When battles drag on and both sides start losing pieces, the tank that refuses to fall becomes the one that carries the whole match and funny enough, some of the best tanks aren’t the ones with devastating melee attacks but those that are not bound by common sense. Infernal Firestorm is one of those tanks.

Lore

Infernal firestorms are born from the molten rocks and ceaseless flames of the Plane of Fire. Few mages have the power to conjure them. Fewer still can control them. If unleashed and left unchecked, these tempestuous elementals can reduce entire cities to smoldering ruins.

https://splinterlands.com/card-detail/618/regular/12?tab=lore

Stats

Infernal Firestorm is one of those rare units that can tank insanely well while still dealing reliable magic damage from the front line. With 7 armor, 11 health, and 3 magic damage, Infernal Firestorm can be an effective frontline with stats alone while giving you more flexibility with his Flank ability. He can even punish enemy melee units thanks to Demoralize. When paired with strong melee allies who benefit from Flank, Infernal Firestorm becomes a very good tank that opens up double tank formations without sacrificing any damage for your second tank.

Abilities

Icon	Name	Description
	Flank	At the beginning of battle, if this unit is in the first position, the unit in the second position gains reach.
		is a match because Inspire works perfectly with Flank because the buff applies directly to the melee attacker behind Infernal Firestorm. If your Flank unit gains more melee attack, every attack becomes much stronger and greatly increases your chance to break the enemy lineup from the front. Once you kill the enemy tank, it's easier to clean up everyone else.
		is a counter because Thorns is a very dangerous ability for your Flank ally because Flank forces that ally to hit the enemy tank every turn. If the enemy tank has Thorns, your melee unit takes damage every time it attacks. If this goes long, this might kill them and disrupt your strategy. Thorns basically punishes your own setup by reflecting damage back to your Flank attacker.

	Demoralize	Reduces the Melee attack of all enemy Units by 1.
		is a match because Shield halves incoming melee attacks so when you combine Shield with Demoralize, you reduce enemy melee attacks twice. This creates a powerful combo that can delay or stop your enemy's melee strategy. The synergy can stall entire enemy frontline for multiple rounds and buys time for your other units to clean up safely.
		is a counter because Enemy Inspire directly increases the melee attack of their team. This cancels out your Demoralize, making that part of Infernal Firestorm’s ability useless. When both effects are active at the same time, the enemy melee attackers basically return to full strength and the abilities cancel each other out which removes the advantage Demoralize normally brings.

Good Rules to Consider

Icon	Name	Reason
	Briar Patch	All units have Thorns (returns 2 damage to attacker when hit by a melee attack)
		Briar Patch is great for Infernal Firestorm because he deals magic damage instead of melee, so he avoids taking Thorns damage entirely. Even if your Flank unit suffers, you can purposely choose not to choose a melee attacker behind him to ignore the drawback. This makes Infernal Firestorm extremely useful in this rule since he can still tank freely while enemies gets damaged by the Thorns everytime their tanks attack.
	Weak Magic	Magic attacks hit Armor before reducing Health.
		Weak Magic is actually a positive rule for Infernal Firestorm because of his extremely high armor. His armor becomes even more useful when there's enemy magic attack on the enemy side. While his own magic damage gets affected by enemy armorn, his value as a frontline tank increases because he becomes much harder to break through. This makes the fight last longer, which is what you want more as a tank.
	Armored Up	All Units have 2 Armor in addition to their normal Armor stat.
		Armored Up gives every unit +2 armor and Infernal Firestorm already starts with massive armor so this rule pushes him into becoming a more ridiculous tank. Because he uses magic to attack, he never suffers from the extra armor on enemies since magic attacks passes through it anyway. This gives him a huge advantage over melee attackers and range units who struggle more in Armored Up rules.

Bad Rules to Think Twice

Icon	Name	Reason
	Counterspell	All units have Magic Reflect (returns 50% of magic damage to attacker, rounded up).
		Counterspell affects all magic attackers like Infernal Firestorm. What's worse is that he has 3 magic attack, so he takes 2 magic damage every time he attacks. This is bad for a tank to take unnecessary hits. He becomes risky unit to use in this rule than a normal melee attack tank.
	Keep Your Distance	Units with Melee attack may not be used in battles.
		Keep Your Distance disables melee units entirely making Demoralize completely useless since it only affects melee attacks. Without this ability contributing value, Infernal Firestorm becomes more of a basic tank instead of adding another layer of strategy. Flank also uses value since you cannot use melee attacking units with it. This reduces his value in the battle and can make him feel underwhelming for a 10-mana unit.
	Reverse Speed	Units with the lowest Speed attack first and have the highest chance of evading attacks.
		Reverse Speed harms Infernal Firestorm because he has naturally high speed for a tank. In this rule, having higher speed is bad, meaning he enemies will less miss their attacks and Infernal Firestorm gets hit more. This rule flips his stat advantage into a disadvantage.

Battle

Link to battle

In this battle, I chose a team that would not be affected by Blood and Sunder rule. I have magic attack units and melee units without armor. That means I don't have to focus avoiding the rule for this battle. My goal is simple, try to eliminate the enemy from the inside out with Cullborn Revenant's Snipe ignoring the melee tanky units while Tasoshi Drakamoto's Sneak goes from the back. There's a bonus catch in this battle which is Emberguard's Demoralize. I did not expect the enemy to use a lot of melee units especially with the Blood and Sunder rule but they still did it so that was their loss.

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

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