Trading For More Flexibility

Hello, Splintelands fans!

For the past week, I've been busy building my deck, doing a fair share of daily battles, and participating in brawls with the new guild I recently joined.

Previously I was in a tier 1 guild that had become idle and in many brawls I was the only member filling my fray. It goes without saying that the rewards weren't that great as I was getting something like 2 SPS and maybe 200 merits for my efforts. With the new more active guild the personal rewards have increased to 12 SPS and 1,200 merits(last brawl).

So now there's this new kinda excitement I'm feeling when waiting for the brawls. Yes, merits(and SPS) are a great motivator, and of course, those sweet, sweet Gladius packs I now get to open more often.

As much as I am pumped up by Brawls, in this post I will be focusing on some upgrades and trades and especially analyzing the use cases between two legendary cards.

---

Grum

Yesterday I made a trade between two legendary cards with not as much investment in my mind but instead, I rather did it to improve my gameplay.

I first bought GRUM FLAMEBLADE because of his Bloodlust ability and my plan was to use him in high mana battles as a tank unit backed up by Chimney Wallstop.

You probably guessed my plan - yes, my idea was to use double Bloodlust to increase the chances of either one defeating an enemy and therefore becoming stronger through the ability.

To take that idea further, I thought of scenarios where Grum would first remove the armor and then Chimney would finish the job using Reach and his powerful melee attack.

It didn't work out as planned. The issue with both of these monsters is their low speed. In many cases, Grum was either destroyed or close to it before even being able to make his first attack. Same thing with Chimney - before he could do anything my other backline monsters might have taken too much damage to make this tactic worth it.

One other reason I bought Grum was his Void Armor ability which makes magic attacks hit his armor first before reducing health. This was to counter opponents with a strong emphasis on magic such as players with Earth splinter for example.

This idea wasn't one I was going to give up on...

---

Enter The Legionnaire

While scrolling down the market listings I noticed an old friend of mine I used to rent in occasionally - LEGIONNAIRE ALVAR. This was like a moment of clarity for me, I ditched the whole "double bloodlust" idea and focused on utilizing the Void Armor ability.

The best thing was that they were priced almost the same so even with my shoestring budget I could complete the trade immediately once Grum was sold.

Comparing these two legendary monsters we can see that Grum is twice as strong offensively than Alvar while he is also slower. Grum also wins if we compare the combined health & armor points having a total of 15 to Alvars 14.

However, there are two major pros that tipped the scale toward Alvar in my opinion. The first one is the mana cost - Alvar is 2 mana cheaper making him fit into more battles. The second, and most important aspect, is Alvar being a Neutral monster. I can now use this strategy with my most upgraded splinters, not only with Fire but with Life and Water too.

---

Alvar In Action (he's the real MVP...)

In this battle, I was up against the opponent who looked much stronger at first with the golden monsters and all. Still, besides Alvar and his Void Armor, I had another ace in my sleeve - River Hellondale. Check it out here or down below!

What is really great with monsters with strong armor like Alvar, is that when they are resurrected they come back with the full armor and since Alvar has Void Armor the enemy will have to fight through that again wasting powerful attacks.

This is probably not news to many of you but I'm actually quite proud of coming up with this combo 😊! An even nastier addition would have been a monster such as Swamp Spitter who would repair Alvars armor before and after resurrected.

---

---

Credits:

Thumbnail background image made with Canva
Other pictures are screenshots from Splinterlands
Links LeoGlossary: SplinterGlossary

---

Missing out on the fun of Splinterlands? Here is my referral link if you decide to give it a go: Splinterlands