics: Monsters lose all abilities
• Odd Ones Out: Only Monsters with odd Mana costs may be used in battles

Team Setup

With Monsters losing all abilities it can often be a great choice to use a Summoner that provides abilities to all Monsters on its team, as those are provided after they lost their own abilities and thus gaining a new ability. This made Yodin Zaku an interesting pick because after its 7 Mana cost there is still 33 Mana left to use for Monsters. Ofcourse Earth was also available and has Obsidian that provides +1 to all Magic Attackers on the team. Which could be extremely painful for Yodin Zaku if his Monsters with Blast don't take care of them fast enough.

I placed a Flame Monkey in the first position as a sacrifice for whatever my opponent would throw at me, it only costs 1 mana so was easy to use there while I used the rest of my mana for bigger and stronger monsters. I put Calduum up next as backup tank with high Health and some Armour for tanking hits, while dealing its 3 Magic Attack that blasts the next opponent.

The rest of my lineup was going to be Ranged Attack Monsters to benefit from Yodin Zaku's +1 Ranged Attack and Blast. The Lava Spider was the first here, because I placed them from lowest speed and highest attack to highest speed and lowest health. I prefer placing the higher health ones first so that if they reach first position they can tank better. And also with all monsters losing their abilities, my backline wouldn't need to worry about Sneak.

Strategy Successful?

My strategy was quite successful. My opponent decided to use Obsidian and my Flame Monkey was able to tank 2 hits from my opponent, serving well as a sacrificial tank while my Ranged Monsters get some hits in. Then my Calduum tanks more hits, going into round 2 it still requires to be hit twice before it goes down, this allows my Ranged Monsters to take out more enemies.

The Lava Spider then ends up going into the first position when Calduum dies. From here it can't attack anymore, but it is able to take 2 hits before it goes down, which helps the rest of my Monsters to kill almost everything that's left alive. Once the Lava Spider goes down, I have 2 Ranged Monsters left that are in a position to attack, and they are able to win the fight.

Do I like the Lava Spider?

As a Monster itself I don't like the card that much right now, with my Yodin Zaku I can only use it at level 3 so it only has 1 Ranged Attack. But it does come with some good base health that makes it a bit tanky for the rest of the backline to deal damage as demonstrated in this game. I think it can be quite good in some team setups where Fire is the only available Splinter, as I mentioned after showing the card. At higher levels it gains the Snare and Poison abilities, I think it would be really cool to play it at that level.

I really love the art of the card! This spider with lava inside its body and even its cobwebs are made out of fire?! That's craaaazy!

Conclusion

With the available choices and Monsters losing all abilities, it would be good to pick Obsidian like my opponent did for all the Magic Attacks that just tear down the enemies. My Calduum would normally have Void, taking less damage from that, but not here due to the rulesets which made it die a bit faster. However the Blast provided by Yodin Zaku was able to tear down all of those Magic Attackers. It gave me a great opportunity to try out the Lava Spider, which I have barely played so far. Thanks to this weekly challenge I looked into a way where I could make use of it in battle.

Thanks for reading my weekly battle challenge.

If you haven't signed up for Splinterlands yet and want to check it out, you can do so with my referral link at: https://splinterlands.com?ref=athunderstruck