RULES OF THE GAME

THE THEME: SCAVENGER

Ability: Gains 1 max health each time any monster dies.

Note from Carrie: Greetings... You have 9 monsters to choose from this week! ...😘@carrieallen

I've trimmed the quote. For the full quote see this link.

My Feelings on SCAVENGER

Not my least favorite ability but definitely not one I take advantage of very often. I've run into a few level 6 Gelatinous Cubes in Gold Leagues and those are a beast to take down. The time I ran up against one playing at the back of a Scarred Lama Mage lineup I didn't even bother to watch the fight knowing it would not go my way.

Education: Commence researching which 9 those are.

The ones I knew already.

I was aware of these because they are fairly prevalent at lower leagues, say Silver, and I have both.

• *Note 1:🤖s love a Gelatinous Cube.
• Note 2: Both of these have the SCAVENGER ability at level 1.
• Note 3: Both of these are from the Reward edition meaning with enough patience most everyone will get at least one of these but honestly as they are both common probably way more than one.

I own these but had no idea.

• Note 1: What these all have in common is they gain the SCAVENGER ability at level 6.
• Note 2: I do not possess enough of any one of these cards to level them up to level 6, nor do I possess the summoner cable of using a level 6 common.

I do not own these and I have only seen 1 of the 2 in use.

• Note 1: In this author's opinion, these are the prettiest cards of the 9 but I give the edge to the Mighty Dricken because I enjoy the humor with the art.
• Note 2: Dark Ha'on is a Legendary from the Untamed set, gets SCAVENGER at level 2 and according to Dark Ha'on on Peakmonsters.com there are only 2,556 in circulation. This monster is not available to me at the time of this challenge.
• Note 3: Mighty Dricken is a Legendary from the Promo series and so far I have been unable to figure out when or where the promo edition was/is available. You can of course buy or trade for Promo edition cards but maybe @clove71 can share some insight into the Promo edition cards? This monster is also not available to me at the time of this challenge.

So now that I know what monsters I can choose from lets get to playing some matches.

My Match(es)

In the name of full disclosure, this week I have linked my SCAVENGER failure attempts before the success we will take a look at. For even greater levels of disclosure, I'm pretty sure there is more value in my losses than my victory.

• Failure 1
• Failure 2
• My Winner, third times the charm

Loss Analysis

As you can see above, I started off trying to play my matches with the Ant Miners, mine are lvl 2. See the stat line below.

My first failure I attempted to use this card in a match where the primary issue was probably my summoner which set me up so poorly as to ensure a loss regardless of team choices after that.

My second failure I put this card as my anchor on a Fog of War match expecting the monster to be a pretty solid but cheap clean up batter. I ended up against a team so boosted it was like we where playing two completely different games in two different realities.

What can we learn from these? One card rarely makes team a team great but a bad summoner choice can definitely ruin it.

Victory Analysis

Ok the win. What can it tell us about SCAVENGER? Nothing. Let's analyze how I wasted 6 mana.

Match Rules

Rules: Lost Legendaries (wave goodbye to the expensive cards)
Mana Cap: 40 Splinters: Fire, Water, Life, Death, and Dragon

Match Choices

I went Fire cause I was in a rut but then I went with the Gelantinous Cube cause it fit the brief and I had way too much mana to put the Ant Miners in. Mistake #1 letting the tail wag the dog.

Match Analysis

Here is how the match started.

As you can see in the above image, I tried to use a level 4 Gelatinous Cube as my back up tank to a back up tank. I was concerned during my line build out that my opponent would cut through my lineup from the front. I've included it's stats to the right but I kept them small because they are pretty much irrelevant here.

Mistake #2, way over assumed my opponent's choices rather than worry about my own.

By Round 2 we had gone from 6 v 6 to 4 v 6 in my favor. Round 3 started the same but ended up 2 v 5 (they did start by going through my tank VINDICATED). Finally Round 4 saw the match reach its inevitable conclusion at 0 v 5, you can see that below.

Why was this a waste of 6 mana you might ask? Well I believe GC took exactly 1 hit the entire match and never made it to the tank position. I could have included more damage and finished the match up even faster if I had included anything else there. Also, anything else might have include a gold foil increasing the match rewards instead of occupying space and mana. In this case, I also would most likely have been better served by moving GC into the tank spot provided I could find a speedy 4 damage until to put in the 3 spot.

Do I have a favorite SCAVENGER monster?

I have only used 2 of the 9 monsters with the SCAVENGER ability so I expect this opinion to change but right now I much prefer Gelatinous Cube to the much cheaper Ant Miners. For me the AM are always a gamble to include since they only have 1 HP right now and are easily 1 shot in many cases. Their value comes through surviving long enough to SCAVENGER up some health allowing them to be more formidable and out last the opponent. Finding that situation can be rather challenging. Gelatinous cube to me feels like a much more forgiving choice and frankly, once I can play a level 6 cube they seem fairly indestructible since they have both SCAVENGER and HEAL.

The Wrap-up

Do you play Splinterlands already? Gimme a shout. Are you interested in playing? Click this link --> SPLINTERLANDS and then gimme a shout. Did I get something wrong? Do you disagree? Did I miss a critical bit of detail? Let me hear about it.

As always, where ever and when ever this finds you, be well and have a spectacular time interval.

Cheers, MagooZ

Edited: fixed typos

Not my art but Cave Slug is relevant here and I think this deserves more visibility