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 which actually it's a part from last week post. Last week post was about Arachne Thug, and here's the link:

https://peakd.com/hive-13323/@dewabrata/arachne-thug--new-killer-on-cursed-windeku-side

In this opportunity I will share about one of my new Death Element Monster from Rift Watcher Edition. This is one of the favorite monster and we often see him recently, he is NIGHT GHOUL.

NIGHT GHOUL QUICK REVIEW

Shorten lore: It fed on small prey in the wetlands and underground, and although it looked utterly terrifying, the creature rarely killed, preferring instead to forage the rotting meat of corpses.

Night Ghoul is a great tank. He has great melee damage, high armor, and high health. His abilitites aren't extraordinary but both very useful, a taunt ability and a forcefield ability. The only problem he has is that there is too many other great tanks too in Death Element team, so I think many like this Night Ghoul but they won't put him as their default main tank.

NIGHT GHOUL STRENGTHS

GREAT DEAL OF MELEE 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.

HIGH HEALTH HIGH ARMOR. In General Death Monsters don't have good defense. No armor, no healer, and no defense buff such as protect. Having a monster such as Night Ghoul is very important to develop a new defense wall system which you might find in certain occasion will be very decisive factor.

NIGHT GHOUL WEAKNESSES

SLOW. Very simple isn't it, He is slow. He won't keep up with his team mate so you can not expect him to join in your attack party easily. Not only in attack pattern, his speed makes him almost unable to void any attack. So you can expect this monster to die soon in 2-3 rounds no matter how sturdy he is.

DEPENDANCE TO SOME RULESET. In my opinion, only on Melee Mayhem ruleset, Super Sneak ruleset and Equal Opportunity this NIGHT GHOUL becomes a power to be recognized. Bottom line when you have to have a ruleset that allow him to do his melee attack from anywhere, else I think you will not even reconsider to put him in because his 11 Mana requirement will become a team burden.

BATTLE TESTING #1

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 Night Ghoul during a Melee Mayhem Ruleset.

battle link : https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_d95d75308bb6a35fe930c5babb59373a&ref=dewabrata

This was a modern format silver league battle. I liked my opponent formation, a traditional textbook formation which he set two tanks and his backline monsters would aim my backline monsters. And here's my line up:

Position	Card	Ability	Plan and Strategy
Summoner		-1 magic, -1 health	One of my favorite summoner, he makes his team stronger against magic opponents
Main Tank		Thorn	Undeniable cursed windeku is everyone's favorite tank on Death Element Chaos Legion Edition.
Second		fly	A filler monster, 1 mana only
Third		Taunt	Our Test Object. He should outperform everyone in this battle
Fourth		none	A mini damager. I like Soul Stranger because his attacks is very hard considering his 3 mana requirement

as you can see from my line up, I only depend on Cursed Windeku and Night Ghoul. I am very confident that with Melee Mayhem Ruleset, this will be an easy win for Night Ghoul.

Round 1

• This battle started by each parties buffed and debuffed monsters. however the effect we had was every monsters got -1 health only.
• My opponent came with 6 Melee Damage and 1 magic damage, combined all became 7 damage.
• My team had 8 Melee damage and 11 range damage, combined all became 11 damage.
• It looked like my team attack power was way above their league, this was what they had to pay to house in their Rift Wing as their secondary tank.

• This first round always be decisive one. Whoever lose their tank first, would have a bigger risk to lose the battle. This was the main point of having Night Ghoul in our team
• Opponent's Sha-vi made the first move, hit our Night Ghoul. Then the damage exchanges started.
• Night Ghoul first moved was a hit which killed opponent Windeku.
• Round one ended as opponent losing their main tank

Round 2

• Opponents who were faster made all their 3 attacks to Night Ghoul, but not enough to kill him.
• Again, Night Ghoul made an attack that killed their Silent Sha-vi
• Everything seemed to work as planned, opponents died easily

Battle Discussion: Why Night Ghoul Worked Awesome

In this discussion, we actually repeat what we have read above, but nevermind let's have them again.

1. Night Ghoul 4 Melee Damage was too much for any Death element monsters. Each moves almost guarantee a kill for him.
2. Death Monsters usually are small and lethal with poision and ailments. this time without those additional abilities, they can not do anything to Night Ghoul.

BATTLE TESTING #2

I tried to add one more battle, and I hope this would be a more interesting one. In this opportunity I want to test out this Night Ghoul during a Super Sneak Ruleset

battle link : https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_8a75555d65fa09d7df87811048e17dad&ref=dewabrata

This was a modern format silver league battle. I liked my opponent formation, using the same Night Ghoul too. but let see how this would go

Round 1

• This battle started by each parties buffed and debuffed monsters.
• My opponent came with 12 Melee Damage and 1 magic damage, combined all became 13 damage.
• My team had 11 Melee damage and 1 range damage, combined all became 12 damage.
• It looked like in term of attack power, we both had the same level

• In this ruleset, which both side were full of melee monsters, which tank died first wouldn't matter.
• My nightmare moved first, attacking their Night Ghould
• Both side started to exchange melee attacks, but none died in this round. This proved Night Ghoul was strong against Melee attacks.

Round 2

• Again, my Nightmare made a first move, it's blast attack killed their Parasitic Growth.
• Then My Arachne Thug killed their Night Ghoul. Things started to look bad for them
• Night Ghould killed their fiend. Now this became 3 vs 6

Round 3-4

• Outnumbered in Super Sneak ruleset of course you ought to lose, and to put this worse, they did not have any big hitter left.
• Long Story Short, my 6 monsters survived and they got wiped out.

Battle Discussion: Night Ghoul vs Night Ghoul

In a glance , it would not be a fair one to compare level 3 Night Ghoul to level 1 Night Ghoul. I agree with that, however my team wins not because of the Ghoul level only.

1. If you have a tank with a Taunt Ability, you need to consider deeply which one will bring more benefit to you... adding extra tank or a support. My case I have Scavo Hireling as a support, they have Djinn Muirat as the tank. For 40 mana cap battle , I think my decision is better.
2. As we have discussed above, no matter how strong a Night Ghoul is, and no matter what supports he receives, in the end Taunt Tank will be die for sure. They only buy time protecting their team mate. So during those rounds we need to have strong fire power and additional defense system as preparation before the Ghoul dies. In their case, they don't have scatter shoot (I have a blast attack from Nightmare), and in the frontline their Alvar failed to subdue my Windeku on time. When Their Ghoul fell, everything crumbled.

So that's my post about Night Ghoul. I do not have to say this is NFA, because I believe Splinterlands is a game not a real business investment. For a fun and competitive decks, go get Night Ghoul for sure!!

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
• carrieallen : for ultimate markdown tutorial
• kyo-gaming : for wonderful divider arts