Its long neck is banded red and black, with savage horns that sprout from its head and vicious fangs more wicked than scimitars that line its jaws
Hello Splinterlands Community!
Welcome to another Splinterlands Share your Battle Weekly Challenge. For this week challenge we can feature any from the dragon splinter and I have chosen the powerful Desert Dragon
For those who are new to my post, I usually post information which is related in the Silver League Modern Format but I already started battling in Gold league which gives me additional knowledge in the battlefiled.
Desert Dragon is a powerful offensive melee monsters with a legendary rarity.
Looking at the basic stats of Desert Dragon, this is a powerful card with a melee attack ranging from 4 to 6, a decent health of 6 to 7 with a 3 armor but with a constant of 2 speed. This card is pretty slow which balance its stats in having a massive damage monster.
In terms of Desert Dragon ability, all of the abilities it have is really terrifying. First is the trample ability which is very great since this card deals a heavy damage. Defeating an opponent could trigger another attack to the next. Heck! With stampede ruleset, this card can decimate your opponent's monsters.
Leveling up to ★2 gives the piercing ability which then further boost this card attack as dealing with armored opponents won't be much of a problem as its attack can penetrate through that armor.
Moving up to Gold League with a ★3 Desert Dragon gives another ability which is retalliate. This card can deliver further damage with this chance to attack again.
Finally, a MAX Desert Dragon do have the giant killer ability. When dealing a monsters with a mana cost of 10 or more such as Grund and Grum gives Desert Dragon to deal a double damage. That is a 12 massive damage.
Desert Dragon is trully powerful but this card may have weakness as well, the first thing is that this card is slow, a high speed magic monsters could easily defeat Desert Dragon. Another thing is that this card does not have any true strike ability which then could give a higher chance to miss those flying and high speed monsters. This card further weaken by blind and dodge ability a perfect combination to avoid the heavy damage.
When it comes to summoner, the best card for Desert Dragon is non other than Kitty due to its speed and true strike. The problem I stated above is somehow address when Kitty is the summoner.
Quix the Devious and Lily Shieldpaw can be use as well as Kitty is expensive. As long as Desert Dragon can attack from the backline (ie Melee Mayhem and Equal Opportunity ruleset) Lily would be a good choice.
| Kitty provides a very important function when paired with Desert Dragon. First is the boost of +2 speed wihch gives Desert Dragon an edge to improve one of its weakness. Second is the true strike in order to make sure Desert Dragon lands the massive hit and the tank heal ability which further gives Desert Dragon a better way to survive the battle. |
In terms of monsters, Monsters with Inspire ability are the best combo with Desert Dragon to further strenthen its attack. A monster with tank heal, repair, and slow could be a good choice as well to support Desert Dragon.
Below are the monsters in the current modern format with Inspire ability:
In order to counter this card, there are a lot of ways since this card main weakness is speed.
To me, monsters with forcefield greatly affect Desert Dragon performance.
Here are the cards with forcefield ability that can only make Desert Dragon attack to 1 as long as Desert Dragon attack at least is 5.
NOTE that above monsters does not include the Soul Bound Reward cards.
In terms of ruleset, Desert Dragon I think can be use in different case which gives this card further an advantage such as:
Aim True | Desert Dragon won't miss any attack, this utilize the high melee attack of Desert Dragon |
Equal Opportunity | Having Lily Shieldpaw as the summoner, Desert Dragon can deal damage from the backline without being targeted due to camouflage. |
Melee Mayhem | Same with Equal Opportunity, Desert Dragon can attack from the backline. |
Reverse Speed | This gives a better advantage since Desert Dragon speed is low, most of its attack will hit and will definitely attack earlier. |
Stampede | The stampede ruleset empowers the trample ability which can trigger multiple times. |
Modifications: Aimless
Mana Cap: 60
Playable Splinters: Earth and Dragon
With only 2 splinter available in the match, I have chosen the Dragon splinter in order to use monsters from the Dragon and Earth monsters. With the aimless ruleset where scattershot for all range and magic monsters, a good opportunity with Desert Dragon in the frontline.
Since Desert Dragon and Carnage Titan focuses on the frontline, the other 4 monsters will use the scattershot to deal high damage possibly in the backline.
Let's do the battle analysis per round:
Analyzing the opponent's lineup, the opponent focus on having a full backline of magic attack which is very dangerous to Desert Dragon. Good thing there is a aimless ruleset in place. Mycelic Slipspawn taunt won't have any effect as well due to the scattershot ability.
Florre, Skyclaw, Uluth and Oshuur will randomly attack enemies because of the scattershot while Carnage Titan deals Grund giving a chance for Desert Dragon to trigger trample ability since Desert Dragon will be the one to attack.
One noticeable in this match is that after Grund is defeated, Mycelic Slipspawn will be in the frontline. Having a forceshield will disable Desert Dragon high damage.
Grund has been defeated in the first round.
Starting the second round with a series of scattershot attack. In this attack, Goblin Psychic has been defeated removing the tank heal towards Mycelic Slipspawn.
Since Carnage Titan attack is less than 5, the double attack hurts Mycelic Slipspawn and a lucky shot from Uluth Dhampir reduces Mycelic Slipspawn health to 1 giving Desert Dragon a chance to defeat Mycelic Slipspawn and triggering another attack towards Magi of Chaos defeating this monster as well.
Oshuur resurrect has been use to Runic Skyclaw as it was defeated by Dr. Blight.
Oshuur has been defeated because of poison and with the attack from Skyclaw and Florre, both remaining monsters has been defeated.
In this battle, it can be seen that Desert Dragon is truly a powerful monster defeating 3 monsters in this match.
In my opinion, Desert Dragon is a powerful melee monster especially that it reaches the ★3 as this card unlockes the retaliate ability in this level. Having a 5 melee attack that can cause trample and can penetrate the armor is really a powerful one.
As long as this card is not being focus fired by the enemies especially with Magic attack, then this card can prevail in the frontline position. A good redirection such as taunt in the backline gives this card the opportunity to deal attack in the frontline.
Also looking at the monsters with forcefield, there are not so much which is this card attack is still useful
Overall I love Desert Dragon as long as this card can hit, then no problem.
How do you think Desert Dragon is?
Thank you for reading! See you in the next Share Your Battle Weekly Challenge!
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