Heloise the Hollow: A Bold Experiment in SPL Gameplay

Hello battle mages, happy ~~late~~ new year from me and welcome to my very first spl post of the year. Since it’s been quite some time since I played, I decided today to try something a bit out of the ordinary and treat myself to a card I under normal circumstances couldn’t dream of having in my deck – Heloise The Hollow.

Yhp, I spent a whopping 1998 DEC to rent her for just 2 days in this very hard economy to be able to take Heloise for a spin. The funny thing is that I didn’t start my day thinking I would be renting a Heloise even this year, but I checked my deck and realized my rent for my strong deck collection had all expired. So instead of renting the entire collection again, I decided to do a little window shopping first and what do you know. Still, I learned a thing or two about commanding her though, and that’s what I’ll be talking about in this post.

The Card

What drew me to Heloise the Hollow was the mind boggling 7 melee power it has even at level 1. I am a sucker for powerful melee units, especially if the unit is also an opportunist (and Heloise is). Grum Flameblade is the closest I’ve come to a Heloise-type monster, but the sheer strength and ability between Grum and Heloise is so wide, Grum doesn’t even compare. Unlike Grum, Heloise has a speed of 3, which sort of gives it agility. But every God has an Achilles Heel and Heloise’s is rather easy to spot.

Is a low health monster with taunt even useful?

For a monster with a health of 4 at level 1, I wonder if it’s accurate to say it has taunt as an “ability”, seeing how taunt is a liability in that case, as it’s typically suited for monsters with more than enough health to take all the damage for the team. If I’m being honest, I didn’t notice the taunt “ability” when I was renting Heloise. Probably the excitement of taking her to battle and all. I noticed the taunt when I hovered over at her to select her for the very first battle. Seeing that, I immediately had to find some way to make sure she doesn’t leave the battle too soon. With that health and a taunt, she can easily be taken out by even basic monsters. What to do then?

How to prevent the enemy from going after my bait?

The thing about bait is that if you can offer an even attractive bait up, you can save your first bait. In the case of my battle, I had to add another taunt to my battle to take the heat off of Heloise. I had to think of this fast because I was caught off guard. The worst part, I wasn’t sure if it would work because I’d never tried it before. So I added Mycelic Slipspawn right in front of Heloise.

My thinking was that the proximity to the tank would mean that it’ll be a more attractive bait than Heloise, and that checked out. So one of the essential accompanying monsters to use with Heloise definitely is another taunt. If your active elements include both Fire and Earth, and you’re more of an earth bender like me, Mycelic Slipspawn is your better bait.

That still doesn’t solve the low health problem

You remember my little friend Spirit Hoarder? He’ll help you keep Mycelic Slipspawn alive long enough for Heloise to cause mass destruction.

I am not very familiar with monsters with the swiftness ability, but I know Clockwork Aide is a popular one, so you can throw him in to increase the chances of both your taunts evading more melee attacks. This one, I haven’t had the chance to test, so it’s purely speculation. I think we can agree that it works though.

Here are some battles where I used the card combinations I just showed you to win battles, and some others where I either didn’t use one or more of these combinations and ended up losing. I hope this post helps someone out.