Share Your Battle Challenge Featuring The Carnage Titan.
Greetings Splinterlanders and welcome to the latest edition of the Share Your Battle Challenge!
This week’s challenge feature is dragons, and with a very special thanks to the Splinterlands team and their Fomo February promotion on Splinterlands TV the particular dragon I am highlighting is the legendary Carnage Titan. I was lucky enough to win this card in a Fomo February giveaway, and I’ve been chomping at the bit to give it a spin.
The Carnage Titan is yet another beast within the splinter of beasts–the dragon splinter, of course. In its level-one trim it sports both the reach and double strike abilities. Add this to its two-powered melee attack and three speed, and what you get is a potential four points of damage to your opponent’s tank before all three speed (or slower) non-legendary monsters even get a chance to act. Hit ‘em fast, hit ‘em hard and hide so they can’t hit you back; That’s the Carnage Titan’s game.
But wait… There’s more!
So your tank has fallen and the Carnage Titan has advanced to the front row? No problem!! Your handy-dandy Titan comes equipped with seven points of armor and eight points of health making it a legitimate double-striking tank in its own right!
And you get all of that for the not so low, low price of eleven mana. Admittedly, that’s quite a chunk of mana, but as is often the case in the dragon splinter, you get a lot of bang for your mana buck.
Looking at the Titan’s level-progression chart we find that this team-dragon double-striker notches up its attack power to three at level two and four when it maxes out at level four. Accounting for the second attack that’s a potential eight points of reach damage for your level four titan. Further, at level three the Titan gains the shield ability helping to protect it from physical damage whether it be pesky blast damage or direct attack.
Interestingly, the Titan never gains more speed, armor nor health. But hey! How bad do you expect one bad boy to get?
This match was played in the silver league and had a cap of 50 mana with only the water, life, and dragon splinters allowed. Beyond that, the match also had the “odd ones out” and “earthquake” rules in effect. So only combatants with odd mana costs could be played and all non-flying participants would take damage at the end of each round.
I didn’t see anything in my opponent’s last five matches that gave me a clue as to what they might play with this particular rule set, so I was on my own to just make a viable team.
Off the bat, when I think of odd and flying, my mind goes to earth with the Pelacor Mercenary and the Regal Peryton. But clearly, earth was disallowed for this match so I wasn’t really sure what I would play.
With the odd card restriction the airborne options were rather slim, so I decided to use the high mana to go with as much bulk and armor as I could—positioned to try to protect my few fliers for as long as possible. Considering the choices, I was expecting the earthquakes to do a lot of damage to both teams this match.
My choice of summoner was actually a very simple one because I only have access to one dragon splinter summoner: the Drake of Arnak, and as a starter card at that.
For my tank, I selected the Drybone Barbarian. With a decidedly odd nine-mana cost, this soulbound reward card puts 10 health points worth of heft at the front of my team and, thanks to the enrage ability, is capable of delivering six-powered melee attacks after it is injured. For my "protect the fliers" strategy, it fits the bill nicely.
Lining up third, I utilized Djinn Renova. Delivering two points of magic damage and possessing high health, this 7-mana, chaos legion, reward card fits nicely into my strategy. That its strengthen ability will add one health point to all of my team members is certainly a nice bonus.
Starting in the fourth position I placed my two eligible flyers beginning with the Gargoya Devil. I used this seven mana-cost, chaos legion, reward card as the first of my flyers to make use of its close range ability. Even when it advances to the front line, it will still be able to fire.
I filled my fifth slot with the only other flier on my team—the War Pegasus. Yet another seven-mana cost reward card, though soul bound, this card was selected mainly for its flying ability. But its two point ranged attacks and relatively high health will also surely come in handy.
For my backline combatant I used the Cave Slug. For this selection I really just wanted to have a rear guard to protect against the Pelacor Bandit, should my adversary play a water team. But if I were extremely lucky, this snail-paced opportunist might even turn the tables on that particular flying foe.
So, I’m facing off against a water team summoned by Possibilus the Wise. I’m not crazy about facing the trample ability, but I am comforted by the fact that the dreaded water opportunists have even mana costs!
Here is the field with all the buffs and debuffs applied.
My first thought is that I think I have enough straight ahead fire power to break through his front two even with the resurrection. My three-speed, flying archer gets the first forward facing shot and shatters all that armor, sweet! Then my Titan and tank, who will have been enraged by the enemy’s three-speed frontline, kill his Refugee who is promptly resurrected. Unless I am unlucky with my opportunist's shot, my remaining attackers restrip away the opposing tank’s armor and that tank falls to the earthquake damage at the end of round one.
To start round two, the only-in-name Flying Squid, who has lost its armor to the earthquake, takes a pounding from my War Pegasus and Titan. And that about tells the tale on how I think the match will continue. My faster forward facers should be able to weaken my foe enough that by the time only fliers remain, I should have the upper hand. And it can’t be overlooked that the Carnage Titan’s heavy armor will keep him in the fight to help sustain the pounding.
You can see how it played out for yourself here.
At the end of round one, and with the earthquake haven taken its toll, we see my opportunity shot did land on the Refugee and that combatant is the first to permanently fall.
Now his level three squid will pulverize my lowly one BCX Barbarian, and the Wise summoner shows his mettle causing my Titan to take a good armor stripping from both trample and reach damage. Still, unless I am unlucky, round three will start with my Titan facing off against the Cruel Sethropod.
At the end of round two, it looks like it’s going to come down the fliers—fair enough in an earthquake match. In round three, the Sethie is toast before it can attack, but it’s last licks for the Titan who will be down to one health after the earthquake and will be killed by the Pelacor to start round four. It’s the last blast for my Djinn as well, the end of round earthquake will bring her down to three health, that pesky Pelacor will trample her to two health and the legendary River will destroy her before she can act in round four. Ouch.
That leaves my archers to take down the faster Bandit, and I think I can’t afford a miss. In round three my Devil can strip the Bandit’s armor, but will lose two points of health—one when Renova dies and one from the Wavesmith’s parting shot. In round four, while the opposing front two are busy destroying mine, my archers can, with two hits, bring the water thief’s health to one. Round five will start with the Pelacor hitting the Devil’s armor and then, providing my archer’s haven’t already blown it, my flying war horse gets a last stab at the win, because when water’s round-five, magical blow kills my Gargoya, I will lose my ability to attack.
So, I am looking at a (0.9 X 0.8 X 0.9 X 0.8 X 0.9 =) 0.5184 probability of winning the battle. It was probably about a tossup from the start. I think I wasn't accounting for the trample damage when I first thought about the match… but I wasn't pleased about the trampling from the start.
I land the first blow.
And after the War Pegasus hits, the Gargoya Devil lands again.
And it all comes down to…
My archers come through!!
Now all I need to do is let the earthquake win me the match!
What I find most interesting about this match is that it hinged on two things, legendary cards and reward cards! For my part, I do not have a River Hellondale at my disposal to play with. But on my side of the ledger, I made up for this by playing the Carnage Titan. Had I not had this dragon-splinter beast in my deck, I don't think I had a prayer of fielding a team that could have competed in this match.
But beyond the big guns, reward cards accounted for seven of the ten other monsters played, and without them both myself and my opponent would have probably had a difficult time fielding a functional team. In this earthquake match, all of the flying cards were reward cards, and my opponent compensated for a lack of flying by playing a reward card with the protect ability to provide armor to absorb the earthquake damage.
If the legendaries can be said to be the stars of this show, then the reward cards surely made for a brilliant supporting cast.
