The ancient behemoth rises from the depths of the abyss. It's massive shadow sounds the death knell of the doomed ship. As it emerges, the sea sucks everyone in like a Black Hole. 🦑⛈️🌊⚫

(Instead of the Djinn Apprentice, I've decided to write about the Kraken. I'd just managed to get a decent rental price on this amazing card this week and have been using it with great results!)

We've all heard stories about the legendary Kraken, a massive beast that's an unstoppable force of nature. I would not want to be a sailor or passenger aboard the unfortunate ship that crosses paths with such a creature of legend. Even people living on land, near the seacoast, will probably be crushed by the tidal waves of such a beast emerging from the depths of the ocean.😰

The theme of this week's Share Your Battle Challenge - I give you the KRAKEN! 🦑⛈️🌊⚫

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They say that in the recent shifting of the Planet that has come with the Untamed, great schisms were opened on the floors of the seas. Through these new openings emerged new monsters from the core beyond, larger than anything even the most traveled Azmaré pirate has ever seen. The Kraken is one such beast, and one that occasionally swims as high as the water’s surface. Sailors who have seen it say that it approaches from beneath like a great storm cloud, somehow darkening everything around it with its massive shadow. With the swipe of a single tentacle, the Kraken can capsize the mightiest ships as if they were a child’s bath toy. The Kraken is so huge that special Gloridax sorcery was used to ensure that its projected essence in tournament battle was only a small portion of its actual size. If this precaution had not been taken, summoning the Kraken would have crushed every spectator in the arena.

🦑⛈️🌊⚫From Splinterlands Lore on THE KRAKEN🦑⛈️🌊⚫

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The Kraken is a Legendary card released way back in 2020 before I even started playing. It has definitely found it's place in many Water decks given its sheer power. At LEVEL 1, it has 4 ⚔️ATTACK⚔️ and 4 🏃🏻SPEED🏃🏻, with 3 🛡️ARMOR🛡️ and 14 ❤️HEALTH❤️. It has the TAUNT ability. It's summoning cost is also a massive 12 🧪MANA🧪.

These stats alone make the Kraken one of the strongest units in the game. It's main purpose is to tank anything which can be thrown it's way. It's high attack and high speed also ensures it'll dish out massive damage to anything in it's path.

The Kraken's true strength lies in it's sheer power and it's TAUNT ability. All attacks are drawn to it, and until it's massive health pool is depleted, all other units remain safe under it's protection. This could make all the difference if the battle comes down to the wire where the slightest advantage is the fine line between victory or defeat! 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

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The release of Chaos Legion has given the Water splinter another card with TAUNT at level 1 in the form of the Wave Brood. I would however consider it as vastly inferior to The Kraken. It has less of every stat across the board, and does not have the sheer power and speed The Kraken has. This ensures that the Kraken is in a league of it's own and will definitely have it's own place here in all Water decks. This is definitely what I'd consider game changing! 😱😱😱

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📊Card Stats by Level📊

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As we can see here, the main purpose of the Kraken is to be what I would call "Massively Overpowered Main Tank" 🤣. However, every level does NOT improve any stats at all BUT it gets new abilities that make it an even more fearsome tank. At max level, it becomes as much of an offensive monster as it is a tank itself 😱🛡️⚔️.

Price wise however, this card is definitely out of most players' price range. A level normal version of this card will cost about USD50 while the Gold Foil version will set you back anywhere from 1k to 3k USD! 💰🤑💸

Overall, the Kraken's amazing stats and it's TAUNT ability make it an almost "must use" card all the time in your deck if you have the good fortune to own one.

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📝Important Rulesets Rundown📝

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Here, I detail the list of combat rulesets that may affect the Kraken.

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	🤔💭✅❌🤔💭❓❓❓
	👍🏻 Melee and Ranged attacks will never miss
	👍🏻 Gives itself more protection. Always good, especially for a unit whose purpose is to take hits.
	👎🏻 Loses all it's abilities. But that doesn't really affect it's massive stats though.
	👍🏻 Ranged units can't be used.
	N.A. Ranged units can attack from the front.
	👎🏻 will be able to last longer than almost anyone with it's health/armor though.
	👎🏻 With its really high HP, it will end up benefitting all other units instead.
	👍🏻 Able to attack the weakest unit from anywhere.
	👍🏻 Even summoning cost
	👍🏻 Deals lots of damage with blast and it's high speed gives it a good chance of dodging the attacks in the first place.
	N.A
	N.A
	Situational. Could add more damage if the opponent's front unit is stunned
	👍🏻 Improve it's own survivability
	👎🏻 Only Melee units are affected.
	👎🏻 Only units which cost 4 or less mana can be used.
	👎🏻 Legendary cards cannot be used.
	👍🏻 Magic units cannot be used
	👍🏻 Gives melee the positional attack advantage enjoyed by ranged/magic
	👎🏻 Will die to poison. But at least it is likely to outlast everyone else.
	👎🏻 Only odd summoning cost units can be used.
	👎🏻 It's fast speed makes it slow
	👎🏻 Only common/rare cards can be used.
	👍🏻 Doesn't really depend on Summoner abilities
	👍🏻 Enrage works out well for units who can take a few hits
	N.A
	👍🏻 All units abilities stay intact
	👍🏻 Allows melee to attack even if it's not in the first slot.
	👍🏻 It is NOT a Neutral unit.
	👎🏻 All ranged/magic units have the Snipe ability.
	👎🏻 Loses all it's armor.
	👍🏻 Only Melee units can be used
	👍🏻 Magic attacks hit armour first.

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⚔️🛡My Battle Showcase🛡⚔️

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Let me present a battle I fought recently in which I used the Kraken. My opponent used the DEATH splinter while I went for the WATER splinter (with Water as my choice). 💀 VS 💧

At first glance, it would seem like my opponent had quite a HUGE advantage over me.

• He had a level 5 Summoner 🤯😱😵

• He was just about using all max level units for his Summoner level.

• A level 2 Legendary Harlaw and Fallen Specter, level 3 Epics and a level 5 Silent Shavi!

• His units even brought along with them a SILENCE and DEMORALIZE debuff which affected all Magic and Physical attacks.

Clearly, in terms of levels I was completely out levelled 😜🤣. Would I be able to turn the tide of battle against such an opponent then? Victory or defeat would lie in the small details.

I would say that the Kraken was DEFINITELY the MVP of this match, having played it's role in turning the tide of battle. It did what it was supposed to do by tanking and holding it's ground right at the forefront of the battlefield! Not only that, it's TAUNT ability sucked ALL the attacks in while my triple heal/repair team kept restoring it back to full health. All the while, it was also chipping off at the opponent with it's huge amounts of damage.

This ensured that the other units could eventually wear down the opponent until victory was achieved! 🏆🏆🏆

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LINK TO FIGHT WITH MY KRAKEN

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👯‍♀️👯👯‍♂️LINEUP CHOICES👯‍♀️👯👯‍♂️

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1st CARD SLOT

The Kraken takes the role of the Main Tank in the first slot here. It will be the most important role since the backline will fall if the Main Tank goes.

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2nd CARD SLOT

Deeplurker fills the 2nd slot. This is also another hard hitting unit with OPPORTUNITY whose purpose is to target the weakest units on the opponent's team. In a worst case scenario, it has a decent amount of HP to be a backup tank too.

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3rd CARD SLOT

Creeping Ooze occupies the erd slot. It's purpose is to further slow the opponent's units. It's main drawback is it's low HP, and therefore, it sits behind here for protection.

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4th CARD SLOT

The Scavo Hireling fills the 4th slot. It's REPAIR ability will allow it to further increase the survivability of the Tank by restoring armour every turn.

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5th CARD SLOT

The Merdaali Guardian occupies the 5th slot. It's purpose is to HEAL the Tank. It's main drawback is it's low HP, and therefore, it sits behind here for protection.

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6th CARD SLOT

The Crustacean King occupies the last slot. It's purpose is also to HEAL the Tank. It's main drawback is it's low HP, and therefore, it sits behind here for protection.

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⚔️🛡Battle Action Report🛡⚔️

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As you can see, both of us fielded very different decks from different splinters. The opponent's team was full of damage dealers while I went for a completely different "outlast" strategy.

💀 DEATH 💀 VS 💧 WATER 💧

My opponent used Harklaw as his main tank in the 1st slot which is an AMAZING choice, given how suitable it is as a tank with the SHIELD ability. ALL his DPS units were aligned up in the next few slots after that. The Silent Shavi, Phantom Soldier, Fallen Specter, Twisted Jester occupied postions 2 to 5. The Shadowy Presence was the only non DPS unit and it sat in the last slot, presumably to protect against Sneak attacks. My opponent was clearly very confident in all the debuffs he had available to his team. 😱

My choice of the Main Tank was The Kraken in the first slot, followed by my only other real DPS in the form of the Deeplurker in the 2nd position. Between the Kraken's Taunt and the Deeplurker's Opportunity, I had hoped to grind out a slow win. The Creeping Ooze sat in 3rd place and it's sole job was to reduce the speed of my opponent. Hopefully this would give me that first hit to take down his weakest units before they could attack me. The remaining slots were occupied by my TRIPLE HEALER team comprising of the Scavo Hireling, Merdaali Guardian and Crustacean King. ❤️‍🩹

The battle started out with all our units just duking it out pound for pound. It was an average mana ruleset with just 32 mana as the limit. The ruleset for this game was STAMPEDE. Both of us managed to fill out our mana limits.

• The first wave showed how strong the Kraken was when it took the entire salvo of hits from the enemy without flinching. My triple healers than topped up it's health and armour for the next round. 💪

• My Deeplurker also managed to take out his weakest unit, the Fallen Specter, thus removing the DEMORALIZE debuff from my team! 👍

• The 2nd round was pretty uneventful as both sides traded blows with no deaths.

• The 3rd round was where my team started to get a huge advantage. My Kraken drew in all the attacks with it's TAUNT while my Deeplurker managed to take out another of my opponent's DPS-ers, the Twisted Jester.

• With the opponent's DPS suffering a huge drop off, my Triple Healers could suddenly completely restore my Kraken to FULL HEALTH AND ARMOUR at the end of the round! 😱❤️🛡

• It was all over at this point as there was nothing the opponent could do anymore. My Kraken was completely unstoppable and they couldn't even scratch it at this point.

Talk about doing WAY MORE than it was supposed to!!! 😱🤯🥳 All I expected was for it to absorb the main bulk of damage from all those high damaging units before dying. Yet it did more than that and lasted through the entire battle by dodging almost every single attack. It even dealt out large amounts of damage on it's own. It even ended the match with FULL HEALTH AND ARMOUR! 💯

Surely that made it the Man of the Match for this battle, punching way above it's weight!

Well as you can see here in this GIF of my battle, the results were pretty good! 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

This was truly an eye opener! 😁🏆

Slowly, but surely, I wore down the opponent's team and the match was won handily with ALL of my units still left standing with ZERO damage taken. It was a PERFECT VICTORY! My team selection proved to be the edge I needed to eventually overpower my opponent. 💪🏻

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🔮🔮🔮Hindsight is 20/20🔮🔮🔮

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Would I have done anything differently? 🤔 This might have seemed like a match that would prove to be a challenge at the start because of the opponent's superior levels. However, with my PERFECT VICTORY with ZERO casualties, IF I had to use the same cards again, there would be no better lineup than what I had already used for the match. Any other combination MIGHT have resulted in a loss for me. I'm really satisfied with the results against such a worthy opponent. 🏆🥇

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💭🧐💭Ending Thoughts💭🧐💭

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I definitely can appreciate The Kraken and it's strengths. This is one of those cards which are very strong if surrounded with the proper team. The role it brings to the battlefield will give a player the edge in squeezing out every tiny advantage to get the win. 👍🏻

For any players looking to try out The Kraken, I hope this article has given you some insight into its potential. 😉

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To any new players who wish to explore the world of Splinterlands, do feel free to sign up with my REFERRAL LINK 😊.

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