Share Your Battle - Mirror Mirror On The Wall, Which Reach Card Is The Best Of All?

The theme for the current "Share Your Battle" challenge is Flying Squid. To be honest, I hardly use Flying Squid even though I am a great fan of Water lineups. They are many Water Melee cards with Reach ability and I thought perhaps I would share my preferred choice, which is none other than Wave Runner!

Among the 3 cards below, I feel that Wave Runner seemed like the best of both worlds, striking a good balance between mana quota, high Melee damage, speed and HP.

Here's the Lore section for Wave Runner for reading interest:

The Wave Runner sees not one but two sets of prey. The first set of eyes scours the ocean for a tasty morsel. The second set of eyes looks above to the skies for unsuspecting flyers. With a powerful swipe of its tail the Wave Runner can leap out of the water and bring giant birds and dragons alike into the water where its body provides a natural fighting advantage. It's best to find land or make peace with your soul if you're unfortunate enough to face a Wave Runner.

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Battle Type & Team Lineup

Position	Card	Notes
Summoner	Kelya Frendul	The go-to Water Summoner in this case given the potential Melee lineups.
1	Diemonshark	I would very much prefer Legionnaire Alvar but rentals are so inflated so Diemonshark works fine.
2	Wave Runner	It is not really a high mana battle so Wave Runner coming in at 5 mana seems ok for the utilisation and I still have mana for the rest of the backline.
3	Deeplurker	This is one of the strongest yet underrated Water cards and it is almost a sure feature for my Water lineups.
4	Sand Worm	Sand Worm is always a risky bet because it could be let down by its poor speed, but with Equaliser, its HP receives a big boost.
5	Demented Shark	This is one of the best cards for Water Melee lineups as it provides an instant boost to the damage output of the entire team.
6	Torrent Fiend	Have run out of mana and Torrent Fiend slots in behind to act as a buffer and benefits from the Equaliser modifier too.

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• Pre Battle: Interesting lineup on the opposite side as my opponent didn't quite take advantage of the modifiers to plan the lineup. Anyway, Death magic cards are strong and let's see how the battle goes.
  

• Round 1: The opposing Harklaw proved to be a strong resistance as expected, but fortunately, there was no Demoralise from my opponent and I just needed my damage output to break down my opponent over time. That said, the opposing Ancient Lich was going to be tough one to handle later on.
  

• Round 2: The opposing Harklaw was down, and my Diemonshark fell as well. All the armour was pretty useless given the Magic damage from the Death cards. Ancient Lich's HP went up to 13 and it made me nervous.
  

• Round 3: Sand Worm successfully took out the last card with Sneak and Torrent Fiend continued to dish out 2 damage per round (it's a 0 mana card!).
  

• Round 4: I had one card advantage though the opposing Ancient Lich had 11 HP which might be challenging.
  

• Round 5: It's 3 versus 1! Fortunately, I had 3 attackers and Ancient Lich definitely would not be able to heal faster than the damage output from my team.
  

• Round 6: No misses and we got the victory!
  

If you are interested to watch the battle, you can find it here.

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Post Battle

Did my strategy work? I thought the main MVP for this battle was Demented Shark. Having an additional +1 Melee damage for all 6 cards in a Melee Mayhem battle proved to be the difference here, especially when I am playing with a full set of Level 1 cards.

Do I like Wave Runner? Yes I do, but it's probably more suitable for 20-40 mana battles. At high mana battles, I think I would rope in the likes of Djinn Oshannus or Axemaster.

Final thoughts? Water lineups are still my favourite because there are many ways to play them, be it Melee, Ranged or Magic.

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So that's all I have! What are your takeaways from this battle? Feel free to comment below, as I am always keen to learn and improve!

As always, thanks for reading and have a pleasant day ahead!

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