The battle challenge monster this week is the Diemon Shark. It is a Rare Chaos Legion card for the Water Splinter. The monster is a medium mana tank which has the Trample ability at all levels. At level 4, it gains the Enrage ability which results in speed and melee attack boosts after it is attacked. I have my Diemon Shark leveled up to Level 4.
The card is very popular as a tank. The monster has decent health and lots of shields so It benefits from the Merdaali Guardian which both heals health and restores shields. The Kelyla Frendul summoner also adds one speed to this already fairly high speed card. The card is most effective at the Silver as well as Diamond / Champion leagues. At Silver it gets the Enrage ability and at the highest leagues it gets Retaliate.
For this week’s battle, I decided to show a 'Modern format' battle with 25 mana. The rulesets were ‘Poison’ and ‘Ranged attacked monsters can attack from the first position’.
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_3db26265bb9ee667b0a50423dba89aff&ref=ninjamike
I went with the Water splinter and chose Bortus as my summoner. I of course picked the Diemon Shark as my tank.
My opponent and I both went with the Water Splinter though with different summoners. Our overall strategy was nearly identical. We both made use of a card to cleanse our Diemon Shark tank which makes sense in this poison ruleset match. We also had a card for healing and repairing our tank. The difference in the lineup was that they added an opportunity monster where as I added three other monsters instead. A ranged monster, an immune monster, and a small one meant as opportunity fodder.
In the first round, I took out all of the shields of my opponents Diemon Shark. Let’s see if I can take advantage of this in the next round.
Yes, in the second round I wiped out my opponents Diemon shark before their healer could heal its health or restore some shields. All it took was a hit from my enraged Diemon Shark and a hit from my ranged monster. At this point it looks like the match is pretty much over.
After the end of the third round I won the match.
In Poison rulesets, most of the time it is a good idea to either choose a tank with the Immunity ability or use another card to cleanse your tank. In this match, I chose the latter and it ended up working out for me even with my opponent choosing the same strategy.
Today, Water splinter is the splinter that I play the least. Originally, the focus of the Water splinter was Magic attacks. In recent times, the focus of the Water splinter has shifted from Magic attacks to more speed and Melee attacks. The Diemon Shark fits in nicely with the change.
In the old days, I played Water splinter the most because magic attacks were the easiest way to beat low level bots. However, I do not prefer to play the splinter anymore. Though Water is a very popular splinter to use and the Diemon Shark is one of its most popular cards.
