Hello, hello, hello fellow Splinterlanders,

we have another week of epic battles, sweat, blood and tears behind us as well as in front of us and the splinterlands team has given us another Weekly Battle Challenge.

This time, we finally get Dragons again. My favorite iteration of the weekly challenge, because Dragons are powerful creatures within the game and there are plenty of battles to choose from.

Before I get deep into the analysis of the following battle, I have chosen to display for you, you can watch my fight against Bad-JuJu from the Immortal Gods 6 Guild here.

It was a Gold 1 ranking battle, as I tried to slip into Diamond III (although, I want to stay in Gold I, I like to have the Diamond ranking for ego reasons ^^).

This is my first entry after Riftwatchers was introduced to the game and we all have to adapt to new abilities, cards and strategies. My opponent had not one, not two, but three Riftwatcher cards in his deck and after glancing at them, I thought to myself, I am in trouble, since I hadn't seen them utilizied in battles until now.

As a struggling gold player without a golden goose, I have a monthly budget I can put into the game and as we approach October, I am giddy about the possible new cards I can get, but for this battle, I was clearly at a disadvantage. Or so I thought, because Dragons are as powerful as ever and even if I deployed just four of them, I had a good chance to destroy the other team.

Let's have a look at what transpired on the battlefield.

Two Rulesets, 52 Mana and 4 active Splinters were standing between me and my opponent.

• Healed Out: All healing abilities are removed from Monsters and Summoners
• Explosive Weaponry All Monsters have the Blast ability

Blast screams speed, especially whithout healing, so I had to choose speed monsters.

The high mana count allowed me as well as the other side to go all out on most cards, we could fit in such rulesets.
Water and Earth were not active, so Keyla as the obvious choice (+ 1 speed and shield) was out of the window.

As I said, I wanted to put the fastest team on the battle field, I could find. As Kelya was not available, I decided on Quix. He not only has -1 Speed, but 1 range damage. I had a hunch, BadJuju (my opponent) would decide on Thaddius Brood to enlist at least one Speed Card with Lira The Dark, which is also a ranged attack monster. I would diminish two stats for this beast and speed overall.

I put Djinn Chwalla as tank and Carnage Titan as second tank in to have a good amount of life as well as countermeasures in the form of thorns.
Third in line was flying the Chaos Dragon and beside him Dhampir Stalker. Chaos Agent as the second to last monster was a bad idea, which I realized, when I saw my opponents lineup and spotted the aforementioned Lira with Opportunity. I should have foreseen at least one opportunity monster in a blast ruleset. Rookie mistake to put a 2 HP monster between two very important monsters, but I had to deal with my mistake for now.

Last but not least, I enlisted Lira The Dark with her opportunity and Swiftness as the major assets for my team.

Bad-Juju decided on Thaddius Brood as I envisioned but to my chagrin I glimpsed at Djinn Muirat as his tank, a magic monster. That was not good, as I had no protection against magic for my two tanks.

Venator Kinjo in the second position was a great move, as he is able to withstand blast. He also has camouflage, so his 3 HP were not a problem, as I couldn’t attack with my Lira and he put a slow on all my monsters, which canceled out my slow from Quix the Devious.

In the third position I saw a monster, which I’ve never seen before on the battlefield.
Queen of Crows, a Riftwatcher Archery Monster with Close Range and Headwinds. Great Choice. My two archery monsters were weakened by this.

Cabalist, another Riftwatcher card entered the game on my opponents side with amplify and Giant Killer. Amplify would only apply, if Chaos Dragon would hit Djinn Muirat, otherwise this would be a wasted ability on my team.

A great monster was second to last on the other side. Fortunately for me only at level 1. A legendaryx Riftwatchers card – RAA – with Double Strike and Scattershot.

Lira The Dark had a double feature in this battle, as Bad-Juju also chose the speedy witch as his last monster.

Very good cards on both sides with the element of surprise due to the scattershot ability in both lineups and three monsters, I’ve never seen in battle.

If I were a betting man, I would have put my money on me, but almost even odds.

I was waiting in anticipation, whilst all cards were buffed. This can take quite a while at gold (I don’t envy Diamond and Champion players in that regard)
and the enemy Lira attacked first and killed Chaos agent, Is new, I fucked up, as the blast damage took 1 HP from my Lira and Dhampir Stalker.

But now, it was my turn and I hit Cabalist for two plus blast damage for the other two Riftwatcher cards. I also snared Raa with the blast damage and took his flying ability away.
Chaos Dragon almost killed Cabalist (1 HP left) with his Scattershot but then, the fight shifted to the front line. Djinn Chwalla took Djinn Muirats shield away and Dhampir Stalker took a healthy bite off of Muirat’s health pool. Carnage Titan finished the magic tank with his double strike but no blast damage was being dealt due to the presence of Venator Kinjo and my opponent still could attack three times.

But I could witness one of the weaknesses of Scattershot. The new mosnter Raa has double strike and scattershot, but the first scattershot hit Djinn Chwalla, my tank, which was no problem at all for him and for Carnage Titan. The second shot hit Dhampir Stalker. If he had hit him twice in a row, he would have died with Lira’s attack in the second round.
As it played out, he would live to fight another round and to shoot another arrow.

As I said at the end of round 1, Enemy Lira the Dark hit Dhampir Stalker with two damage and almost killed him and my Lira. Both monsters would have been eliminated, if Raa would have hit either monsters with his first attack.
But I still had my monsters, after the only attack, that mattered at this point.

Now it was my turn and I put the hurt on. I destroyed Cabalist with a fine-tuned shot from Lira, Demolished Venator as tank plus 2 blast damage for Queen of Rows, decimated a few HP from all enemy monsters with Chaos Dragon, killed Raa with blast damage, as the Queen tank only had 2 HP left, before Carnage Titan had its say on the matter.

The horned and masked Dragon took a run-up and with two swift and precise hits, he was able to score a double kill.

A decisive win for myself, which was not clear at all from the beginning, but one thing is clear. Dragons are mighty.

Although my opponent did not chose a single Dragon card, it is not always as one-sided, when one player has dragons and the other has none. With everything in life and in Splinterlands, it is down to luck, to strategy, ruleset and especially with dragons, mana. Low-Mana fights are always a detriment to Dragons.

But overall, Dragons are superior cards and I am always happy, when I can employ them on the battlefield.