The Disintegrator Lore

What's up, Splinterlands community? This week's share your battle challenge features Chaos Legion neutral monster Disintegrator. It is a versatile beast that useful in different rulesets (I'll come back to these later). I have a sentimental appreciation for Disintegrator because it was one of the first Gold Foil cards that I pulled from a Chaos Legion pack!

What's the story behind the Disintegrator? You probably heard of Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus, which tells the story of an ambitious young scientist who creates a sapient beast. Well, the lore tells us that the Disintegrator is some sort of Frankenstein from Splinterlands:

The crazed tinker, Morloth, created the Disintegrator within his lair in the Badlands. Assembling various parts of other creatures together, he spent an age designing and building his masterpiece. (...) With the torso of a mountain gorilla, the hind quarters of a crocodile and the mouth of a leach, the Disintegrator is a mismatch of devastating qualities. Its strength is formidable, twisted strands of metal combined with great sinews of muscle. When the heavy forearms and tail strike its foe, it will pummel them into submission without mercy. If that fails to work then the monster’s evil jaws will latch onto its prey, numerous splayed fangs locking onto their body as it sucks the life from them. The obscene golem strikes terror into its foes wherever it goes and it has been known to continue to fight even after the yellow glow of life has left it eyes.

Disintegrator is a powerful creature. Level 1 comes with the demoralize ability: reduces the melee attack of all enemy monsters by one. It is however slow. At level 4, it increases its speed, at level 5 it gains the trample ability, at level 8, knock-out, and at the maximum level it may (randomly) retaliate attacks.

The Disintegrator Strategy

Disintegrator is particularly useful in some specific rulests, particularly those that benefit melee monsters, like up close and personal, melee mayhem, equal opportunity, and super sneak. Level 5 is also great for the stampede ruleset.While I own tow gold foil versions of the Disintegrator, I decided not to level it up, as I keep some cards slow for the reverse speed ruleset. The battles I'm sharing combined the following rulesets.

Icon	Ruleset	Strategy
	All Melee attack Monsters have the Sneak ability.	As explained in Splintercards: Choose a summoner that increases/reduces Melee attack or Mylor. Keep a monster with Shield, Retaliate or Thorns in the last position.
	Monsters with the lowest Speed attack first and have the highest chance of evading attacks.	As explained in Splintercards: Try to pick monsters with 1 speed because they have the best chance of evading Melee and Ranged attacks.

I like to combine Disintegrator, who demoralizes melee monsters, with a monster that has the shield ability, as they suffer reduced damage from melee and ranged attacks - and zero damage if it is a 1-point attack.

Icon	Ability	Strategy
	Reduced damage from Melee and Ranged attacks.	[Combine it with summoners and monsters that reduce melee or ranged attacks.*
	Reduces the Melee attack of all enemy Monsters.	[Very useful when opponent is expected to fill the.line up with melee monsters.*

With all the needed information, let's look at a simple line up I used in the battle. Note that it is a line up suitable for the Wild format, as it employs a summoner from alpha/beta and an early reward monster.

Card	Lore	Role and strategy
	Zintar Mortalis is the leading Dark Summoner. His renown has earned him the right to have a name, which is rare among the Dark Eternal collective. As a powerful summoning wizard, Zintar is the closest thing Mortis knows to a celebrity.	Previously one of the summoners available in the starter "ghost" deck, it has now been substituted by the Chaos Legion summoner. Its low mana cost makes it great for low mana battles, and the reduced melee buff stacks on demoralize abilities.
	Harklaw has achieved the highest degree of Dark Eternal existence in this realm. Harklaw has already won the loyalty of some of the Dark Lord’s closest confidants, and together they are concocting a scheme to dethrone him forever.	Brilliant synergy with the leading Dark summoner, and with monsters with demoralize. An obvious tank.
	The obscene golem strikes terror into its foes wherever it goes and it has been known to continue to fight even after the yellow glow of life has left it eyes.	We already spoke of the Disintegrator, so you know it has demoralize and it is slow. Perfect for the ruleset of the battle.
	You may be thinking, “A spider already has eight legs… Why Octopider?” For one thing, the Octopider is much larger than a spider, closer to the size of an octopus.	The Octopider is ranged attack monster with demoralize, to protect even more Karklaw.
	The chickens of the Splinterlands have had enough. For too long they have been kept in cages and pens. For too many generations their eggs have been made into omelettes, their breasts and thighs into nuggets, and their most pristine feathers into rather tacky jewelry. Under the brave leadership of a great hero known only as The Alpha Chicken, all chicken-kind is finally rising up against their oppressors. This uprising, all across the Splinterlands, is known as the Cluckening.	There's a fetiche (let's say a NFTicheover the Furious Chicken, which still costs $20 a single card ($5 per BCX if you buy it maxed). Sometimes having it in the line up makes the victory. Here it is positioned last to take the sneak attacks.

Battle

The battle I'm sharing had 26 mana cap, super sneak and reverse speed. A great combination for using the above combo. The opponent chose Kelya Frendul at level as summoner, with Sea Monster and its self-healing ability as tank (luckily, without thorns), followed by two melee monsters, one ranged with triage, one magic and, like me, a zero-mana monster at the back end. What was surprising was the choice of fast monsters for a rever speed battle. Well, so much better for me...

Already in round one, melee attack from the opponents monsters were reduced to one point. Its ranged monster also only had one point of attack. That meant that only the magic monster caused damage on Harklaw. And the other melee would be damaging back line monsters very slowly.

On my side, only the chicken succumbed. The battle ended in round 8, with a final blow of Harklaw on the Angelic Mandarin.

Reflecting on the battle

This was a battle where the demoralize strategy unfolded as planned. The Disintegrator played a key role, as it was slow and detracted melee attack from the opponent. I expect to use the same approach whenever the rulesets permit.

Splinterlands

Splinterlands is an fun card-based play-to-earn game, that requires strategy. Splinterlands has its own economy, tokens and assets (NFTs), representing also an investment opportunity for some. But I prefer to enjoy it as a game, and whatever I profit from it is an addition. If you want to start playing it, you can use my referral link to register: let me know you did it and I will send you a gift card if you buy a hive account "spellbook" (needed to hold assets as an alternative to creating a hive account elsewhere).

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