Share Your Battle: Nerissa Tridawn

Share Your Battle Challenge Featuring Nerissa Tridawn.

Once again it’s time for another Splinterlands Share Your Battle Challenge! And I am happy to be able to complete this challenge for the first time from the silver league (modern.) I’m in my first season playing in silver, so I’m still learning the ropes a bit, but I’m managing well enough to put up a good fight!

This week's SYBC feature is Nerissa Tridawn. This water-splinter, 9-mana cost, epic card from the Chaos Legion set packs a powerful magical punch dishing out three damage points even at level one. That’s enough firepower to even punch through the void ability and still deliver 2 points of damage. This has made the trident wielder one of the cards I try to utilize when I suspect I will be facing the brutal Djinn Oshannus.

In addition to the substantial magical attack, the entry-level Tridawn comes equipped with two speed points and a whopping nine points of health, but no armor. Her high health helps ensure that Nerissa sticks around for a few rounds so she can keep unleashing her magical haymakers.

Looking at Nerissa Tridawn’s level-progression chart we find that this team-water enchantress notches up her magical attack to a devastating five-power when maxed out at level six. Further, her health also notches up to a very robust 11 points. The Tridawn’s advancement concludes with a single point of speed that is gained at level 3. What is of particular note is that Nerissa pays for the high attack and health totals by sacrificing abilities. At no point does this card ever acquire any abilities at all.

This match was played in the silver league and allowed for 60 mana and only the fire splinter was excluded. Beyond that, the match called for standard rules. As previously noted, this is my first season in the silver leagues and one of the challenges I am facing is building lineups for the matches with higher mana than was ever allowed in bronze. While I have a bunch of solid 30-mana teams already in my memory, I am still working my way through my choices in higher mana matches. Worse yet, my usual choice for these higher mana matches is a fire team lead by Conqueror Jacek, but fire is the only splinter that these rules exclude.

My opponent hadn’t played any high mana matches in their past five, so I didn’t have much of a clue how to proceed. But since these higher level matches allow for the greater power of legendary summoners, I decided to take my airdropped Possibilus the Wise out for a spin.

I build my strategy based on the abilities granted by Possibilus and the mana granted by the match. I wanted to include a beefy, melee-attacking tank and secondary tank.The secondary tank would gain reach and both tanks would gain trample. In support of my tanks, I would use the taunt-toting Wave Brood, to draw incoming attacks and give my tanks time to score kills and utilize their tramples. Further, I wanted to use the Deeplurker. Again, this heavy-hitting, melee-attacking opportunist would gain the trample ability making it that much more deadly.

For the rest of the team, I would let the amount of manna remaining be my guide.

As already noted, I chose Possibilus the Wise for my summoner. I am finding the legendary summoners to be much more useful in the silver league than they were in bronze due to the frequency of high mana matches in the higher league. Although I am still learning the silver-league ropes, with the 60-mana cap on this match, a legendary summoner seemed to be called for.

For my tank, I selected the Diemonshark. While it is true that this card already comes with the trample ability, its high armor, speed and health make it a formidable tank, and I believe, the best option available to me.

As my secondary tank, I slotted in the Serpent of Eld. With its summoner-granted reach ability, this sea-snake delivers quick and powerful hits from the second position and stands an excellent chance of evading hits once it advances to the front lines.

Lining up third, I utilized the Deeplurker. As previously noted, this submarine stalker pairs very well with my wiseguy summoner. If one 3-attack-power, opportunistic strike is good, a second such attack is even better after a kill. The Deeplurker is deadly on its own but giving it the trample ability is that much better.

In fourth position I recruited this week’s featured fighter, Nerissa Tridawn. I admit that this choice was primarily made to use up mana points, but if you’ve got the mana to burn is this stout sorceress of the seas ever a bad choice to have on your team?

Receiving the penultimate placement is the Coastal Nymph. Again, this selection is chewing up nine of the available mana points. But with a three-point, ranged, scatter-shot attack, this costly archer has a chance of striking anywhere in the opponent’s soft underbelly and with luck, can be deadly.

As a rearguard, I used the Wave Brood. With standard high health and an additional summoner boost in this regard, the Brood will use its taunt ability to draw as much enemy fire as it can withstand.

My opponent sent out an earth team summoned by Immortalis. A legendary summoner showdown! I didn’t see much of that in the bronze league and don’t really know if this is good or bad for me.

Here is the field with all the buffs and debuffs applied.

At first glance I am not discouraged. My tanks are faster than anything my foe has on the board. I should have the opposing bear dispatched in round two, and in that time I will lose my taunt and perhaps my Diemonshark, if the opposing front two never miss. Thereafter, I like my chances with my heavier hitters and evasive tank. But evasion is a wildcard. If I get a few misses with my Serpent, I should be golden. Otherwise… not so golden at all.

I’m not super happy about facing both void and shatter. On the plus side, my only magic attacker will still do two damage per shot, and unless it is my opponent’s magic attacker that strips my armor, I won’t be giving up more than one hit to my Diemonshark with the current lineups anyway.

You can see how the whole played out for yourself here.

Round one went pretty well. My Deeplurker scored a hit against my flying foe, and by a stroke of luck, my scatter shot targeted the Devil as well. But the archer’s shot was a miss. The targeting was lucky, because any other target (excepting the Bear) would have at best stripped armor that would be lost when the opposing tank fell anyway. Targeting the tank would have been best, but the only other target where the shot mattered was the Gargoya Devil. Unfortunately hitting the 33% (2 in 6) stoke of good luck in targeting was erased by a 35% stroke of bad luck in not getting the hit. So, it’s a wash and about how things would probably have turn out no matter which opponent was targeted.

With round two ready to begin, the situation is pictured above.

I’m still happy with the position. Next round will begin with the enemy tank falling and the Deeplurker getting a trample. Further, there is a 50% chance that Arkimus falls before he acts in round two which would save a strike against my Diemonshark.

As an aside, my trample attack will not strip the Pixie of all its armor. Am I the only person who thinks this is an incorrect result? Although my Deeplurker's attack will bring the opposing tank down to zero health, the armor buff will not be removed until after the trample attack. In essence, the dead Bear is still giving the armor buff to its team. Oh, well.

Round two was not particularly friendly to me. Arkims acted before my Deeplurker, putting my tank on the brink. My position, which is pictured above, would be much more comfortable if my tank had the three extra health points, but it’s still not awful. If I can get an evade or two from my Serpent I will be well positioned to take out my enemy’s low-health center pieces with a weakened tank and my backlines.

Round three was nothing short of a disaster!! Not only did my Deeplurker miss its attack at the Gargoya Devil (25% chance to miss,) but all of the opposition attackers hit my Serpent (0.65 x 0.55 x 0.55 = 20% chance to hit all three times!)

This leaves me in the desperate position above. Round four will see my Deeplurker bring down the pixie, and I don’t think I have a chance of a victory if the trample attack misses the Gargoa Devil. This will likely be the Deeplurker’s last attack as it should fall to 1 health point this round and will be targeted by faster attackers at the start of round five.

I don’t see many paths to victory. But I can’t predict all the ways my archer’s scatter shots will fall either.

Finally some good fortune. My trample attack hits, and my Nymph targets, hits and fells the Gargoya Devil. That’s going to save Nerissa two points of damage next round and that might be huge. Sure enough my Deeplurker is a dead monster floating about to be shot down by the Vampiric Blossom.

The end is in sight. Next round my Tridawn will take two or three points of damage from my opponent’s front two but this will be their final attacks because our feature acting before either in round six will take down the Queen Mycelia leaving the beefed up Seedsmith unable to fire.

But exactly where the match stands will depend on what happens with my Coastal Nymph’s attack.

Of course I get the worst case! My archer stripped the armor off of the Vampiric Blossom. A waste of an attack since when the Queen falls that armor will disappear anyway. So rather than the opposing magic user already down, or the Seedsmith damaged we get the position above.

Team green is still in the game, but even with earth getting plenty of breaks in this match I'm still in the game, too!

Now we can see that after Nerissa attacks she will have five points of health. Because the only attacker on the other side deals two points of damage, it will take three attacks for my foe to win the match. In that time, my Coastal critter will attack three times and my Tridawn twice more. That is 13 potential points of damage. The Seedsmith will have 11 health points after scavenging the dead Queen Mycelia. So, I win if I either concentrate all of my fire at the Seedsmith, or if my archer attacks and hits the Blossom twice. If my Nymph attacks the Seedsmith exactly twice, I lose. Likewise, if I attack the Blossom two or three times but fail to hit it twice, I also lose.

I think this is close to a toss up. I'm still in the game on my third shot as long as I don't target both enemies but miss the Blossom. And that should only happen 5% of the time. The other 95% of the time I have already won or have a 50% shot of targeting the correct opponent and a 95% chance of hitting on average. That puts me north of 45% so very close to 50/50.

The die is cast! The Nymph’s first attack targets the Blossom and hits. Now I must hit the Blossom again or I lose. Having not missed the Blossom, I am not the favorite to win, having a 75% chance to target the Blossom at least one more time and a 90% chance of hitting when I do.

And the very next round my Coastal Nymph wins me the match. The opposing Seedsmith has lots of health left but it can’t attack, so it’s all over but the mop up.

The RNG played a rather large role in this match. That is often the case when evasive combatants or the scattershot ability is in use. Through this match both my opponent and I had some good breaks and some bad breaks as well.

But in the ebb and flow of the match, it seemed a few really bad breaks put my team in grave danger, and then a few good breaks bailed them out. Since it took bad breaks to endanger me, I think my team was the favorite in this match, but no matter how much of a favorite a player is in Splinterlands, they need to beware of the RNG!

As for Nerissa Tridawn… There is no doubt she was pivotal in my being able to pull this match out. Without her high health and steady stream of of two-point magical attacks my team would not have been about to rally to victory in this match.