Old and New Friends

Hello Splinter family!

I've been quite excited about the new Soulbound monsters and their abilities while trying to find new strategies by combining them with the older friends. Even though some of them may not look that impressive at first sight, I keep learning new use cases for them when mixing them with different combos and rulesets.

So, in this Splinterlands post I thought I share three interesting examples of how well these new guys fit in. Enjoy!

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Dragon Jumper And His Little Friend

In this battle, I paired up DRAGON JUMPER with a pretty harmless-looking creature called FUNGUS FLINGER. To be honest, the sole purpose of this unlikely match was to make the jumper even stronger and most importantly - even harder to hit.

In order to do that we had to use Fungus Flingers' Martyr ability which means, well, the little guy had to sacrifice itself for the greater good.

I placed Flinger at the very last spot to lure out the enemy Sneak monster and make them spend their valuable attacks on this sympathetic fellow. Cruel, I know. So, when the armor which Queen Mycelia provided was worn out it was time to activate the ability.

Martyr will increase all stats of the adjacent monster(s) which in this case meant Dragon Jumper.

One of the Jumpers' best attributes is the great amount of speed(5) combined with Flying ability making him a very hard target to hit.

Since Fungus Flinger did what it needed to do, its killer, Goblin Thief was now concentrating on Dragon Jumper. It's always easy to pick on the weak ones but it's so much harder to take on a guy like the Jumper.

As we saw in the battle, Goblin Thief missed both its attacks while my other guys took care of the opponent squad and Goblin was then played in the first spot and defeated.

Fungus Flinger(RIP) & Dragon Jumper - talking about a match made in heaven.

BATTLE LINK

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Eternan Brune And Chimney Wallstop

The new Soulbound reward summoners allow bringing one Gladiator monster to the battlefield. This was on my mind when I had just pulled ETERNAN BRUNE from the reward chest and was walking into a Armored Up ruleset battle.

Besides bringing some friends with him, Eternan Brune will also debuff the opponent monsters by reducing 2 armors which is the same amount they would receive from the ruleset.

Now as my enemy was almost bare naked I needed someone to make sure they will also be dead. Since one friend is allowed to be brought to the party, and because this is a 99-mana party, I thought it would be fun to bring in CHIMNEY WALLSTOP.

Besides having the Reach ability Chimney Wallstop also has Bloodlust ability making him stronger every time he defeats an enemy unit.

In this fire vs. fire battle, both of our teams had some of the same monsters including Living Lava's as tanks and Disintegrators to reduce melee attack strength.

Because of the Reach ability, Chimney's place was clearly behind the tank unit. He could now be offering great support with his melee strength and help take down the armorless Living Lava and Disintegrator.

And indeed he did. It was a great party.

BATTLE LINK

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Clockwork Aide & The Dragons

Some of these new guys seem pretty weird at first sight but once you take a closer at CLOCKWORK AIDES' stats and abilities, you might get some good ideas for your strategies.

My grand plan was to use its Swiftness ability to increase the speed of my already fast flying monsters. Note that this is an earthquake battle so because of Clockwork Aides' high amount of armor it will be helping out perhaps a bit longer time.

Monsters with Opportunity are always targeting the weak things like our little helper and this battle was no different. There was a DEEP LURKER among the opponent ranks and it kinda ruined my plans by withering down the armor until the earthquake did the rest.

Then again, those attacks done by the sea creature would have been meant for some other poor thing if it wasn't for Clockwork Aide. Perhaps the best use case for this guy is to use it to draw those Opportunity attacks to itself - unless the opponent monster happens to be a magic one.

Sometimes the greatest damage to the enemy is done by proxy.

BATTLE LINK

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Conclusion

These are all great additions to the game and I'm sure there are many new combinations of monsters, rulesets, and abilities for us to discover. Besides the new soulbound monsters, the ability of their summoners to bring in gladiators, brings in a whole new aspect.

I'm gonna keep it short and compact this time but I'm gonna leave you with this bonus battle in which this one guy (luckily) destroys the whole opponent team.

Thank you for reading!