Weekly Splinterlands Community Engagement Challenge: Conclave Arcana Presale Has Begun!🔥

9 months ago

Okay, since the topic of this week's Community Engagement Challenge is "Conclave Arcana Presale Has Begun", it is only natural that I'll start this short write-up by having a look at it. Then, we'll have a look at some new cards which I have not posted about yet as what's more exciting when a new set is launching than the actual cards that are part of the set. You can have a look at the cards I've already written about in these two posts - here and here. And if you've been hiding under a rock up until now, and you've missed all the details related to the presale and the set itself - check out this post of mine.

Okay, so the long awaited presale started on Tuesday and, in my opinion, it's been pretty successful so far. The total amount of packs purchased (of all 3 types) is 121,899 (as of the time of writing) and the total amount of spend DEC/Credits is getting very close to 1B! Currently sitting at 917,628,000.

Below you can see the breakdown of the types of packs that have been sold so far - 79,473 Standard packs (out of 500,000), 7,552 Legendary packs (out of 50,000) and 34,874 Alchemy packs (out of 100,000), People definitely seem to like the Alchemist packs a lot. That's probably because they have the highest chance for Black foils, even though I do think that you've got a higher chance of getting a BF Lengendary in Legendary packs simply because you get so many more Legendaries in them.

As for the leaderboard. The current top 6 players (and group buys) are basically divided in two groups. The first group is in the 50M-60M DEC range, and the 2nd one is in the 20M-30M DEC range. This race is definitely not over yet and I expect some action when the end of the presale gets closer.

Speaking of the end of the presale, there are 16 days to go so there's definitely plenty of time. That's plenty of time for me to buy in as well. I'm still of the mind of burning 415K SPS but since it dropped pretty fast from 0.0130+ to 0.010, and I did buy 33% of it at 0.0115. I kinda don't feel like burning at a loss even a part of it right now, so I'll just wait and see if we have a bit of a minor presale end pump. I do want to get at least 4.4M DEC worth of packs. At least I don't think there is any threat of any of the packs being bought out before I am able to react. The Alchemy packs are free to sell out though, I'm only interested in Legendary and Standard packs.

You can also track the pack sales on splintercards.com. They've got a pretty neat visual going:

Now, let's have a look at a few of the recently revealed cards:

Name: Bellowmancer
Element: Neutral
Bloodline: Ulund

The Bellowmancer is a 10-mana Ulund Legendary Magic Attacker. At level 1 she starts off with 2 Magic Attack, 1 Speed, 5 Armor and 8 HP. The ability she starts off with is Taunt. At level 2 she gains an extra point of Armor for a total of 2 and her second ability - Shield. She's now a viable ranged tank with Taunt against Melee/Ranged Attackers. Next at level 3 she gains 1 Speed for a total of 2, 1 Armor for a total of 7 and 1 HP for a total of 9. More importantly, she gains a brand new ability for the CA set - Reveal:

Reveal is an interesting but somewhat niche ability so I am not sure how useful it would be in general but we'll see how the meta evolves overtime and what new cards get introduced. Finally at level 4 she gains 1 Magic Attack for a total of 3 and 1 Speed for a Total of 3. She also gains her final ability - Void Armor. With the addition of Void Armor, I can say that she becomes a pretty versatile neutral tank, especially if she has some support of a unit with Repair and someone with Triage. She'll definitely take the niche of the CL/RW backline tanks which will be exiting the Modern meta.

https://x.com/GhostlyBG/status/1915500387185938857

Name: Taye Loreswift
Element: Neutral
Bloodline: Elf

Taye Loreswift (definitely not related to Taylor Swift ;) ) is a 3-mana Melee Elf Legendary Unit. At level 1 she starts off with 1 Melee Attack, 3 Speed, 1 Armor and 2 HP. The ability she starts off with is Reach. At level 2 she gains an extra point of Health for a total of 3 and her second ability - Inspire. Next at level 3 she gains 1 Melee Attack for a total of 2. She also gains her third ability - Snare. Finally at level 4 she gains 1 Melee Attack for a total of 3 and 1 HP for a Total of 4. She also gains her final ability - Piercing. I think Taye Loreswift has a very good kit for the 3 mana she costs. She's definitely a contender to be often played in very low-mana battles as well as whenever the Little League ruleset is active, especially give the fact that she's a Neutral Unit. She's also an Elf so we've got a bloodline synergy Archon to add more power to her kit since she would get Execute in that scenario.

https://x.com/GhostlyBG/status/1915828656888320236

Name: Fenmoor Gorgon
Element: Death
Bloodline: Saurian

The Fenmoor Gorgon is a 5-mana Common Death unit. She's a Saurian. At level 1 she has 2 Magic Attack, 1 Speed, 0 Armor and 4 HP. She has no abilities at level 1. At level 3 she gets her first ability - Demoralize, which makes her a viable option against a melee heavy lineup. At level 5 she gains Cripple. Finally at level 10 she has 2 Magic Attack, 2 Speed, 0 Armor and 9 HP. She also gains her 3rd ability - Execute. For 5 Mana she has a decent health pool at max level and is potentially usable in Magic only battles as a sponge for damage. If the battle is long, Cripple could be useful as well as Execute. Generally I would say - a C-tier unit for now. But we might get a Saurian Archon and that could change everything.

https://x.com/GhostlyBG/status/1915705212607619146

Name: Moribund Arrowbait
Element: Life
Bloodline: Ulund

Moribund Arrowbait is a 4-mana dual-attack Magic/Ranged Legendary Ulund Unit. At level 1 she starts off with 1 Ranged Attack, 1 Magic Attack, 1 Speed, 1 Armor and 1 HP. The ability she starts off with is a brand new one - Bloodline Tribute:

. This is a great new ability, and the goal of units with it will be to die quickly so they could buff the rest of their allies of the same bloodline. . At level 2 she gains an extra point of Speed for a total of 2, and extra point of Armor for a total of 2 and an extra point of HP for a total 2. The second ability she gains is also a new one:

. It is an interesting ability even though I am not sure how useful it will be on this particular unit. . Next at level 3 she gains 1 Ranged Attack for a total of 2 as well as 1 Speed for a total of 3 and 1 Armor for a total of 3. Finally at level 4 she has the same stats as at level 3. However, she also gains her final ability - Rebirth. Now that's huge because that means that she will trigger her Bloodline Tribute ability twice thus buffing all other Ulunds on the team twice. In general I think Moribund Arrobait is a very playable unit for 4 mana, specifically at max level.

https://x.com/GhostlyBG/status/1914376749410099338

Name: Mahkah Hemlig
Element: Earth
Bloodline: Minotaur

Mahkah Hemlig is a 9-mana Magic Attacker of the Minotaur Bloodline. She is a Legendary Earth Unit. At level 1 she starts off with 4 Magic Attack, 4 Speed, 0 Armor and 3 HP. The ability she starts off with is Opportunity. She is basically a glass cannon at level 1 with her 3 HP and 4 Magic Attack. She could be quite useful even at this point. At level 2 she gains an extra point of Health for a total of 4 and her second ability - Deflect. Now she's a glass cannon with a protection from Magic Reflect. Next at level 3 she gains 1 HP for a total of 5. She also gains her third ability - Scavenger. Now things get more interesting especially if she manages to survive the initial stages of the battle, she has a chance to beef up (pun intended) considerably. Finally at level 4 she has 4 Magic Attack, 4 Speed, 0 Armor and 6 Health. She also gains her final ability - Triage. I think Mahkah Hemlig is starts off as a glass cannon but eventually turns out as a very good backline semi-support Magic Attacker. She definitely could be useful in the new CA meta.

https://x.com/GhostlyBG/status/1913993763816378522

Name: Palifala Weslinath
Element: Life
Bloodline: Gnome

Palifala Weslinath is a 6-mana Ranged Attacker of the Gnome Bloodline. She is a Legendary Life Unit. At level 1 she starts off with 3 Ranged Attack, 2 Speed, 2 Armor and 4 HP. The ability she starts off with is Sneak. Ranged Sneak attackers are always interesting and could surprise the opponent. At level 2 she gains an extra point of Armor for a total of 3 and her second ability - Relentless Strike. I see Relentless strike being quite useful here as doing True Damage to a fortified backline is definitely very useful. Next at level 3 she gains 1 HP for a total of 5. She also gains her third ability - Close Range. She definitely cannot be a Ranged tank at this point with only 5 HP but at least she can deal that final blow should she find herself in the tank spot. Finally at level 4 she has 3 Ranged Attack, 2 Speed, 3 Armor and 5 Health. She also gains her final ability - Mimic. We all know how overpowered Mimic could be especially given the time to stack enough buffs for its wielder. That's when Palifala's Close Range definitely becomes very important cause without it a Ranged Attacker with Mimic loses a lot of value as it would not be able to deal damage in the last stages of the battle. Let's not forget that Palifala is also a Gnome so there's already an Archon which will buff her by providing the Painfoge ability to her:

. Painforge scales up really quickly if put in the right circumstances so this should not be underestimated at all. Overall Palifala could turn out to be a very often played unit for people who are fans of the Gnome Archon.