Bludgeon Hucker is a unit that feels simple at first but becomes more interesting on higher levels. At only five mana, it fits easily into many lineups without forcing big sacrifices elsewhere. It brings ranged damage, utility and support abilities all in one slot which is rare at this cost. Many players focus only onmonster's damage and often ignore the rest of the kit but that is a mistake. Bludgeon Hucker is not meant to be a main carry. It is meant to combo with other units from the backline. When used correctly, it helps your team attack the right targets without wasting time with the tank while supporting your team and making them harder to kill.

Stats

• Bludgeon Hucker has very balanced stats for a 5 mana unit. The 3 ranged damage is solid and lets it deal steady damage every round from the backline. The speed of 3 is average so it will not always attack first and might miss against higher units but it is not too slow either. The combination of armor and health is not high so make sure that you keep it protected. It is enough to survive some damage first in specific modifiers if it is not targeted early. Because it uses ranged attack, Bludgeon Hucker cannot attack from the front. Put him in the back to avoid it. Overall, stat-wise, it's okay. It's not the best but you're also only just spending 5 mana so it's also not the worst.

Abilities

Snipe: Tagets the frist enemy Unit with Rangd, Maic, or no attack that is not in the first position with Ranged or Magic attacks.
Snipe is a strong ability because it allows Bludgeon Hucker to ignore the front tank and target weaker units in the backline. This is very useful against teams that rely on support units like healers or buffers hiding behind a tank. By hitting those units early, you can remove value from the enemy lineup faster. That is actually what happened in the battle for this post. Snipe works especially well when combined with other Snipe units creating pressure on the same targets. Even if Bludgeon Hucker does not get the kill, it helps soften targets so they die sooner and that early deaths from the enemy backline can decide fights.

Slow: Reduces the Speed of all enemy Units by 1.
To me, Slow is not a useful ability. It's not bad but it's also not good. Speed can decide who can act first which is nice and can also increase the chance of hitting or missing the attacks. The problem is that the chance is kind of complicated. It's not as simple as if your enemy has higher speed, they have 50% chance to miss or something. It's way more complicated than that as well as unreliable metric in my opinion. Even if your unit has 1 speed and theirs have like 5 or something, your units can still hit them and sometimes, the hit can be consecutive as well. It's like your units are most likely to miss but it doesn't mean it would. Slow is a mediocre ability for me. It's a good addition but it's not something I would pick Bludgeon Hucker for just because it had this ability.

Protect: All friendly units gain +2 Armor.
Protect adds armor to all friendly units which is very strong against melee and ranged damage. Even one extra armor can block an entire attack especially from high damage units. This ability helps low health backline units survive longer and gives tanks more time before their health starts dropping. Protect is most effective when the enemy team relies heavily on melee and range attacks. While it does nothing against magic attacks, it still forces enemies to spend extra attacks breaking armor first. I like using units with this ability when I don't want or don't have extra mana to spend on fortifying my back row against potential Sneak attacks.

Battle

Link to battle

In this battle, I wanted to attack the back line units first since there's a potential that they also use a Magic-focused water lineup. I realized that Water units with magic attacks and came from Foundation doesn't have a armor with them. Some examples are Saltwater Mage and Mystic Scaleweaver. If they did use the water team, these units will struggle from being sniped by my Bludgeon Hucker and Frostguard Warrior. While the enemy team did not use a water lineup, the strategy still worked as they bypassed the enemy tank with Void. This allowed my team to quickly kill some back line units to tilt the battle on my favor.

Images were taken from Splinterlands, made in Canva, drawn in Krita and animated in Photoshop.

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