Hello Spltinterfriends,
This is my submission for the weekly SHARE YOUR BATTLE challenge, featuring the thorny turtle from Alpha/Beta cards edition - the Spineback Turtle!
Although my water deck is pretty strong for my Silver league, I did not own Spineback Turtle yet, so I decided to rent 5 level, beta-edition one for this challenge. Just for a little bit more than 5 DEC, I own for the entire 24h beautiful (not!) turtle and so I can test it on the battlefield in the Silver league.
Battle lineup
I took several battles using the Turtle so I tested two strategies: one with a turtle as the main tank, second with the turtle as the last man standing, due to its Thorns ability, which I hoped would stop all the Sneak attempts towards my damage dealers. As a summoner, I was using 4 lvl Bortus to fully utilize leveled-up cards from my water deck. Furthermore, I was also using Level 2 Djinn Oshannus, which in combination with Bortus, makes it pretty hard to kill by magic attack monsters. Before Djinn Oshannus, I was always putting Furious Chicken and Torrent Fiend, to gain extra survivability for my ranged monsters. To make me even more bulletproof from melee and ranged attacks, I was using Venari Wawesmith leveled up to 4 level, so it was bringing me extra armor combined with decent magic damage as well as Elven Mystic which was applying even more magic attack decrease. Check the following battle as a good example, when I am beating a challenging lineup with Byzantine Kitty:
When I felt that I can use a more offensive lineup, I combined Spineback Turtle with Oshannus, Ruler of the Seas, Coral Wraith, and Phantom of the Abyss, making a perfect balance between damage output and defense abilities. This lineup was also working very well for me, as you can observe in the following example:
Conclusion
Due to Thorns ability, relatively low mana cost combined with high armor and HP, Spineback Turtle seems to be a perfect choice for the main tank or anti-sneak card for low mana battles. Probably it won't be very useful as a plain-vanilla card due to lack of any abilities. However, once invested in a leveled-up version, it is a very good companion on the battlefield.
Thanks for reading!
PS. If you haven't registered yet to Splinterlands you can use my referral link to do so and start your adventure today!
Register here
