Magalli's "SHARE YOUR BATTLE Weekly Challenge! RADIATED BRUTE!"

A new week in Splinterlands, tomorrow another season will finish, and another "Share Your Battle Weekly Challenge" is ready, this week I'll talk about the Radiated Brute, a really interesting card.

Before I start talking about the card, I want to say that I analyzed it as a Bronze player.

So let's start analyzing the card:

1 ) Mana cost: 5 The Radiated Brute has an average Mana cost, just one too much to be used with "Little League" Rules of Combat.

2 ) Melee Attack: 2 Nice attack value, especially considering its ability "Reach".

3 ) Speed: 1 Lowest possible value in speed, it may be useful in reverse speed battles, but it is not a good value.

4 )Ability: Reach This is an ability that allows a Melee monsters to attack the opponent's first positon monster from second position, so the Radiated Brute placed behind a good tank can hit the enemy's first monster while it's covered.

5 ) Expansion: Chaos Legion I highlighted that because in the near future the Expansion of a card will be important to know if it is playable in the Modern format or in the Wild format (MF: playable only in the last two Expansions that came out on Splinterlands, WF: every Expansion is playable).

6 )Health: 5 This is, in my opinion, a nice amount of health considering the Radiator Brute not as a tank but as a second position card, protected by a more resitant monster.

7 )Element: Fire Its element is "Fire" which means that it can be used only with Fire Summoners and Dragon Summoners.

Please note: the Radiated Brute has no armor and considering its ability, we can agree that it is definitely not a tank. Both in Fire and Dragon elements we can use much better monsters in the first position.

Now I want to analyze the "priority" that the Radiated Brute should have in a Fire deck. Especially considering the Chaos Legion Expansion and the "ghost" cards that a beginner can use.
The Fire decks should focus on Melee attack, considering Tarsa, the Fire Summoner, that gives +1 in Melee attack and +1 in Health and the type of Monsters that this element has:

These are, probably, the three best Ghost cards that can sinergyze with Tarsa increasing their Attack and Health.

I want to concentrate on the last one: the Tenyii Striker, it costs 5 Mana as the Radiated Brute, it has 2 Melee Attack as the Radiated Brute, it has 1 point more than the Radiated Brute in Speed and Health and a different ability, Sneak that targets the last Monster on the enemy Team instead of the first Monster, making it another interesting non-tank Melee monster.

So, for the same Mana cost, who is better? As always I tried to analyze the two cards in "Vanilla" battles, without Rules of Combat and with the same Summoners and "Teammates".

Thanks to https://splintertools.io/, where you can "Test different decks from your previous battles"

The simulation is pretty clear, the Tenyii Striker outclasses the Radiated Brute in almost 100% of the situations.

So, when should I use the Radiated Brute while I have a card that for the same Mana performs better? Well...when I can use both of them, taking advantage of Tarsa's boosts.

To wisely use a Radiated Brute these are the three things to take into consideration before choosing it:

1 ) In a Fire deck, the Living Lava, the Serpentine Spy and the Tenyii Striker are essential, so we will need a Battle with at least 24 as Mana Cap to be able to use the Radiated Brute without leaving important monsters out of the deck.

2 )Another important consideration is about different opponents' strategies. Personally I would avoid to use a Fire deck if my opponent could count on Armor boosting cards, because 1 Armor can neutralize one Melee hit, regardless of the attack's strength. Some examples:

The ability Protect gives +2 armor to all friendly monsters, great Melee attackers counter.

3 ) The last consideration is about the "Rules of Combat" there are some rules that can help the Radiated Brute to shine:

Images from https://splinterlands.fandom.com/wiki/Splinterlands_Wiki

After my card analysis, it should be understandable why these rules could help the Radiated Brute (I hope).

So the introduction to the Radiated Brute is finally over, let's see if we can use it wisely to win a battle.

Rules of Combat: Positive, with "Aim True" I don't have to worry about the misses due to the low Radiated Brute Speed.

Mana Cap: Positive, 25 will let me use all the best Fire cards that I listed before plus the Radiated Brute and some decoy.

Active Elements: Non-Positive because my Opponent could use a deck with Armor booster cards, but I felt confident in using the Fire deck because with the "Aim True* Rule of Combat I wasn't particularly worried about the high chance of missing versus a "quick" deck and because, studying my opponent's previous battles, I noticed that he never used cards with Protect ability.

This is the team I chose, in case my opponent had choosen a Magic Deck I would be calm because the Living Lava and eventually the Radiated Brute could have absorbed enough damage to let the Tenyii Striker and the Serpentine Spy kill the magic monsters in the second lines.

Sneak and Opportunity abilities to hit respectively the last monster and the weakest monster in the enemy's team.

In case of a "physical" deck the Living Lava's Shield ability would have let it absorb a lot of damages, and in case of monsters with Sneak or Opportunity ability I bet on my precious Scorch Fiend to absorb one hit for free, and I bet on the Radiated Scorcer in last position to protect my Tenyii Striker from monsters with the Sneak ability.

"Bait" monsters are important, the less they cost in mana, the better they are.

As you can see, there were two monsters with the "Opportunity" ability in the enemy team, nice choice to use the Scorch Fiend.

So, my opponent bet on higher Speed and Armor, probably with no "Rules of Combat" it would have been a defeat, considering the high chances of missing. But with "Aim True" I could count on 7 certain Melee damages to the opponent's first line monster and other 6 damages at his second line's monsters.

The Radiated Brute did its best, dealing with a high amount of damages.

And the Tenyii Striker closed the match, luckily to my advantage.

Final considerations:

The Radiated Brute is not the most important or the most powerful Fire card that you can use, and it is inferior to the Tenyii Striker, but it can synergize very well with the Summoner Tarsa in battles with Mana Cap 24+.

The battle: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_5ddd15fd90ecc41b39f247ef1d7e10ea&ref=magalli

Best regards,
Mr.Magalli

P.S. my referral link: https://splinterlands.com?ref=magalli

P.P.S. A special thanks to @monstercrusher for whitelisting me.