Welcome friends! It's been quite a while since I did one of these, but the Diemonshark is a staple in my Water based line ups. A fearsome beast with lightning fast reflexes, the Diemonshark is one my top choices for Water Splinter tanks. Interestingly, these creatures are not used as offensive mounts by the Chaos Legion, but rather as utility transport vehicles according to the official lore:
The Chaos Legion trains them as transports for equipment. Since they can travel by air, ground, or sea, they are ideally suited for the task.
Given the heavy armor plating the creatures have, it'd be neat to see how that's accomplished - perhaps we'll see that in a future animation update/more lore drops? Getting back to the creature in the game itself, I play the card at level 4:
By leveling this rare card to level 4, the Diemonshark gains the Enrage ability - allowing its damage output to raise to 5 and speed to raise to 6 under normal circumstances. The high armor can help defend against melee and ranged attacks, while a direct magic hit instantly makes it more dangerous (except in the case of Weak Magic ruleset, which it gains the protection of its armor - either way, it's a win!). Let's see it in action!
I'm going to take a slightly different approach here. Instead of going through the battle turn by turn (which you can see by replaying it), I think it'd be more interesting to provide some strategy notes on each card in my line up and how the synergies work.
In this 34 Mana battle, the Target Practice (ranged and magic have snipe) ruleset was active. I used the following line up:
| A Water summoner, Kelya Frendul adds a bit of extra speed and armor to all monsters. At level 6, the Gold League Cap, it can summon level 8 commons, level 6 rares, level 5 epics, and level 3 legendaries. | |||
| The Diemonshark at level 4, my primary tank and frontline fighter, capable of dealing a healthy amount of melee damage from the first position. Further sped up and armored by Kelya. | |||
| The reach of the Flying Squid allows it to deal out melee damage from the second position. Being faster and gaining a bit of armor courtesy of Kelya, it's a pretty mighty secondary tank on its own. The Blind ability further compounds the speed increase offered by Kelya, adding a 25% chance for the enemy to miss. | |||
| Djinn Oshannus, a mighty magic master of the seas. Fast on his own, faster with Kelya, it also has the Void and Phase ability - giving it a chance for magic attacks to miss, and even when they don't, the damage is cut in half. Coupled with this battle's Target Practice ruleset, this is a good option to draw ranged and magic attacks. The Forcefield ability also ensures the heaviest attacks(5+) are negated down to just 1 damage. | |||
| Igor Darkspear doesn't cost much, but provides a decent ranged damage output and is able to stun enemies. Should the Djinn Oshannus fall, this would draw the sniper attacks. | |||
| I'm not a huge fan of snakes, but Uraeus is one of my favorite sneak attack options. Decent melee damage at a fairly high speed when paired with Kelya, the real draw here is the Poison ability. All that in a 3 cost, level 5 card? Epic. | |||
| At the end of the line, I added in a Hardy Stonefish. Not much use for it here, but it's a low cost way to absorb any sneak attacks and the gold foil added a bit to the rewards. |
Overall, a pretty competent and competitive line up in Gold league that took advantage of the ruleset and synergies between the summoner and monster abilities.
Looking at the battlefield, this went up against a line up headed by Grandmaster Rathe at level 2.
The use of Pelacor Conjurer in the second slot might be considered a mistake here. While it does have the reflect ability, the Shieldbearer's Taunt draws any magic fire to it. When that fell, the Pelacor Conjurer moved into the first slot. With the Target Practice ruleset active, any magic attacks not launched by a monster in my first position would then target the Djinn Renova instead. A bit of a waste of the Reflect + Amplify abilities in that case. Switching Djinn Renova and the Pelacor Conjurer would have made more sense (especially if playing a higher level Djinn Renova, where that could use Triage to heal the Pelacor Conjurer and keep up the reflection longer).
The Diemonshark is a solid Water tank that works well with other cards in the Chaos Legion and recent reward sets. It feels like a good replacement in Modern for the Sea Monster, and the design of it seems at least a little inspired by it. With the call outs of its armored scales in the lore, I wonder if we'll see other monsters or characters that wear armor crafted from it.
Was the line up breakdown helpful? Am I missing other potential synergies within the Water Splinter for the Diemonshark? Let me know in the comments - thanks for reading!
