The Fire Monsters with Reach
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Currently, there is a total of 5 Reach Monsters from the Fire Splinter. Giant Roc from the Alpha/Beta set, Magma Troll from Untamed, Fines Rage as an out-of-print Reward card, Aganju from Dice, and the Radiated Brute from Chaos Legion.
For exhaustivity's sake, we should also cite Chimney Wallstop from the Gladiator set to fully complete this collection.
Their Commonalities
They all come with the Reach ability at level 1. And, besides the Legendary Aganju, most of them are Common cards with the exception of Fineas Rage, which is a Rare card.
Only two of them are usable in the Little League ruleset with a mana cost of 4 or less, Aganju and Magma Troll. This particularity makes the Magma Troll a bit more versatile than the Radiated Brute.
Fineas Rage, the best HP/Mana Cost ratio of all
At level 1:
- Giant Roc: 4/5 = 0.80
- Magma Troll: 3/4 = 0.75
- Radiated Brute: 5/5 = 1
- Fineas Rage: 8/7 = 1.14
- Aganju: 1/1 = 1
In Silver leagues and above, I've started encountering Fineas Rage much more often than any other Fire Reach Monster. At first, I thought this card would be a bit expensive to rent, so I didn't bother checking the cost at all.
However, whenever I was in a Fire VS Fire face-to-face, my lineup would often get outlived every time Fineas Rage was in the opposite team. I finally decided to look at the rental market and got a copy for a cheap cost of 0.135 DEC per day.
While I don't run the Fire Splinter as often as I used to, Fineas Rage is still my go-to Reach fire monster whenever I need one. Consequently, I end up not using the Radiated Brute very much in high mana battles either.
With a 5 mana cost, the base-level Radiated Brute is torn between not being able to fit in Little Leagues’ low mana battles, while also being outperformed by Fineas Rage in high mana cap confrontations.
Therefore, those are the reasons why I'll be showcasing a battle of Fineas Rage, instead of the Radiated Brute in this week’s Share Your Battle Challenge.
The Top Battles in Gold
To bring some diversity to my posts, I've decided NOT to highlight one of my own battles this time, but one from the TOP Battles on Splinterlands' homepage. Playing myself in low Gold only, I thought it would be interesting to analyze a top battle from the upper spectrum of this league.
The battle
Players: EDD2 VS HIV3
Rulesets: Heavy Hitters + Up Close And Personal
Mana Cap: 46
League: Gold I
Watch the battle at the following link:
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_f231223e68ccb576442349ca50ebaa40&ref=tt88
To begin with, both players ran a Legendary Summoner that I don't possess, which instantly made the battle much more intense. One was Byzantine Kitty, the other Yodin Zaku.
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In the Up Close And Personal ruleset, the goal is often to have the least amount of idle monsters as possible. Therefore, we observe that both players chose to run a Reach Monster; HIV1 going with the freshly released Carnage Titan, and EDD2 with Fineas Rage.
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In this battle, Fineas Rage doesn't seem to do much, yet its high HP/Mana cost ratio makes it a reliable second tank that always buys valuable time for the entire team. In this specific case, it allowed the other monsters to deal serious damage to the opposite backline.
The firepower from both sides was as impressive as it was devastating. By Round 3, the match was already over, which to me seemed fairly fast for a 46 mana cap battle!
I hope you’ve learned something, or at least, got entertained.
See you all in the next challenge!
Thomas
For new players interested in joining this amazing game, you can support me by using the following referral link (at no extra cost to you!):
https://splinterlands.com?ref=tt88
Thank you.