Hello Guys!

I'm back again with my Splinterlands post. The Social Media Challenge has just come out and I can't wait to take part in this challenge. I'm going to share one of the battles I experienced when Bloodust Grum Flameblade was active a few times. I think this battle is quite interesting because frankly I very rarely see the bloodust of Grum Flameblade active. This is because Grum Flameblade only has an initial speed of 1 and for normal battles, Grum Flameblade's attacks are often missed, especially in the upper leagues where the buffs and debuff abilities of monsters related to speed have been opened a lot.

Well, I'm neither a proplayer nor a tournament hero. I just enjoys sharing strategy and battles that I find interesting in my own view. This is the battle I did when pushing rank in the Diamond league, and maybe the strategy I did was not suitable to be applied in other leagues because the abilities that are open can be different in each league. Before seeing what this battle looks like, let's first get acquainted with this Grum Flameblade!

Grum Flameblade is a Chaos Legion Legendary monster from the Fire element that has a mana capacity of 11 and is the first non-Gladius monster to have the ability Bloodust. From level 1 Bloodust and Void Armor abiliy are already active. Of course, Grum Flameblade has very strong stats as a tank because it has a large HP and Armor. In addition, this monster also has a large damage of 4 Melee attacks from levels 1-3 and 5 Melee attacks at max level. At level 2 of this monster, Void has an additional active Void ability, and at level 3 the Giant Killer ability is also active. When combined with Summoners who have Piercing buffs such as Qid Yuff or Conqueror Jacek, of course, this monster will be very impressive, what if the Bloodust ability is active.

Grum Flameblade has a speed of 1, which means this could be a weakness or advantage to activate the Bloodust ability. In a normal battle ruleset, of course Grum will have the opportunity to attack later because of the low speed, this means that the target may have received attacks from other monsters and Grum Flameblade's task is to complete with 1 attack that will immediately activate the Bloodust ability. But, if the target has a large speed difference, then the possibility of an attack from Grum Flameblade missed is also increase.

BATTLE PREPARATION

The rulesets in this battle are Reverse Speed (Monsters with the lowest Speed attack first and have the highest chance of evading attacks) and Up Close & Personal (Only Monsters with Melee attack may be used in battles) with mana capacity 60 and elements active Fire, Earth and Life.

Because I play at a modern rank, and the Fire Summoners I have are Conqueror Jacek and Tarsa. Although the Conqueror Jacek has a Piercing ability that will accelerate the Bloodust ability of the active Grum Flameblade, but I can't possibly use Jacek which gives +2 Speed buffs in the Reverse Speed rulesets. So, Trasa is the one who is more suitable for this battle because it gives buffs +1 Melee and +1 Health Point. Another reason I chose Tarsa is because all the monsters in this battle are Melee monsters, and Tarsa will increase the damage of all monsters. I'll explain the line-up and strategy of each monster I chose in the table below.

Monster	Position	Abilities	Strategy
Tarsa	Summoner	+1 Melee, +1HP	As I said above, Tarsa will give a +1 Melee buff which means that all monsters will get an increased attack.
Grum Flameblade	First (Tank)	Bloodust, Void Armor, Void, Giant Killer	Grum Flameblade will be a very strong monster here, in addition to its abilities because it also has Speed 1, which means that in this Reverse Speed ruleset, it will be a monster that gets the opportunity to attack early, and also has the most chance to avoid the opponent's attack.
Junker	Second (Attacker, Support)	Reach, Repair	Besides being able to attack in the second position because he has Reach ability, Junker also has a Repair ability that will restore Armor from the monster friend whose armor receives the most attacks, in this case there must be a Grum Flameblade.
Legionaire Alvar	Third (Support)	Void Armor, Giant Killer, Demoralize, Deathblow	3 of the 4 ability that Legionaire Alvar has is useful in this battle, the ability demoralize which will reduce 1 damage from the opponent's attack.
Tusk The Wide	Fourth (Support)	Void, Inspire	In contrast to the Demoralize ability which reduces -1 Melee attack from all enemy monsters, Inspire ability will provide +1 Melee attack buffs from all friendly monsters. So the Damage that all monsters have will increase, and this will be very useful in this Close Up and Personal battle ruleset.
Tenyii Stiker	Fifth (Attacker)	Sneak, Dodge, Backfire	The only Sneak monster that is an attacker in this formation. It has a very high speed, and also large attacks. Actually, the speed is not suitable for this Reverse Speed ruleset, but because of the large damage I still use this monster as an Attacker
Magnor	Last (Tank)	Taunt, Enrage, Trample	A monster that will be the target of attack from the opposing monster because it has a Taunt. I deliberately placed it in the rearmost position, because if the opponent uses a monster that has a Blast, then the damage will not go anywhere.

Opponents use decks from the Life element, with Summoner General Sloan. Jared Scar, who also has the Bloodust ability, is in the first position. The opponent's Jared Scar already has Piercing and True Strike ability. In second place there are Riftwatchers monsters, Consair Bosun who have Reach and Reflection Shield abilities. The third position is Legionaire Alvar as a support monster because it has Demoralize ability. The fourth position is Arkemis The Bear, also a support monster because it has the Protect and Halving abilities. The fifth position is Sand Worm, a sneak monster with very large damage, namely 6 Melee attacks and in the last position there is a Taunt monster Shieldbearer.

If you look at the number of attacks from each team as if you receive buffs and debuffs, your opponent has a larger number of attacks. In 1 round the opponent has 16 Melee attacks, while my team only has 13 Melee attacks. What about the conditions after getting buffs and debuffs from all monsters and summoners? Let's jump into the Battlefield Arena to take a look!

LET'S JUMP TO BATTLEFIELD!

(Click the image above to direct to the battle link)

Round 1-2

As usual, the first round begins with showing off the buffs and debuffs of all summoners and monsters. Unexpectedly conditions now reversed with before the battle began. I have a total of 16 Melee attacks in one round, while the opponent only has 13 Melee attacks.

My Grum Flameblade became the first monster to attack. Unfortunately, Piercing ability does not exist in this battle, so Grum Flameblade's attack only destroys the Armor of Jared Scar. Sand Word gets into a monster that gets its turn attacking. His attack immediately activated Magnor's Enrage Ability. Unfortunately, Enrage in this battle is only a weakness, because the increased speed makes this monster easier to attack. Jared Scar's attack destroyed Grum Flameblade's Armor, but the Armor received a Repair from Junker. 1 miss attack in this battle is Tenyii Striker's attack on Shiledbearer.

The second round began with an epic show where Bloodust Grum Flameblade was active after defeating Jared Scar. The stats of Grum Flameblade immediately rise to 7 Melee Attacks, 17 HP and again have 1 Armor. Until the end of the second round, no more monsters died than Jared Scar.

Round 3-5

The third round went on as usual. Bloodust of Grum Flameblade returned to activity at the start of the fourth round as he defeated Consair Bosun. Magnor also ended up dying in this round. An attack from Junker missed hit Legionaire Alver, as well as an attack from Tenyii Striker missed hit Shieldbearer. In the fifth round, Sand Worm's attack hits Tenyii Striker, and Backfire ability deals 2 damage from his attack to hit Sand Worm.

Round 6-End

The sixth round began with Bloodust Gum Flameblade returning to activity. Now Grum Flamrblade has 10 Melee attack, 19 HP and 3 Armor. Sand Worm's attack again missed to hit on Tenyii Striker. When it was Archemist's turn to attack, Halfing ability immediately hit Grum Flameblade which made damage from Grum only 5 melee attacks left. Shieldbearer finally died at the end of the sixth round.

This match ended in the seventh round with the win in my hands. I won with 5 monsters left and only lost Magnor. You can see the final result of this battle in the picture below:

CONCLUTION

From the battle I did above, I can draw several conclusions, including:

• Grum Flameblade is one of the non-Gladius monsters that has Bloodust ability.
• Grum Flameblade will be very effective to use for Reverse Speed rulesets because it only has speed 1.
• Grum Flameblade also has other abilities that make this monster a powerful tank.
• The best combo of Grum Flameblade is with a Summoner who has Piercing Ability.

Ok guys, I think my post is enough here, thank you for visiting my blog, don't forget to upvote and leave a comment. If you want to start playing Splinterlands and don't have an account yet, don't hesitate to use my referral:
https://splinterlands.com?ref=anif1908

Credits:
The wonderful divider by @kyo-gaming
Thumbnail created using canva
All images taken from Splinterlands website
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