Welcome to my Splinterlands Social Media Challenge. Social media challenge is a regular event held on HIVE BLOCKCHAIN which everyone share their thought about Splinterlands.

This week I choose to share about Rift Watcher again, it's the same topic as my last two post of Social Media Challenge. My goal is simple, I want to buzz out good things about Rift Watchers Edition, taking part in making people FOMO about it.

In this opportunity I will share about my last two purchase of Rift Watcher Monsters. Both of them are from Death Element, however due to the length of post, I decide to split them into two post. Let's check one of them first.

ARACHNE THUG QUICK REVIEW

Shorten lore: Enticed by the enormous caverns and bountiful food supply, these spider-bodied fey soon expanded their territory. They had no care for the Realm’s other inhabitants other than as slave labor or hunting sport. The venari and scavo were pushed closer to the surface, terrified of their spidery nemesis and their webs.

The first Rift Watcher monster I want to share is Arachne Thug. This monster is not something that special, not a game changer. So why should we get him? the answer is not about how you play your death element, it's more like he has things that most death monsters chaos legion are lacking at.

So Why did I buy him Anyway?

Arachne Thug offer good damage. This is my main consideration why I think I should get him. The basic Chaos Legion Edition are full of good Death Element monsters however most of them has low attack damage. I can say on Silver League only Windeku and Silent sha-vi have notable melee damage. The rest are bunch of 1-2 health damagers only. 2 Damage is not something that good anyway, they are decent but sometime are not good enough to threat your opponents.

Arachne Thug speed can keep up with Cursed Windeku. In General Death Monsters don't have good defense. No armor, no healer, and no defense buff such as protect. So speed sometime becomes their only salvation, to defend by killing their opponent first. By having a good speed, Arachne Thug can blend well with the rest of Chaos Legion monsters.

Arachne Thug has some armor. You might find this funny, however this is the truth. This Spider Thug has good armor and I think that's important because only 2 monsters from Chaos Legion Death Element have armors, Djinn Muirat and Crypt Beetle. When I get Weak Magic Ruleset, he definitely will be very usefull in my taem.

What's the bad part?

There are two notable cons on Arachne Thug. First he doesn't special. He has good damage, good speed, good health and good armor, can blend well with many formation and meta. He is strong against smaller mana monsters. All sound good however we have several better option as reach melee monsters or secondary tank. This makes him a good choice but never be a must have monster.

The second cons is his nature to be an early bloomer. He is terrifying on Bronze-Silver league, having 3 Melee Damage and 4 Speed. However on Diamond level, He is still on that condition, 3 Melee Damage and 4 Speed. His competitiveness as a destructive force behind main tank will gradually depleted as other monsters get powered up and he stays on that level. I am having a hard time to believe Arachne Thug can work well on higher league.

Investing on Arachne Thug

I bought that Gold Foiled Arachne Thug at $1.709. I think that number is a decent one. Let See what peakmonsters data shows us.

I am using some screen shoot from @peakmonsters user interface to display some data about Lemell Refugee pricing.

The Regular Foil

https://peakmonsters.com/market?card=Arachne%20Thug&edition=Riftwatchers&foil=regular

From above table we can see This Thug price is not stable, jumping between $0.07 to $0.16 for each BCX. The gap between Bid and Offer price is big, the offer price is almost twice of the bid price. the problem is that not many Lemell cards are being purchased, only about 21.000 bcx or around $3.14 for a month.

The Gold Foil

https://peakmonsters.com/market?card=Arachne%20Thug&edition=Riftwatchers&foil=gold

Overall both regular dan gold foil have same issues, the volume are low and the the highest price was more than 3x of the lowest price. However in Gold Foil market, the price is gap between bid and offer re small, less than 5%. I think gold market has found a new equilibrium price that's why I chose to buy the gold foil one.

Price wise I think this card is quite demanded unlike Lemell Refugee (water) and Lichen Beast (earth). Demanded in term maybe people are interested to get a high level Arachne Thug. Not just a formality having an option to have him on the list. So I think it's good to get him because I think he offers alternative meta and many people seem to agree with this. This statement is just a personal hypothetical from me, So it's a valid NFA and you still must DYOR first.

BATTLE TESTING

It won't be a good Splinterlands post if I don't add any battle about this. This is a battle testing so don't expect me to share something that is Epic. In this opportunity I want to test out this Arachne Thug and I pick an opponent on Modern Format Silver League BAttle rank who used Mylor (Anti Melee)

battle link : https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_bdd2b7a6c0d3275807f505e8310e61d1&ref=dewabrata

There ruleset were Close range (Ranged attacks may be used in the first position in battles) and Spreading Fury (All Monsters have the Enrage ability). With these rulesets I was thinking that Melee Team would still have a chance to challenge a mylor team.

Position	Card	Ability	Plan and Strategy
Summoner		-1 magic, -1 health	One of my favorite summoner, he makes his team stronger against magic however in this battle it will be useless
Main Tank		Thorn	Undeniable cursed windeku is everyone's favorite tank on Death Element Chaos Legion Edition.
Second		Reach	Our testing object. You can see this thug are one of the 3 monsters I have in my team that have a notable hitting damage (3 melee damage)
Third		Shatter	My first range attacker, 1 range damage + shatter
Fourth		Sneak	One of the best sneak attacker,and I think Death Element Chaos Legion won't be exist withouth Sha-vi and Windeku. these two are their the one that usually lift up whole team
Fifth		Sneak	I neeed him to help Silent Sha-vi killing backline opponents
The Last		none	my second range attacker, an extra filling monster

as you can see from my line up, most of Chaos Legion Death Element monsters have 1 damage only and I have hard time choosing team mate for Silent Sha-vi and Cursed Windeku. Most of the time I get Uraeus (reward card). Death Element has Dhampir Stalker, a great range attacker, however he demands 7 mana.

So for a mana range 20 to 35, it's a hard one to set up a strong Death Element Team if we only rely on Chaos Legion edition monsters. In past we have extraordinary monster such as Twisted Jester (4 mana but ridiculously strong sniper), but now we have several 4 mana monsters that are great with buff debuff and status ailment but they don't do damage. On lower league (Bronze and Silver) this becomes a major issue for some players because those abilities haven't activated yet.

Round 1

• This battle started by each parties buffed and debuffed monsters. the only buff that might be significant is the Thorn from Mylor and Armor from Queen Mycelia. Yes, my opponent came well prepared.
• My opponent came with 3 Melee Damage, 1 magic damage and 5 Range damage, combined all became 9 damage.
• My team had 11 Melee damage and 2 range damage, combined all became 13 damage.
• It looked like my team hit harder but their team had Thorn + Protect. So this would be a close call

• This first round would be decisive one. Whoever lose their tank first, should lose the battle because only the tanks which had high health.
• His mustang moved first, hit very hard. My windeku didn't back down, hit back harder. It's a battle of hard hitting tanks with thorn from both side.
• Arachne thug landed a hit on Mustang, followed by Wierding Warrior attack. Mustang was killed. Now I had a chance of winning
• A combination of Sha-vi and Uraeus brought down their Acid Shooter. Round 1 seemed to favor my side

Round 2

• The first kill in this round was made by Arachne Thug, killing their fiend.
• Their Uloth Dhammpir killed my dying Windeku. Nothing I could do, against mylor Melee Monsters were meant to die from thorn, it's either kill or getting killed. Windeku had done his best
• Again, combination of Sha-vi and Uraeus brought down one of their monster, Halving Alchemist. However uraeus died due to thorn.
• Everything seemed to work as planned

Round 3

• This round started by my Silent Sha-vi making a suicidal attack, he died but managed to shatter Mycelia Armor
• Next move was our Thug delivering 5 Melee Damage. Uloth did not die from it and he hit back and killed our Thug.
• This round ended by Wierding Warrior killed their Uloth Dhampir

Round 4

• 2 vs 1, not a chance for them. This round ended with my Xenith Archer killed their Queen Mycelia

Battle Discussion:

First I remind again, this is not a battle challenge which I set up great formation and great monsters to fight strong opponents. This is a testing battle, although it's a real Rank Battle on Modern Format Silver league. My goal is to test whether Arachne Thug is good or not. In fact the result is the same as I have expected, He is Good.

What He did in 3 round

1. He killed 1 monsters, made a 8 Melee Damage. Getting 6 thorns damage, getting hit by 1 magic damage before finally Uloth Dhampir killed him. This is something that definitely Shadow Snith can't do.
2. Arachne thug succesfully utilize Spreading Fury ruleset. Not All malee monsters can get benefit from Enrage Ability, they need to have a good health. Uraeus is one of the example of good sneak melee monsters who can't take benefit from it due to lack of health.
3. Melee damage and Speed does matter, with enraged condition, Arachne thug shows that he can deliver 5 daage first before Uloth Dhampir could move to kill him.

So in term of fire power and defense wall, he has proven himself to be usefull for the team. I think we do not need to worry about this one, he is surely working well with existing Chaos Legion team. I am very sure he is a good addition to any players regardless how they play their death element.

So what do you thin? have you got enough copies of Arachne Thug cards?

Thank you for visiting my Social Media Challenge, don't forget to leave your comments and feedback below. There are credits in this post for these people:

• @splinterlands : for holding weekly social media challenge events
• @peakmonsters : for providing historical market data about splinterlands cards
• carrieallen : for ultimate markdown tutorial
• kyo-gaming : for wonderful divider arts