The cheapest card part 1: Splinterlands
I currently am actively playing 3 games: Splinterlands, DCity and Rising Star. I used to play Rabona in the past, but due to the stagnation in development there I decided to go for a hiatus there (I understand the dev team has resumed work again, so I might pick it up again in due course).
Splinterland's Cheapest
The cheapest card Splinterlands has to offer today is Marrow's Ghost from the Azmare Dice set. It goes for $0.19-$0.20 on the MonsterMarket, which is about 10x more expensive than its price half a year ago. However, if you realize that a Azmare Dice pack of 5 cards costs about $12 these days, you can see that $0.20 is actually still very cheap.
Marrow's Ghost at 1st level: unimpressive and therefore cheap.
How useful is this card?
Well, I noticed in general that card prices in Splinterlands are very much biased towards good low-level cards being more expensive (think e.g. Goblin Mech), and good high-level cards sometimes being remarkably cheap (e.g. Failed Summoner). With one attack and one hit point, Marrow's Ghost is clearly not a good low-level card. But it's progression is very interesting:
Its attack goes up to 3 which is OK, its speed stays mediocre as well, but its Arcane Armor bumps up from 2 to 7 points as the card progresses in level.
In normal play this is a useful but potentially risky card, because cards like Ice Pixie and Battering Ram may shatter its armor in Round 1, leaving it vulnerable to for a swift kill by another card. However, when blue is not present in the match this card has a clear use in low mana battles, particularly if you don't own a Skeletal Warrior (which is much more expensive). At 3 mana it gives you a little more leeway to strengthen the rest of your lineup than 4 mana tanks such as Giant Scorpion or Animated Corpse.
Where this card shines though is with the Equaliser ruleset (all monster health is set to the maximum value found on the battlefield), where its health will be pumped up considerably. Players only rarely play shatter cards with Equaliser, because its so centred on aggressive attack and healing.
Closing thoughts
This card is situational, but it has a clear use despite being the cheapest card, so I give it 2 stars out of 5 in regular play and 4 stars out of 5 when using the Equaliser ruleset. It is clearly not the worst 3 mana card out there (Gremlin Blaster is imho ;)).
And as I typed this post, the cheapest card shuffled around, and now the Phantasm has become cheaper than Marrow's Ghost! Ah well, such is life. Guess I'll have to make another Cheapest Card post again for Splinterlands soon then!
Thanks for reading this, and if you have suggestions about future posts, then by all means just leave them below the line!
Posted from blogs.mg.social (a blended Coil/Hive blogging platform) with Exxp : https://blogs.mg.social/whydoitweet/2021/08/07/the-cheapest-card-part-1-splinterlands/
