SHARE YOUR BATTLE Weekly Challenge! MOLTEN ASH GOLEM

Hello there, this is my entry to the "Share Your Battle Weekly Challenge!". If you want to participate, click here. You can participate even if you don't have the theme card.

MOLTEN ASH GOLEM

THEME CARD:
*EDITION*	CHAOS
*RARITY*	RARE
*ELEMENT*	FIRE
*LEVEL*	1
*MANA COST*	6 POINTS
*ATTACK*	RANGE
*ABILITIES*	CLOSE RANGE

Molten Ash Golem is a ranged monster but comes with a lot of health and a special ability named: close range which allows it to attack even from the first position. These above-mentioned factors ironically make it a good tank to absorb heavy hits at the front.

It is rare to have a ranged monster be used as a tank but in this case, it can be used. Let's see how it performs from that position.

My Lineup

This is my lineup for the battle

Position	Summoner/Monsters	Abilities
Summoner	Tarsa	+1 melee damage, +1 health
Position 1	Molten Ash Golem	Close Range
Position 2	Radiated Brute	Reach
Position 3	Serpentine Spy	Opportunity
Position 4	Tenji Striker	Sneak
Position 5	Lava Spider	Snipe

This was a 26-mana battle and it was a lot to play with and experiment with as well. I choose the Tarsa as my summoner, she gave my friendly monster +1 melee damage and +1 health to all.

In the first position, as I said above, I used the Molten Ash Golem. It was a good candidate for a tank in this composition. Although it has just 1 range attack and 1 speed still was helpful in this battle not only with its defensive capabilities but with its offensive ability as well.

Next came the Radiated Brute, it is one of my favourite units in fire splinter to be placed in the second position. First, because of its reach ability and secondly, due to its +2 melee damage which then will be increased to 3 melee damage.

In the next position, I placed the Serpentine Spy, a quick slashing melee unit that has very low health but good attacking strength. Its opportunity ability helps in eliminating the weakest monsters early in the battle.

Next was the Tenji Striker, a beast of a unit with greatly balanced stats in all three aspects (damage, speed and health). It comes equipped with a sneak ability that allows it to target from the end of the enemy lineup. This along with Serpentine Spy helps in surprising opponents as most weaker units are placed at the end of the lineup, at least at my level.

Last but not least came the Lava Spider, another ranged monster but with a snipe ability that targets the monsters from the second position onwards. It is very useful for attacking those weaker monsters that are protected sometimes by beefy tank units.

My Strategy

My strategy was pretty straightforward, first I want to use a nice tank and Moten Ash Golem fulfilled that duty very well. Next, I wanted a melee unit that can get benefits from my summoner and also can be used as a form of a secondary tank if the worst happens to my tank.

With all other units, my focus was to increase the attacking strength and add a surprise element. I implemented this strategy by using monsters with abilities like opportunity, sneak and snipe.

I will share my battle here, which I have uploaded to YouTube.

ROUND 1

While I used a mix of melee and ranged monsters my opponent went with an out-magic attack. They used Regal Peryton in the first position, but the real tank was in the second position, it was the Mycelic Slipspawn. Round 1 saw heavy punches exchanged by both teams and in the process, my Molten Ash Golem gets eliminated early while they have all standing still but much weaker.

ROUND 2

Round 2 was in many ways a decisive round where my monsters eliminated two important units from the enemy lineup and left the other two much weaker while I had no causality in this round. After this round, it was a much easier task to leave in the next round.

ROUND 3

As expected with this round, it was an easy win. Both the Regal Peryton and the Khmer Princess were defeated easily and I won this round and the match was comfortable at the end.

Did your strategy work? What will you try differently next time?

Yes, my strategy worked well here. Although Molten Ash Golem doesn't have any extra armour its huge health helped in soaking heavy beating at the start of the battle and my monsters from the back did their job perfectly.

Do you like the Molten Ash Golem? Why or why not?

Yes, in some cases but not that much in others. I don't personally use the ranged units as much as I like to use mages or melee units. Still, this card has a lot of health and can be used as a primary or in some cases, as a secondary tank. It will excel more in double and triple sniping composition and maybe be less useful in low mana cost battles.

Let me know your thoughts about the card as well and how you use it in your battles.

Splinterlands is a popular NFT-based play2earn game. If you have not joined the game yet, then you are missing a lot of fun. You can join by using my referal link.

Thanks for reading...

Until Next time.

Few Notes:

Text dividers are from freeztag.
The banner and card image are from @splinterlands.