My second challenge of the week!
Theme and card of the week is Kulu Swimhunter.
Thoughts: This is a card I find hard to place in a Water deck. I often associate the Water deck now as a melee attack oriented, using more abilities such as Opportunity and Sneak to attack from anywhere and at the critical areas. Hence, I find it somewhat hard to place a ranged attacker at the back which only targets the tank. Perhaps I am still unexperienced with the card and haven't found the win potential in it yet.
A similar card I know of would the Fire deck's Scavo Firebolt, which also have the same stats and (lack of) abilities.
Card Showcase
| Theme | Kulu Swimhunter |
|---|---|
| Edition | Chaos Legion |
| Rarity | Common 🔘 |
| Element | Water 💧 |
| Attack | Ranged 🏹 |
| Abilities | - |
Battle Rules
| Symbol | Effect |
|---|---|
 | Standard: No modification to the standard gameplay rules and mechanics. |
Mana cap: 17
Usable elements: | ALL |
Team Composition
Role: Summoner
A generally great summoner to be used. With a (+1) to speed and (+1) to armour, it is versatile and often the favoured choice over Bortus, its other free Fire summoner.
Giving 1 armour to an unarmoured card may be more impactful than one may think.
Role: Fodder, Sacrificial Tank
The first in position and not the beefy tank you might expect. Torrent Fiend comes at no cost and maybe has better stats than some 1 mana costs cards.
I placed it first to hopefully take some damage for the team. With Kelya Frendul's summoner abilities, it may even tank 2 hits, given that it isn't a magic attack or piercing attack.
Role: Tank
A good and cheap card that emphasises on tanking. With pretty good health and armour stats for a 3 mana cost card, you can count on it to tank a number of hits. Especially useful in a low mana cost team.
Role: Opportunity / Backline Hitter
A great card with 3 melee damage that can obliterate the enemy team with Opportunity if they can't resolve your tanks by then.
It is very useful against decks that make use of glass cannon attackers like Pelacor Arbalest. However, the opponent may play with Gaps / Fodders to pull aggro away from the damage dealers.
I typically try to place him near the backline to last longer in the battle.
Role: Ranged Attacker, Backline
The card of the week. Coming at a decent mana cost, you get a card with all around decent stats for its cost.
I placed it at the back of the lineup for it to continue attacking due to ranged attacker restrictions. It does have decent health to doubly tank for backstab too.
Play by play
Opposing Summoner - Mother Khala (4)
Opposing Cards - Gargoya Scrapper (1), Chaos Agent (1), Scavo Hireling (3), Truthspeaker (3), Stitch Leech (3) and Celestial Harpy (2)
> Round 1:
(Round 1 battle log)
(+) -- My cards / Positive outcomes
(-) -- Opponent's cards / Negative outcomes
(-) Truthspeaker grants the enemy team 2 points of armour!
(+) Kulu Swimhunter broke the armour of Gargoya Scrapper!
(+) Torrent Fiend dealt 1 direct damage to Gargoya Scrapper!
(+) Deeplurker took down Gargoya Scrapper!
(-) Celestial Harpy broke the armour of Torrent Fiend!
(+) Kulu Swimhunter dodged an attack from Stitch Leech!
> Round 2:
(Round 2 battle log)
(+) -- My cards / Positive outcomes
(-) -- Opponent's cards / Negative outcomes
(+) Kulu Swimhunter broke the armour of Chaos Agent!
(+) Torrent Fiend dealt 1 direct damage to Chaos Agent!
(+) Deeplurker took down Chaos Agent!
(-) Celestial Harpy took down Torrent Fiend!
(+) Cruel Sethropod dealt 1 damage to Scavo Hireling!
(+) Kulu Swimhunter dodged an attack from Stitch Leech!
> Round 3:
(Round 3 battle log)
(+) -- My cards / Positive outcomes
(-) -- Opponent's cards / Negative outcomes
(+) Kulu Swimhunter broke the armour of Scavo Hireling!
(+) Deeplurker took down Scavo Hireling!
(-) Celestial Harpy dealt 1 damage to Cruel Sethropod!
(+) Cruel Sethropod dealt 1 damage to Truthspeaker!
(-) Stitch Leech broke the armour of Kulu Swimhunter!
> Round 4:
(Round 4 battle log)
(+) -- My cards / Positive outcomes
(-) -- Opponent's cards / Negative outcomes
(+) Kulu Swimhunter broke the armour of Truthspeaker!
(+) Deeplurker took down Truthspeaker!
(+) Enemy team's armour values are restored to normal!
(-) Celestial Harpy dealt 1 damage to Cruel Sethropod!
(+) Cruel Sethropod dealt 1 damage to Stitch Leech!
(-) Stitch Leech broke the armour of Cruel Sethropod!
> Round 5:
(Round 5 battle log)
(+) -- My cards / Positive outcomes
(-) -- Opponent's cards / Negative outcomes
(+) Kulu Swimhunter dealt 2 damage to Stitch Leech!
(+) Deeplurker took down Stitch Leech!
(-) Celestial Harpy dealt 1 damage to Cruel Sethropod!
(+) Cruel Sethropod dealt 1 damage to Celestial Harpy!
> Round 6:
(Round 6 battle log)
(+) -- My cards / Positive outcomes
(-) -- Opponent's cards / Negative outcomes
(+) Kulu Swimhunter takes down Celestial Harpy!
Strategy Talk
At low mana costs, Water and Life decks seem to have similar playstyles, such as bringing out some Opportunity and Sneak decks. Hence why I was quite ecstatic to see a win over them.
Looking at the opponent's history, I noticed him playing with just Life decks. Seeing the mana cost cap was at 17, I decided to just try out a low mana cost Water deck including Kulu Swimhunter.
In this battle, I tried to focus on the survivability of my backline. I tried to ensure I have adequate tanks to buy time for my backline to dismantle the opponent team. Due to the lack of mana, I had to pull out 1 or 2 low mana cost tanks (Torrent Fiend and Cruel Sethropod), which worked out brilliantly in the end. I had to pull in the important damage dealer - Deeplurker, and the card of the week Kulu Swimhunter afterwards.
I had triumphed today with my lineup. I think in this battle, Kulu Swimhunter did a pretty good job actually. Other than constantly being able to break the opponent's armour generated by Truthspeaker, it had moments when it dodged some attacks from a backstab.
I think Kulu and Deeplurker did a really nice one-two punch combo in this battle. With Kulu whittling down the health or breaking the armour, followed up by the damage laid down by Deeplurker, takes down an enemy card each round.
A good position you would really put Kulu Swimhunter would be at the back of the deck. As it uses ranged attacks, you would want it to be away from the frontline as it won't be able to attack from there. It also has decent health to take some hits if backstabs ever came. A dilemma you might face would probably deciding whether to place Deeplurker or Kulu further at the back of the lineup as Deeplurker is definitely a damage dealer which you want to survive as long as possible.
Thanks for reading!
We had an interesting matchup in this battle and I am happy to find a lineup which I might use with this mana cost cap in the future. It may be surprising but I think I might also try to use the card in other lineups as well.
It was fun to theorise and also play the card I don't usually play!
We keep on going. Cheers.
Link to the battle: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_0c83a6a27f904a6230f79a90bd0fc242&ref=tertius