Hello Guys,

Welcome back to my series of Splinterlands post. Splinterlands has been bullish since past few days. Thanks to Bitcoin, it has been making a lot of things happen in the crypto space. The Land pre-sale, Uniswap Dec pairing, Brave partnership etc. just added to the rally.

Today I want to talk about a monster card which evolved to my favorite in the recent days. The SCREECHING VULTURE.

Let us discuss the stats of this card.

Upto level 4:

The stats of this monster seem to be very ordinary till level 4. The speed is ordinary, 1 melee damage and low health. Not that it is useless at lower levels but doesn't do wonders for sure. Save him from sneakers and snipers and he can help you take out the low health monsters like Spark or Ice pixie, Brownie or the Creeping ooze even at lower levels.

Level 5:

At level 5 this guy gets to speed 4 which is good for an opportunity monster. He becomes faster and takes out the ice pixie before it can attack. Flying + speed 4 also increases the miss rate of low speed monsters while attacking him.

Level 6:

Though the health of the vulture reduces by 1 at level 6, I still don't see much of a difference. The reason being that it gets the scavenge ability. Play it with the Natura Lyanna and you already get the vulture with 3 health.

Level 7:

Faster the better right. +1 speed of your opportunity monster can make a big difference. You can take down one opponent monster before it can even attack. The least you can do is take down their mighty chicken which can also make you lose if your sniper or melee monster with maximum damage happens to hit the chicken.

Level 8:

Base health 3, +1 from Lyanna, probably +1 from the strengthen of Wood Nymph. And the ever increasing health as monsters continue to die. I am very happy leveling up my vulture to level 8. He is my must use card in green battles.

Now let us see the vulture in action. I like vulture the best in earthquake ruleset. My favorite lineup is:

Daria Dragonscale summon the Natura Lyanna

1. Nectar queen at front with 5+1+1 melee damage + retaliate
2. Manticore reaching out to enemies from position 2 with thrones and 3+1+1 melee damage
3. Vulture at third position with 2+1+1 melee damage
4. Brownie to speed things up and +1 melee damage
5. Any other monsters based on second ruleset type
6. Chicken to protect the brownie from sneakers or opportunity guys
7. Recently learned that Orc Sergeant also gets inspire at higher level. Add him up for more melee in melee favoring rulesets
8. Heal your monsters with Wood Nymph and also give +1 health if ruleset favors it

Vulture becomes even more powerful when the earthquake ruleset is paired with the following ones

1. No healing (scavenge feeds the vulture)
2. Fogs of war, with no sneakers and snipers (vulture still sneaks because it is opportunity)
3. No armor (vulture is fast and hits hard)
4. Equalizer (Vulture starts at highest health and keeps getting more)
5. No neutrals (vulture is not neutral)
6. Little league (vulture is just 3 mana with lot of power)

Market price

I honestly feel that the vulture is underpriced. With so many abilities it is often listed less than 2 cents on the market. I am not sure of higher leagues but I find him very useful at diamond 3 or diamond 2. Many a times I feel that I should stock up 1/3 of the vultures from the circulation like @mattclarke did to the Alpha Flesh Golems lol.

Circulation

Vulture is already printed 90%. It will be out of print soon. Not a financial advise but stock it up and it will pay off as it goes out of print.
Reference: https://kiokizz.github.io/Splinterlands/rewardCards.html

Some interesting battles

Battle 1:

https://steemmonsters.com?p=battle&id=3e5e8c93e5c0e91f7449a9569ceb244a5f1c4c38&ref=blog-beginner

The lineup made me skip to results immediately. A shielded tank, healing Flesh Golem in the second, Wood Nymph to heal and what not. To my surprise I won this battle. I replayed to see what exactly happened.

Who would imagine that I won the battle even when my Nectar queen went down just in the first round. Leaving a lot to be done for sure.

So my sniper and the vulture took out the wood nymph which would otherwise heal both the Golems endlessly. The stun from the Stone Golem killed my Nectar Queen faster than I had expected. But then the vulture came in front and just count the number of misses. It was 22 misses in around 10 rounds since he came in front.

And this became easy after his Flesh Golem went down. My team survived with Vulture at health 21.

Battle 2:

https://steemmonsters.com/?p=battle&id=ec80eff7bc4144fa12d477dc69de2e66bc1caafe

This is what I meant by ruleset specific cards at position 5 and 6. Wood Nymph would have been my favorite option here but since it was no magic I decided to go with Goblin Chef. Another reason to go with him was I had seen that @cyberblock had played earth splinter a lot that time. Earth has lot of healing so afflication was necessary to counter that. @stealthtrader see it helps.

Attack from 2 enemy monsters brought the game down to this situation.

Now the magic happens. One blow from my vulture changed the game statistics like below. Reduced the speed of Flesh Golem to 3 and even the melee damage to 3. This makes sure that my Nectar queen attacks first. Who knows if the Golem would have attacked first and taken down my Nectar queen everything would have changed.

Then once the Golem was gone, the Goblin chef afflicted the tree and others took him down. After which the monsters just toppled one after another to show us this. The vulture standing tall with 10 health.

I hope you guys liked this post. Hope this is helpful for you all. Do post your interesting battles with vulture the comments. I would be happy to watch the vulture go wild.

Thanks to @flauwy again. I am using his art work for the Splinterlands community. The link. All dividers and images are his creation. Go give him a follow.
Thanks @clove71 for you upvote on my earlier post. Encouraged me to write even a more detailed one today.
Thanks @marcuswahl, @stealthtrader, @blackheart1,@jemmarti for all the Twitch streams. We learn a lot of strategies when @byzantinist kicks some butt in there.
Thanks @stever82. I've tried to describe a SL battle like you always do.