Greeting Summoners
In this opportunity I want to share a couple of similar units that actually not the same, but many fail to see it that way. It is something that I have been doing recently, which of course a reward card. Many still underestimate these cards, well it is ok if you have thick wallet or big budget to spend on this game, if you are not... than you better catch me up in grinding your soulbound selection.
Ok it is about the tank from the water element, precisely from the Rebellion Reward Cards edition. In a glance both are similar, a melee tank, a good one. One is rare rarity and has more mana requirement than the other which is a common rarity. So of course it doesn't need a genius to identify which one is stronger.
The one who has higher mana requirement, and higher rarity should be the one that is stronger. He is Commander Slade, and he is my favorite tank for most of Water Element team I assembly for my battles.
I would not use max level as reference, regarding I believe not all players aiming to be the best or invest max resource for this game, so I will pick the mid, the max level for Silver League tier.
Slade move faster, has higher health point, thicker armor and 3 abilities. Ability-wise it is debatable but by the numbers, it is a sure win. No brainer he is stronger.
So here is the weaker one, Giant Alpine Skink. Well I believe that what most players think about him. Do we like this card? of course we do, he has 4 melee damage and 4 speed, good one for a melee unit. Melee Mayhem, Super Sneak, and Equal Opportunity are the right ruleset for this unit... or at least that is most people think about our Giant Alpine Skink here.
However I see him differently. This guy can avoid magic, which is not special however becomes something special because that is the main weakness of Commander Slade. Water Element do not have good tank with void ability or void armor ability, I mean specifically in Conclave Arcana edition. So like it or not, if you want to enter the battle which you have a high prediction that your opponent will be a bunch of mages, Commander Slade won't be effective.
At that case, Giant Alpine Skink will definitely work better as the main tank. He can not withstand magic damage too however he will definitely dodge some of those incoming magic attacks, so he will be harder to kill with magic damage. Beside that traits, we can not expect anything better from him than Commander Slade.
However... again... currently I am seeing more players anticipating Commander Slade as their opponent tank. Many indicators that support this thought, like the use of the electrified dude, who has that 5 magic damage, or coming with a duo electrified units for the sake of getting good amount of magic damage in their fire power.
I do not have to share those units, I believe most of us already know which units I refer too, if you dont' then come and play Splinterlands more!
Well I do not know whether you will agree with my opinion about Giant Alpine Skink could be better than Commander Slade, you are free to have your own opinion there but let me share you a battle so you can get better picture about my opinion here.
HIGHLIGHTED BATTLE
Ok let me pick this battle for reference.
I pick this battle for a very simple reason, it has Armor Up ruleset. With +2 armor for all units, the mostlikely to happen is that people will fill their lineup with mages. We all hate those armor so we will use Magic attacks to by pass those armor.
The fact is that Commander Slade weakness is magic attack. He can't evade and it will negate all the defensive traits that make Commander Slade superior. However Giant Alpine Skink is different...
Giant Alpine Skink has a phase ability, I already mentioned this above. It is the ability that I am going to exploit, regarding he already has a good speed... exploiting this one should not be imposible.
As you can see, 4 of 5 my backline units are speed modifiers, either they debuff opponent speed using their Slow ability, or they increase all their teammate speed using their Swiftness ability. Combined all, my team will reduce 3 speed and add 1 speed to my Alpine Skink.
I will not discuss the battle in detail, you can see it for yourself by clicking the image above but allow me to show you some decisive point in that battle:
- This is the start of the battle after all buffs and debuffs deployed. My Giant Alpine Skink gets 6 Speed and all our opponent speed get 1-ed. So all incoming attack only has 50% chance to land on the mighty Alpine Skink.
- At Round 4, we can say the battle is actually already settled. They only have 3 units and I can not see how they could make a comeback. They are losing badly because all they attacks are coming straight to my Speedy Evasive Giant Alpine Skink.
- I believe thing would be better for them if they have a couple of snipe or sneak attackers. Opportunity ability users are better in this case, when you meet annoying incompatible tank against your meta.
- The battle ends at the six round. At least their Gramel The Hunger killed three of my units. Gramel is an amazing unit, a bit Over Power in some cases like this!
In my opinion, if I go with Commander Slade, I believe the battle won't be one sided like this, I might lose too regarding they have that OP Gramel The Hunger. However my Giant Alpine Skink proves himself as the better tank that withstand all the attacks. So what do you think about this one? leave your feedback yo! Thank you for your visit here. See you in Splinterlands Rank Battles!!!
Thank you for visiting my Splinterlands post here, don't forget to leave your comments and feedback below. There are credits in this post for these people:
- @splinterlands : for holding Social Media challenge events
- carrieallen : for ultimate markdown tutorial
- thepeakstudio : for wonderful divider art