The Gladius Guide - Part 1 | Fire

Not only since the introduction of the SPS Rewards, the Brawls are a highlight for many Splinterland players. There are many factors that make the Brawls a special experience.
Celebrating successes together and also going through defeats together to become better inspires and builds team spirit.
I still remember how confused I was at the first Brawls when the veteran opponents came to the field with cards that seemed to be completely overpowered!
From my point of view, the Gladius cards are one of the main reasons why the Brawls are so much fun.
Not only because they are very strong, but also because they are rare and it takes a long time to build up a good deck of them.

now that the Gladius cards can also appear in tournaments and with the new Summoners also in Ranked matches, I thought it was time to take a closer look at them here.
I'll be going over all the Gladius cards in a small series of articles and we'll look together at how and where they can be used. To keep it all organized I will go through splinter by splinter.

Today we start with Fire!

Gladius

As mentioned, the Gladius cards are rare. The only way to get them are the Gladius Case. They can only be bought in the guild store, with Merrits.
One pack costs 2'000 Merrits and contains 5 cards. There are boosters for Goldfoil and Legendary cards, but for that the guild store must be very advanced.

Except for Dragon and Neutral, all Splinters have a set of 6 Gladius cards: 2x Common, 2x Rare, 1x Epic and a Legendary card.
Since the cards are difficult to obtain, there are hardly any Max. Level cards. In addition, the guild development limits up to which level you can play the cards.
Nevertheless, I will briefly show max level cards for each splinter. In the review of the different cards I will concentrate on bronze & silver and maybe gold.

Let them burn

Here you can see the Gladius cards of the Fire Splinter at maximum level. Already at first sight you can see how strong the cards are. Some are so strong that it feels like you are cheating when you play them.

The Fire Team has 4 meele cards and 1 ranged fighter. One card has no attack. There is something for every mana range, let's dive in!

Chimney Wallstop

Meele & Reach the classic offtank. On Level 5 he gets Repair and later on Strengthen. The damage is high at 5 points from level one, you can definitely call him a heavy hitter.
With its high mana cost, Chimney is only suitable for the Highmana matches. Another disadvantage is the low attack speed. Furthermore, he lacks defensive abilities, especially against magic he is vulnerable.
From level 5 it is an excellent complement for Grumm. It can be used well with all Summoners.

The cards is okay, but very rule dependent. There are some rule sets that make him strong though, e.g. Weak Magic or Lost Magic and of course Reverse Speed and Aim True.

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Krash Wanderford

Krash is a card that really only gets interesting at the high levels. Without attack it doesn't seem strong, but that's deceiving. Due to the high speed, he will often dodge and if he does get hit, then it hurts the attacker himself.
Again, the weakness is the attack with magic damage.

But with this card comes something else, the recently introduced ability Weapons Training allows the card to play as a tank with melee damage!
A tank with thorns, bloodlust, swiftness and from level one 6 attack speed is good!

He can be played well with all summoners. But if we imagine a combination with Byzantine Kitty and Ferexian Hero.... definitely worth a try!

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Orella Abadon

2 mana cost, sneak with 3 attack speed and from level one 2 damage. These are solid values. The damage is increased by one point at level 3.
Orella Abadon is a good choice for me in fights where very little mana is available.
The weaknesses are the few hit points and the lack of defense. He is very vulnerable to opportunity, which is why cards with protect are always a good choice as a synergy.

The card is good for setups with double Sneak, but he shines especially in the rule Little League.
He benefits especially from Pablo, Malric and Tarsa.

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Sarius

Another candidate for a Little League matchup. Sarius has good base values. With only 3 mana costs, she can be used often.
She benefits enormously from Yodin! Also her weaknesses are the lack of defense and the low hit points. Therefore, speed is a crucial factor for her.

From level 5 she gets Poison, which is always a nice side effect. Some rulesets she likes are: Explosive Weaponry, Keep your Distance, Little League or Close Range. Target Practice or Equal Opportunity are also cool in combination with yodin.

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Gorth

We've talked about heavy hitters before at Gimney, and Gorth is definitely in that category as well. With his 12 hit points he can also take a lot of damage.
Because the card "only" costs 8 mana, it is not in danger of being quickly eliminated by Giantkiller.
From level 4 there is additionally Enrage. With Skagore, Gorth can also get it earlier.

Apart from the 12 hit points, Gorth has no defensive abilities, otherwise he would probably be just too strong. That's why he also benefits from rulesets without magic cards and from cards that give him protect.

Summoners that boost his attack are a good thing, but he also benefits from a speed buff. Who can afford it takes a kitty to play him.
Particularly favorable rulesets are: Super Sneak, Equal Opportunity or Meele Mayhem.

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Fina Voxom

Let's move on to the last and thus the legendary card of the Fire Splinter: Fina Voxom.
Drawing a Legendary is always cool, but it's especially great with Gladius cards. Fina is, in my opinion, one of the strongest Gladius cards around. Let's look at the stats: 5 mana, 3 melee damage with 4 speed and 7 hit points. Opportunity and Bloodlust at level 1 and Piercing at level 2.

It's obvious that it's a strong card. It can be played in almost any ruleset and, like all Fire Gladis, benefits from Protect.
It is, one exception is Reverse Speed. At level 1, Qid Yuff and Jacek are especially useful for her. From level 2 all other summoners as well, especially with Yodin an extreme snowball effect can kick in.

I already had 2x the pleasure to pull a Fina, I hope soon follows number 3! It would be a great boost.
As mentioned, Fina goes well in many rule sets, but she especially benefits from: Explosive Weaponary, up Close and Personal and from level 3 on Heavy Hitters.

The Fire Splinter has exciting Gladius cards and together with the new Soulbound cards, there are some exciting combination possibilities depending on the Fray.
In general, however, it is such a thing with Fire... I just don't really like the Splinter and even though I have the Gladius cards, I rarely get wins with Fire.
Still, deploying the Gladiators is always fun.

Next week I'll continue with the Water Splinter, one of my favorite splinters.

I hope you enjoyed it, I'm looking forward to your comments and feedbacks.

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