Splinterlands Social Media Challenge!

First of all - Happy New Year! May it bring a lot of love, joy, happiness and crypto pumps! ;-)

So, the Hall of Legends sale for the last two cards - Warborn Shaman and Fizbo The Fabulous started yesterday a couple of hours before the start of the new year.

<div class="text-justify"Let's have a look at their stats and the levels which are worth getting enough BCX for.

The first one is the Warborn Shaman:

She is a 10-mana Water/Death Unit. At level one she starts with 3 Magic Attack, 2 Speed, 4 Armor and 6 Health as well as 1 ability - Void Armor. At level two she gains an additional ability - Impede. Next at level 4 she gains her third ability - Ambush. Then at level 6 she gains her 4th ability - Poison. And finally maxed, at level 8, she gains her 5th ability - Heal. The rest of the stats at max level are as follows: 3 Magic Attack, 3 Speed, 4 Armor and 8 Health. So, this card will be sold for 3000 credits/DEC per copy (as all previous rare ones) and a max card (from the shop) will cost 345,000 DEC. While it looks like a cool card, I am currently unsure how well it will fit in the meta we have right now. 10 Mana is on the expensive side, and also makes her susceptible to Giant Killer. On the other hand she does look like a pretty good unit for the Wands Out ruleset. Maybe her position in the team would be optimal as an off-tank or at the back of the line-up to protect against enemy sneak action. Still a lot of other cards can perform these duties for a lot less mana. Her Heal at max level is definitely attractive though, however, I think that a level 6 copy could also do most of the work expected from her as long as she's not supposed to be taking a lot of damage. On 2nd thought Heal might be a bit un-synergistic with Void Armor. Maybe Repair could have been a better option?

The next one is Fizbo the Fabulous:

Fizbo the Fabulous is a 6-mana Legendary Fire/Earth unit. At level 1 he starts with the following stats: 2 Magic Attack, 2 Speed, 1 Armor and 4 Health and Tank Heal. Even at level 1 I think he's a must-have card since he brings Tank Heal to the Fire time in the Modern Meta. But wait there's more! At level 2 he gains his signature ability (and newly introduced to the game) Shroud of Reflection Shield - At the start of battle, adjacent units gain Reflection Shield. That's huge in a Tofu-donimated meta and a great way to counter Thorns. I can see Fizbo becoming a basically must-play in most Tofu vs Tofu battles. At level 3 he gains Affliction which is always useful. And finally at level 4 - maxed - he gains a additional point in the damage department for a total of 3 Magic Damage. My initial thoughts of this card are that at least a level 3 will be a must-have (even if you don't enjoy its art ;) ). I am not sure that getting 5 more BCX for an additional point in Magic Damage is justified. Maybe if it gained 1 more ability?

Before the battle, let's also have a look at how the Auction House card is going:

It's been going great so far I must say. 52 cards have been sold so far and these sales have accumulated a total of 83M DEC. The price of the RF cards has been trending downwards (as expected) as Azircon has begun setting lower floors for them so currently most of the copies sell for about 900K DEC. I expect the price to go even lower until probably the 75th card or so and then as the end of the sale approaches we could see some people jumping on the train for the last few copies and driving the price up.

This time around I will be showcasing a battle featuring Shades of Gray ruleset. Let us see what this ruleset does before we get into the nitty-gritty of the line-up and the battle itself. The Shades of Gray ruleset is very straight-forward - Only Neutral Units may be used in battles.

Now that we've got a good idea of what the Shades of Gray ruleset practically does, let's see now how it can be effectively utilized.

I normally describe a couple of options here if it ruleset allows for some variation but this one in particular is pretty clear, so here's in short:

On the screenshot above I have listed all the Neutral cards currently available in the Modern Format. However, bear in mind that in just 5 days we will be getting a ton of new soulbound reward cards (43) and some of them will definitely be Neutral, so this list will very soon expand. I have divided the Neutral cards by attack type - melee, ranged, magic and no attack so you can have a better idea what the distribution of these attack types is. Neutral cards are very powerful as a whole and can be seen in basically every battle apart from those where they cannot be played due to a restriction imposed by the ruleset.

Now that we have a decent understanding of the featured Ruleset and its potential advantages and disadvantages, let us have a look at the battle I have chosen to showcase.

<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>BATTLE<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>

The line-up of the Battle and the Ruleset:

The rulesets for this battle are FiveAlive (Up to five Monsters can be used), Shades of Gray (Only Neutral Monsters may be used in battles) and Reverse Speed (Units with lower speeds will attack before monsters with higher speeds. Attack Accuracy based on speed will also be reversed). The mana budget is 99 which is the greatest amount of mana available in the game right now so I can basically play whatever combinations of Monsters I want. The available Elements are Water, Earth and Dragon. I have decided to give the Earth Element a shot this time around. The battle I have chosen is from a very recent Diamond-level tournament.

The main tank spot in the line-up goes to the Arkemis the Bear. It is one of my favorite tanks overall because all 4 of his abilities are actually very good in cases of taking heavy damage and also mitigating enemy attacks - Protect (All friendly Monsters gain +2 Armor), Halving (Each time this Monster hits a target, the target's attack is cut in half (rounded down)), Forcefield (This Monster takes only 1 damage from attacks with power 5+) and last but not least in terms of damage output - Enrage (Has increased Melee attack and Speed when damaged).

The 2nd place in the line-up goes to the Junker. It is a very useful Neutral Monster because of its two abilities - Reach (Melee attack Units with Reach may attack from the second position) and Repair (Restores a third of max armor to the friendly Unit whose armor has taken the most damage). I use it quite often even though I still have not maxed it but I think it's high time I did that cause it gets an additional point in the Attack section at max level.

The 3rd spot goes to the Drybone Raider. It is a cool Dual Attack Monsters with Double Strike which means that it hits not once, not twice, not three times but four times every round!. Maxed out at level 4 it has Double Strike (Monster attacks twice each round), Shatter (Target's armor is destroyed when hit by an attack from Monsters with Shatter) and finally Cripple (Each time an enemy is hit by a Monster with Cripple it loses one max health).

Following immediately after is my very own Runi. Runi has True Strike as an ability so it is incapable of missing in general but I actually have picked it for its general utility with Opportunity (Monsters with the Opportunity ability may attack from any position and will target the enemy Monster with the lowest health) and Rebirth (When this Monster dies it will self-resurrect with 1 Health once per battle). I have brought it in to help kill off enemy targets left at low health by the rest of my team as it will be the last to act with its base Speed of 1.

Last but definitely not least is the best Monster in the Chaos Legion set and one of the best Monsters in the game as a whole, that's right, I am talking about Doctor Blight. I could write pages upon pages of praise for this Monster of a Monster but I'll keep it short and just list its tool kit in order of appearance - Affliction (when a unit with Affliction hits a target, it has a chance of applying Affliction on the target causing it to be unable to be healed), Camouflage (this unit cannot be targeted for attacks unless it's in the first position), Poison (attacks have a chance to apply poison, which does automatic damage to the target at the beginning of each round after the poison is applied), Scavenger (gains 1 max health each time any unit dies), Weaken (reduces the health of all enemy units). All this for the cost of 4 Mana, which also makes it a perfect candidate for the Little League ruleset. You can basically use it on any occasion and not make a mistake if you have the space in your line-up for it.

It is time for a quick round by round analysis:

The Summoner I am going with for the battle is Immortalis (not much of a surprise here, lol). I feel he is a great choice given the rulesets and the available Elements. My enemy, on the other hand, has decided to go with Obsidian and the Earth Element as well. That's good cause Immortalis is a direct counter to Obsidian in general.

After a round of exchanging blows no Monsters have died, however, both Salty Bears have been poisoned and the poison is yet to be applied on the screenshot below so the enemy Bear will bite the dust before mine.

Round 3 - after a bit more fighting, we have both lost our Junkers as well but I have a definite advantage at this point of the game as my Drybone Raider is intact and on the other hand their Magi of Chaos is a goner.

Round 4 - All that's left for my team is to do a routine clean-up of the remainder of the enemy line-up.

Well this was definitely a fast but fun battle, and an entertaining way to showcase the Shades of Gray ruleset.

Over and Out,

Referral