Hello and welcome to another weekly Battle Challenge. This time with the Cruel Sethropod. In the following I'll go over my thoughts on the card and how I use it in battle. If you would like to skip right to the action: Here's the full battle.
The Card
Sailors tell many tales of the dangers of the Cruel Sethropods. Armed with strong pincers and teeth as sharp as spears, they attack anything that gets within range. It is nearly impossible to remove a Cruel Sethropod once it has latched on, and many a sailor has the scars to show where they ventured too close.
(From Splinterlands Lore)
Cruel Sethropod is a water melee card from the Chaos Legion edition. It has no abilities at all and might be looked at as one of those cards "that aren't that great", because of it. However this card has some really good stats to make up for it and for the mana cost of only 3 it's a fantastic low mana tank. It doesn't have the highest health if compared to other low mana tanks like earth's Hill Giant maybe, but it makes up for that with its armor. This is why I think it's best used in Equalizer, Weak Magic or Lost Magic rulesets and of course Little League and Rise of the Commons. In Super Sneak you can also use it to protect yourself from Sneak attacks.
Overall its a solid card that does a particular job (low mana tank) very well, for a reasonable price. I'm not the biggest fan of the artwork however, I do think it looks a bit plain and boring.
The Ruleset
The game was played in Bronze and as it's very typical for Bronze, there were no restrictions/ rules, with every splinter being playable and a mana cap of 23.
The Line Up & Strategy
Summoner 1. Position 2. Position 3. Position 4. Position 5. Position 6. Position Alric Strombringer Cruel Sethropod Elven Mystic River Nymph Ice Pixie Venari Wavesmith Xenith Archer +1 Magic - - Cleanse Flying Protect -
I used a very "tried and tested" strategy from the older days here, when beta summoners were still available as starter cards. The basic idea is to play Alric for his +1 magic with as many magic attackers as possible. Since water has quite a couple of cheap ones this fits a low to mid mana cap very well. With my damage and main strategy in place I went with the Cruel Sethropod as my tank, because it's so cheap, yet tanky. Finally a put in a Wavesmith to protect against Sneak, Snipe and Opportunity and a Xenith Arche, because I had exactly 2 mana left.
Round 1
My opponent went for a Dragon/Death line up, with Drake of Arnak and some typical death cards. Cursed Windeku as the main tank up front and 2 sneak attackers in the back to attack my backline. This is a very common strategy, but I think I'm perfectly set up for this.
- My magic attackers won't get hit by the Thorns from Cursed Windeku and will ignore the enemy's armor
- Wavesmith protects my backline from sneak
- There's almost no magic, so my Sethropod should stay alive for a bit
Lets see how it goes:
Round 1 starts off with us trading attacks back and forth. I instantly kill the Carrion Shade and deal a lot of damage to the Cursed Windeku. Their two sneak attackers don't have enough damage to take out my Xenith Archer in the back and it survives with 1 health. The Life Sapper deals 1 damage to Sethropod and life leeches for 1 health, but other than that my Sethropod only takes damage to its armor.
Nothing big happening in the first round, but I don't lose anything and have his Windeku quite low. As I predicted things are looking very good.
Round 2
Cursed Windeku again only hits Sethropod's armor, before dying to my magic attackers. Silent Sha-vi does take out the Xenith Archer, but the other sneak attack only hits armor of the Wavesmith in the back. Life Sapper gets pulled in to the first position and even though it leeched for 1 health, it's down to 2 by the end of the round...
Rounds 3 & 4
...aaaand it's dead. One attack from the Ice Pixies takes quick care of it. Silent Sha-vi gets off one last attack which, who would've guessed it, only hits Sethropods armor, before it dies to my other magic attackers. This leaves one lonely Undead Badger, which dies instantly in round 4.
Conclusion
There isn't too much to talk about here. My line up was very basic and as soon as I saw theirs I knew it was over. One thing to point out however, is the Sethropod in combination with the Wavesmith. It had 5(!) armor and 4 health for only 3 mana and lasted until the end, even though it was up against a way stronger Cursed Windeku. Had I played a more expensive tank like the Diemonshark for example, I wouldn't have been able to fit in all those damage dealers. This goes to show that low mana cost cards, without any abilities can still be very strong in the right circumstances. Since there's a lot of these low to mid mana battles in bronze you will need a cheap tank more often than not and because Cruel Sethropod is super cheap right now, I would definitely pick one up if you haven't already.
I'm very much looking forward to the next season when I finally will be playing with my leveled up cards back in silver, trying to get as many wins and new reward chests as possible and have some exciting battles to share with you guys.
Disclaimer
None of this is financial advice. This content is for educational purposes only and might fall out of date as both Splinterlands and the Crypto Market in general are subject to constant change.
Referrals
If you're not playing already create an account over at Splinterlands.com and hop right into battle
Thanks to Carrie Allen for the amazing Markdown Tutorial
and to Chris Roberts for this Thumbnail Tutorial
Background Thumbnail image is from Pexels
Free image editing software used Canva
Check out my 5 tips for new players series: Part I, Part II, Part III
And my $21 New Account Challenge
Hope you enjoyed the battle. Have a great day and until next time!
Pinkman45
