SHIELDS

Don't leave home without them!

Reduced damage from Melee and Ranged attacks
Attack damage gets halved (rounded up), except attack 1 which deals 0 damage
Reduces the Thorns damage to 1
Cancels Redemption damage

What does it look like?

The Shield appears where you'd expect, at the bottom of the card where the other abilities show. The first thing you should consider is a word of warning - the shield won't help you against magic attacks. In fact if you're against a magic team and you have a monster with shield as your tank, it's going to hurt...a lot!

Now that's out of the way let's look at melee and ranged attacks. The shield is going to halve the incoming damage, which is rounded up for odd numbers apart from an attack of one which will simply bounce right off your shield, doing zero damage. Taking that into consideration, you can already see that in a low mana melee match, shield will be really helpful, soaking up loads of potential damage.

So what works well with shield?

Firstly healing works well with shield. Whether that be a tank heal from one of your other monster's or a self heal - the longer you can keep your health up, the longer you'll stay in the match. This is an extra consideration in case you end up facing magic attacks because, as mentioned the shield won't help you, but with incoming healing you might just weather the storm.

Secondly, repair is excellent with shield. There is nothing more annoying than when you're facing a tank with shield, who keeps getting its armour regenerated by repair. Not only are all your melee and ranged attacks getting halved, but your target's armour keeps repairing. Very frustrating for the player that's faced with this situation.

So what should I be wary of?

Shatter is deadly for shield bearers. Your armour will be completely destroyed when hit by an attack from monsters with Shatter and unfortunately there's not a lot you can do about it. Of course you still have your health points which are also protected by the shield ability, but you were probably relying on having your armour around for a bit longer. Another reason to have repair in your line up somewhere. Of course magic is bad news as well, but we've already covered that.

But is Shield really that good?

It can be the difference between a win and a lost. If you've positioned your troops well and have a bit of luck in terms of your opponents line up, then shield can win the day. If you don't believe it then check out this match where I played a fire team against a dragon team for one of the 'share your battle' challenges. Here my level one Living Lava survived the entire match, without any healing or repair either. A stalwart defender that grabbed me a strong win!

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Shields - Don't leave home without them!