Hey guys,
this weeks Battle Challenge about Nerissa Tridawn. I'll go over the card in general and then show you how I used her in high gold league as well as explain my thoughts and strategy for this battle.
Nerissa Tridawn is a magic water monster from the Chaos Legion set with no abilities. Therefore her strength lies in her high magic damage, which is already at 3 at level 1 and goes up all the way to 5 at maxed level. This is also complemented by high health, which makes her difficult to take out. Speed wise she's rather slow, like a lot of other magic attackers. All this comes in at a mana cost of 9 which is quite significant and makes her usable primarily in high mana battles. However I'll show you how you can use her in smaller mana matches with my battle as well.
Having no abilities to support her team in any way makes her a plain damage dealer, who's goal it's to take out as many opponents as possible. This also makes her amazing in Back to Basics rule sets where monsters lose all abilities. Due to her high health you can also use her as sort of an off-tank either in the second spot to soak up Snipe hits and take the first spot, once your tank dies or in the last position to soak up Sneak hits. There are definitely better monsters for these rules in Water, but if mana is tight Nerissa can function as both a damage dealer and off-tank.
She pairs well with Kelya, but not so much with Possibilus, because she doesn't really benefit from the Reach or Trample abilities.
When looking at the price, Nerissa is definitely one of the most expensive Chaos Legion epics and her price has been going up quite a bit recently. However anything under 2 dollars for a copy seems fair to me. While she is very strong and you kind of want her, I think she's not a must have, simply because water has so many other great cards.
Unfortunately Fog of War cancels out Target Practice and this way the only working rule set we have is True Aim.
I chose Kelya for this battle, because I wanted to incorporate Nerissa. Since it was only 19 mana and now sneaks or snipes I went with Torrent Fiend in the first spot to take a hit and Cruel Sethropod behind it as my real tank. For 3 mana it's just an absolute beast and my favorite low mana tank (besides Pelacor Conjurer maybe).
For my only real damage I went with Nerissa in the third spot and I put a Merdaali Guardian in the last spot to utilize the Heal and Repair since all my monsters had Armor from Kelya.
The strategy was simple: Have Cruel Sethropod tank as much damage as possible, while being healed and repaired by Merdaaali Guardian to allow Nerissa to dish out damage. Once Sethropod goes down have Nerissa in the first spot where she can still attack due to her magic attack and have er healed and repaired by Merdaali as well.
Since there were no sneak attacks I didn't have to protect my healer and could stick her in the back.
Let's see how it went!
My opponent went for a Lorna Shine (which I could've predicted, being so close to the gold leaderboard, but annoyed me non the less). They also brought a Magic Reflect with Pelacor Conjurer and an Amplify as well! This doesn't look good...
Nerissa goes first and attacks the Conjurer, dealing no damage because of the Divine Shield, but taking a hefty 3 damage reflect hit - great.
Their Pelacor Arbalest takes out my Fiend with its two hits, the Eagle deals 3 damage to my Sethropods armor and the Dax Peragon 1 to its health.
Sethropod then returns the attack on Pelacor Conjurer and hits for 2.
Not looking so good, to be honest.
Merdaali Guardian starts the round with a nice heal and repair on Sethropod, refilling all his health and armor. Nerissa then hits the Conjurer for 3 but also takes 3 damage reflected damage and is now down to 4 health.
The Arbalest and Eagle take away Sethropods entire armor and Dax Peragon hits it for 1, before it takes out the Conjurer. This is good.
Merdaali Guardian heals Sethropod back up to full health again, but only repairs 2 armor, which is instantly taken off again by the Arbalest. Nerissa only hits the Eagle's Divine Shield and thus deals no damage, where as the Eagle takes Sethropod down to 1 health.
Sethropod manages to get an attack off against the Eagle but only hits its armor, which makes no difference, because my only other attacking monster deals magic damage. Dax Peragon then deals the last damage needed to take Sethropod out. Leaving only the wounded Nerissa and Merdaali Guardian.
I had hoped Sethropod lived another round.
Merdaali heals Nerissa for 3 (because Heal = health divided by 3 and Nerissa has 9 health total) and Nerissa fires her attack against the Eagle.
Pelacor Arbalest first attack is absorbed by the 1 armor, but the second deals health damage. Eagle also deals 3 and finally Dax Peragon deals 1, leaving Nerissa barely alive with 1 health.
Merdaali heals Nerisssa back up to 4 and repairs the 1 armor. Nerissa then takes out the Eagle.
Pelacor Arbalest again hits armor with his first attack and health with its second, taking Nerissa down to 2 health and Dax Peragon takes her down to 1 again.
You might think this battle is lost, but from here on out the process from round 5 repeats.
They don't have enough damage to kill Nerissa. Pelacor Arbalest always hits armor with the first attack and health with the second and Dax Peragon only has 1 attack. This leaves Nerissa with exactly 1 health every time and since Merdaali Guardian is the fastest monster she starts off every round by healing and repairing Nerissa.
Slowly but steadily Nerissa takes out the opponents monsters one after another, securing the win for me!
I wanted to show that Nerissa could work in low mana battles as well as a single damage dealer, because she has so much firing power and enough health to take a couple of hits. Paired with the Merdaali Guardian this worked out perfectly.
Looking at the numbers shows a different story, though 😂
For some reason it says I had 0% chance of winning this battle and I'd guess it's a bug that might have something to do with the 3 rule sets. Maybe it's not calculating correctly because of that.
How ever to be fair there are a couple of things that played in my favor here. First and foremost my opponent didn't have gold level cards. Were this a level 6 Lorna Shine and all the monsters were maxed for gold league, my opponent would've had enough damage to take down my Nerissa. They also made a mistake with putting their Fiend in the back, because there were no Sneak attacks in this game due to the rule set.
All in all I think the battle show cased what I wanted to show, though and therefore I'm happy with both the strategy and the outcome.
None of this is financial advice. This content is for educational purposes only and might fall out of date as both Splinterlands and the Crypto Market in general are subject to constant change.
Check out my push into gold league: Part I, Part II
Check out my Bronze league strategy guides: Part I, Part II
Hope you enjoyed the read. Have a great day and until next time!
Pinkman45
