Steem Monsters - One Week of Battles and My Water Team

I've been diving a bit more into Steem Monsters battles since last week. Still experimenting and seeing how the game mechanics work in practice, and each cards' usefulness. I personally find it cool whenever I get matched against someone whose username I recognize!

Image source: screenshot from a battle replay on Steemmonsters.com against @freyman

I eventually got confident enough to face the ranked battles, and brave enough to purchase a couple of alpha cards on the market to push one of my cards up one level.

So far, my most successful team was very similar to the one that crushed me in my first battle, except that I switched one of the Monsters for another magic user because the Summoner gives a +1 magic bonus to the whole team, and I wanted to get the most out of this benefit. The team consists of:

• Alric Stormbringer (Summoner): summons water element Monsters, and gives +1 magic bonus to magic users.
• Spineback Turtle: has more Health than average and also some Armor, which means it can take a few more hits.
• Medusa: magic user also with more Health than average.
• Mischievous Mermaid: another magic user, a bit stronger than Medusa but doesn't have much Health.
• Sabre Shark: I only use it occasionally when the Mana cap allows. It's neither strong or durable, but has the Sneak ability to attack the last Monster instead of the first one, and can be of help sometimes.
• Crustacean King: has the Tank Heal ability, and heals whoever is in the first position. At first, this was all it did, until it reached level 3 and became able to attack.

Only after battling and getting a better idea of the stats and abilities that sound useful to me, I began combining the cards I had and leveling them up. Most of the cards in my team are still level 1. The exceptions are the Alric Stormbringer (level 2), the Sabre Shark (level 2) and the Crustacean King (level 3). I combined the two only Alric Stormbringer cards and Sabre Sharks I had, and they became level 2. Same with the Crustacean King, but then I realized it would be able to attack from level 3 onward and become a bit more useful, although I'd need two more cards. After much deliberation, I decided to take the plunge and bought two alpha Crustacean King cards from the market. Alpha cards are worth more XP and level up easier. My thought was that since they're out of production, they'll become rarer and more expensive the more time passes. The two cards together ended up costing me 0.38. I remember having seen these cards at around half the price months ago, but I'd never have guessed I'd ever need them. I had thought I could do with the ones I already had, but I was wrong. Ah well.

The Crustacean King has only 1 point of ranged attack. The attacks are weak, but all the 1s of damage add up, and can even be the deciding factor in a match. For example, the match when I faced a team with the same cards as mine (except for the levels).

The teams that give me trouble the most are the ones with the Weaken ability, which reduces all my Monsters' Melee and Health by 1. This means the Spineback Turtle's 1 Melee becomes 0 and it can't deal any damage. Sometimes I also lose the Crustacean King to an opponent with the Sneak ability (attacks the Monster at the back instead of the one at the front). And I also tend to lose to teams with higher levels, of course.

So far, there doesn't seem to be battles that give XP yet, but at the end of the season (I think it's at the end of the month), we may get rewards depending on our rank. At least for this season, the rewards are beta booster packs. As I don't have much STEEM/SBD to spend on booster packs, it would be good to win some packs. But as my rank went up, I began getting matched against teams at higher levels and with better abilities, and since then I've been losing more often than not... I can only hope that my rank won't drop too much, and that I can win at least one pack at the end of the season...