After checking out Splinterlands for a few months and getting hooked, I've decided to get involved posting my own battles and thoughts.
This week we're taking a look at the crypt beetle from the death splinter!
Crypt beetle's only ability at all levels is the shield ability (reduced damage from melee and ranged attacks). At only 3 mana it can be a very cost effective cost for specific rulesets. Having a small health pool (only 2 hp at level 1!) is the major weakness of the card. A high physical damage attack will still kill the beetle through his shield trait.
To effectively use this card in bronze/silver leagues we are looking for battles where 1-2 attack monsters are going to be very common. In my experience this is usually around the 12-18 mana battles.
You can watch the battle replay here
At 12 mana we are likely to see a lot of low damage attackers making this a good ruleset to try out crypt beetle. The opportunity rule means our beetle will be able to attack from anywhere as well as be the target for enemy opportunity attackers. Our main liability would be magic attackers easily killing crypt beetle right away. With the earth splinter not available in this ruleset I was only worried about some of the low cast magic cards used in water and life splinters.
| Card | Notes |
|---|---|
| Normally Thaddius would be a good death splinter summoner but at such low mana Contessa L'ament gives us an extra mana to squeeze into our line. Lowering the enemy ranged attacks can also help against certain lineups. | |
| We need a cost effective tank with limited mana and Cursed Windeku is hard to pass up whenever running death splinter battles. At only 6 mana he provides 9 health worth of tanking power and his thorns ability will help chip down any melee cards. | |
| With the last 3 mana we can perfectly slot in this week's challenge card. It will act as a soak for any enemy backline attacks to give our lineup more longevity. Sometimes the shield can let the beetle finish off the rest of an enemy team if they lose their high attackers. |
Our opponent choose a similar lineup but opted for Thaddius as a summoner. This gives them a 1 health advantage over my lineup but 1 less mana for their selection. They also chose to put a 1 mana chaos agent soaker in front to save a hit on their Windeku. This seems a little counter productive as you want your Windeku to dish out thorn damage.
The chaos agent takes a hit from our Windeku which actually saves us some thorn damage. My opponent's Carrion Shade in the backline is not going to do any damage to our Crypt Beetle, our backline tank gambit has paid off. However we do have a disadvantage of less health on our main tank.
Our Crypt beetle misses against the Carrion Shade but this actually works to our advantage. Killing the carrion shade early means our beetle would start taking thorns damage from attacking the Windeku next. Unfortunately our Windeku dies early leaving their Windeku at 1 health remaining.
Our Crypt Beetle finishes the Windeku off leaving it at a nail-biting 1 health. Fortunately the shade can't do anything but harmlessly bounce off the beetle's shield. It's just clean up from here.
Our strategy was a bit of a gamble, given that a lost mana magic cards could have ruined our day. This time we lucked out!
Overall I like the Crypt Beetle for rulesets where you can't afford the big shield tanks but you still want that damage negation. Little league, earthquake, explosive weaponry and equalizer are all battlegrounds where the beetle shines as a sponge for the extra damage.
Being a lower level player I only have access to a level 1 starter copy but at higher levels it gets even more mana cost efficient. The market seems to reflect this to as he's more expensive than other low cost commons from the Chaos Legion set. I'm looking forward to experimenting with this card more in the future!
Images in this article are all taken from splinterlands.com
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