Kulu Swimhunters are members of a race of squid-like creatures that hunt in packs. They use their multiple tentacles to wield all manner of projectiles, to include spears, coral, and even fish. They are very aggressive and are known to traverse oceans, lakes, and rivers, killing for sport and leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. They do not value gold or glory and will ally themselves with whoever promises the greatest opportunity to hunt and kill.

Hi everyone, welcome back to my Splinterlands weekly battle challenge. This week we have Kulu Swimhunter as our main theme. Honestly I think our @Splinterlands developer team has mis-treated this squid monster wrongly. Take a look at Kulu's relatives below:

Every Squids in Splinterlands have Blind Ability, so can anyone tell me why Kulu Swimhunter doesn't have it? 😅

Battle Preparation

Ok now our battle preparation. I was looking for a Little League rulesets (max 4 mana monsters) when suddenly I got this battle. The rulesets gave me an idea about how I could showcase our KULU SWIMHUNTER perfomance.

• EXPLOSIVE WEAPONRY ~ All Monsters have the Blast ability.
• KEEP YOUR DISTANCE ~ Monsters with Melee attack may not be used in battles.
• 48 MANA With this amount of mana, having a team of 6 monsters is a must.

We talk the second ruleset first, Keep Your Distance. No Melee Monsters here. So the battle would only consist of Range and Magic. Now the important one, EXPLOSIVE WEAPONRY. With this ruleset my priority would be like these:

1. I needed fast team. I wanted all my monsters to hit first, or atleast they could make any attack before getting killed
2. A couple or more big monsters in front. Blast damage could kill anyone behind the targeted monsters
3. I threw out healing, focus on the damage I could deliver. It's about killing opponent fast

So here was my simple lineup:

Position	Card	Ability	Plan and Strategy
Summoner	Kelya Frendul	+1 Speed, +1 Armor	There were a couple options I had, first using Alric which would made damage from Oshannus and Nerissa became lethal and so would the blast damage. But I sticked to my plan, chose the second option, Kelya due to speed.
Main Tank	Kelp Initiate	none	This 2 mana no attack tank was a great choice. I needed a meat tank in front, and save up mana to pick big monsters in back.
Second	Djinn Oshannus	Void	The first real tank, Kelp was just a meat wall. His 5 speed was the main reason for the selection
Third	Nerisa Tridawn	none	3 Magic damage and a hugh health point. Hopefully she could withstand blast damage when Oshannus became opponent sniper's target
Fourth	Gargoya Devil	Flying, Close Range	3 range damage, 3 speed
Fifth	Venari Wavesmith	Protect	The only support I brought. She could deal 2 magic damage with 3 speed
The Last	Kulu Swimhunter	none	Our main actor for this week. This Squid had 3 speed and 5 health, not bad for 4 mana monster. Let see if it would work well or not

notes : Actually I made a fatal error that time, I didn't realize my Axemaster was gone due to rental expiration. Gargoya Devil was the subtitute, but in EXPLOSIVE WEAPONRY ruleset, Axemaster was extraordinary powerful

HERE COMES THE BATTLE!!!

If you want to see the battle directly, you can see it directly here:
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_d6c233e66de68f949c2cf39fcc7a95d5&ref=dewabrata

It was a Fire vs Water, My opponent chose the mighty Yodin Zaku as his summoner. I didn't know why he did that, we already had EXPLOSIVE WEAPONRY ruleset. There was similarities in our tactic, that both of us put big monsters in front

Round 1

• The game started as both party buffing and debuffing their monsters and opponent's monsters.
• My opponent had a total 12 range damage and after got buffed, it became 18 damages.
• I had 7 magic damage and 5 range damage, combined it became 12 damage per turn
• My Kelp Initiate managed to dodge a couple of attacks, It survived the first round.
• My magic attacks killed their Lava Launcher. It's their biggest lost

Round 2

• I lost my tank, Kelp finally got killed... However they lost their second tank, Molten Ash Golem.

Round 3 and 4

• My gargoya devil killed Cornealus. It's a game over

Battle Discussion

Both of us on that battle seemed to agree that having big monster in front was one of the key strategy. However there were 3 decisive points that made my opponent lost badly.

• First was my strategy Focusing on my speed. During the first 2 round, we could see I delivered all my damage first, then after opponent died, they couldn't fight back at their full power.
• Second was about the depth of defense. Opponent main defense was the heal that Cornealus had in the middle. Cornealus was hard to kill, once it got killed, there wasn't anymore defense they had. Meanwhile I had two defense, first was Kelp Initiate in front, it managed to absorb some of opponent attacks. second defense was Venari Wavesmith. It's protect ability guarded all the monsters in my team.
• Line up and selection. My opponent biggest mistake was letting his Lava Launcher killed first. Meanwhile my team managed to work in perfect, even Kulu Swimhunter which should be my weakest, managed to perform well on par with the others. Never let your main or sole damage dealer dies first!

INSIGHT ON KULU SWIMHUNTER

Last battle challenge, I said that I disliked Radiated Brute. This time I will say differently. Kulu Swimhunter is one of my favorite in Water Element Chaos Legion. Favorite is not in term that I often use it, in fact I rarely use Kulu in my team. Technically it's not strong, weak for sure and not much different with Radiated Brute, however I often find situation where Kulu comes very handy. Here some facts about it that I like:

1. It has 4 mana cost. We can use this monster during Little League Ruleset (4 mana or below). It's stats is good for small mana monster.
2. It's cheap. The first Chaos Legion Gold Foil card I have bought was Kulu Swimhunter GF.
3. Kulu can follow many strategy. If you need speed, it has good speed. Attack damage is so so, not good but not the lowest. It has good health point, you can consider to place it for meat wall behind.

The weakness? as I said above, Kulu isn't a powerful monster. You can not put any strategy focusing on it. It will come in handy later, after you set your main strategy and put in your core monsters.

Thank you for visiting my weekly battle challenge, don't forget to leave your comments and feedback below. There are credits in this post for these people:

• splinterlands : for holding weekly battle challenge events
• carrieallen : for ultimate markdown tutorial
• flauwy : for wonderful divider art