Hello everyone and welcome to this weeks Battle Challenge. This time we battle with "Djinn Apprentice".
Statistics
In the post for each weeks battle challenge issued by Splinterlands you will read what they'd like us to discuss in these challenges. One part that stood out in my head while doing this challenge was. "talk about what you don't like about this card".
I'm not afraid to tell it like it is and I personally don't like this card at all. I usually try to achieve a battle with center focus on the card in discussion for the week. But my attempts to make this guy the center of the fight put me back from Bronze 1 to almost out of Bronze 2.
Looking at his statistics is almost a joke. Not great on HP, no armor and achieves no special abilities until leveled all the way up to level 6. At this point he gets the "Deathblow" ability. This means "IF" he's attacking the last enemy on the enemy team he'll do 2X the damage.
But he has to survive the whole battle first.
I think that's almost useless from a tactical standpoint. Basically, he hits harder when your team is pretty much almost won the fight anyway. Unless, of course, it was a last stand between this card and the enemies last card. But that would mean this card would have survived where others didn't. Probably won't happen too often.
We can't expect to much, after all he is just an apprentice
Anyway, I threw him in on one of my favorite lineups (in place of a card I would rather use) to see him appear productive. So let's look at The Battle, Ruleset and Lineup.
Wild-Ranked battle
Ruleset: Standard
Mana Cap: 28
Splinters: Fire VS Fire
For a full description of all the cards, rulesets and abilities visit:
https://splintercards.com
My lineup used here has a great tactic but I usually use it with a much higher Mana Cap. Nevertheless, the tactic is the same. Take a look.
The Summoner
Yodin Zaku
Additional Attributes:
+1 HP. +1 Ranged attacks
"Blast" ability
The Monsters
Venari Heatsmith
Djinn Apprentice
Tenyii Striker
Countess Sinash
This entire tactic is centered around our summoner. Yodin Zaku increases all friendly ranged attacks and gives all allies the blast ability. I usually do this with a much larger Mana Cap and I'm able to use all ranged attackers. But for this battle I started with a non attacking unit. The "Venari Heatsmith" has the "void armor" ability which allows it to take magic damage to the armor before HP.
The reason this lineup is so deadly is the combination of the summoners given "Blast" ability and Legendary "Countess Sinash". She has both the "Camouflage" and the "Opportunity" ability. With "Camouflage" she cannot be targeted for attack until she is in the first position. With "Opportunity" she will attack the enemy with the lowest amount of HP first. With her increased ranged attack aimed at the weakest enemy, not to mention her speed putting her attack out first in most occasions, most likely she will kill the weakest enemy in one shot(if they don't have armor of course). Now add the given "Blast" ability which causes damage to all adjacent cards to the target. You'll be hitting at least 2 and maybe 3 enemies at once.
Since most players put their support monsters (repair and healing) in the middle of the lineup for protection, and since most support monsters don't have a large HP you can find this will give you a double and sometimes even triple kill on the first shot. Goodbye support. With such a devastating hit from the very start most lineups tactical standpoint is all but gone. Keep in mind that "Countess Sinash" can't be hit until her whole team is wiped out (if you place her in the last position). Oh wait, we forgot about "Djinn Apprentice". Well, follow my link to watch the Battle and you'll see, at least he got the last kill on account of being a rare Chaos Legion fire splinter magic attacker.
Thanks for reading my post, watch my link to see the tactic at work and all support will be returned to the best of my ability.
Special thanks to 
Watch the Battle then sign up to play:
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_90d86b031f5a708285f98998b93a660f&ref=splinterob