There is only so much that can be done with 1 mana cards which make many of them feel similar with limited use case and only a couple of them really standing out. The Gargoya Scapper is a common Life cards and very much feels like a filler card that nobody is really going to use that often. The 1 mana cards that I regularly use as those that give buffs to other cards or those that restrict monsters from the opposing team. Some of them are Flame Monkey / Albatross / Brownie / Silvershield Bard / Lensmaster / Cursed Slimeball / Shadow Presence / Creeping Ooze.
Since the new ranked reward update does not allow sub-optimal play I played a game with better alternatives to the Gargoya Scapper.
This was a match where me and my opponent both have a very similar approach and I really feel I outplayed him purely on skill as he has a higher-level summoner and the most expensive Chaos Legion Card in Doctor Blight. The Combination for the Death Thaddius Brood Summoner with the Cursed Slimeball + Undead Priest + Shadow Presence which in total costs just 4 Mana is super powerful. The opponent will see life of their monsters go -2 while almost instantly getting 1 damage to all their monsters. You prevent the same scenario thanks to the +1 health which was key to winning this battle. The Cursed Windeku is also an excellent Death card that has self-healing and the Twisted Jester always is a valid option along with the Furious Chicken to absorb potential sneak or scavenger damage.
This battle shows that you don't need to max out the mana cap as I only used 16 out of 18 available mana. It also shows that the Doctor Blight is a highly overrated card which I have noticed before as I rarely have trouble dealing with it.
It's no coincidence that the battle the week was a fun one that involved some skill as the new ranked reward update really made a world of difference in making Splinterlands an actual game instead of it being extremely dominated by pay2win mechanics. I have highly been enjoying the game lately even though things can always continue to improve.
Full Battle Replay
Previous Weekly Challenges
