Cruel Sethropod, a Little Golden Gem

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CRUEL SETHROPOD

About two weeks ago, I was looking for interesting Gold Foil cards to purchase in anticipation of the New Reward System. Cruel Sethropod popped up as being one of them. Indeed, at Level 3, the base level for a Gold Foil Common card, this Little League tank already acquires its second Melee attack.

With the recent pump in card prices, I even made a decent profit on paper. I got the GF Cruel Sethropod for $0.791 (783.246 DEC) and barely fifteen days after, it is now already priced at $2.440 (2,226.074 DEC), which is more than a 3x! The speed at which those assets fluctuate in value from week to week has always been astonishing to me.

All-in in Basic Stats

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At max level, the Cruel Sethropod displays an impressive 3 Melee attacks, 6 Armors, and 7 Health Points for 3 Mana cost only. Sure, it doesn’t have any special ability, but those solid basic stats still make it a viable option in any league.

A Challenge Completed Within Another Challenge

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This battle was buried among other battles that helped me complete my Dragon Quest of the day. And, as you can see, except for this battle, the others were all conducted with the Byzantine Kitty as my summoner.

In fact, today was the first time I've ever rented a Byzantine Kitty. This was part of a little experiment I wanted to run before the next season as Win Streak will be much more important going forward.

So, having finally reached a stage in my Splinterlands journey where my rental revenue more than covers my rental cost, the extra leeway left will allow me to rent key cards to help me with the Daily Focus of the day.

And, starting by renting even base-level Untamed Legendary Summoners seems to be a no-brainer.

And sure enough, the Kitty didn’t disappoint. I quickly went on a Win Streak, which helped me complete my Daily Quest in only 6 battles. Another great help came from the Carnage Titan, which was also another card I played with for the first time.

This result, more than ever, makes me look forward to the upcoming Chaos Legion Legendary Summoners!

The Battle

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Rulesets: Healed Out + Earthquake
Mana Cap: 12
League: Gold III
Available Splinters: Fire, Water, Death, Dragon

On Mobile:
https://m.splinterlands.io/#/battle/game/process/sl_b0f0f9b49bbe03ef89a726f97f99bd3c

On Desktop:
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_b0f0f9b49bbe03ef89a726f97f99bd3c&ref=tt88

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Splintertools link

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As I've said, this battle was the only match from my Dragon Quest that didn’t feature the Kitty. Looking at the rulesets and the small mana cap, I decided to bet on Brighton Bloom, even though she was a Level 1 summoner.

Then, having this Share Your Battle challenge in the back of my mind, I figured out that this could be a good opportunity to throw the Cruel Sethropod into it.

But, the first problem I encountered was that my Level 1 Brighton Bloom couldn’t make use of the Cruel Sethropod’s second attack.

Moreover, to protect my backline, I chose Naga Assassin and her speed, which combined with Flying could potentially make her quite evasive.

However, this brought another issue because Naga Assassin could also only deal 1 single damage.

So, fearing a Shield tank could be in the opposition to offset my single Melee/Ranged attacks, I tried to hide Ice Pixie in the middle of my lineup.

This choice made me win the battle.

My opponent chose to go with the Chain Golem. Its Shield ability immediately turned both Cruel Sethropod and Naga Assassin into harmless monsters.

Fortunately enough, round after round, Ice Pixie and the Earthquake slowly wore the Golem out.

3 Mana, 3 Rounds

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CHAIN GOLEM	CRUEL SETHROPOD

In this battle, Cruel Sethropod successfully bought time as it took 3 rounds for the Chain Golem to get through this little tank, which was enough to ensure the win.

After the Cruel Sethropod, the Chain Golem still had to face the Torrent Fiend, the Furious Chicken, and the Creeping Ooze to have a chance to hit Ice Pixie.

Being able to count on two 0-mana monsters in a 12-mana game was without a doubt very helpful. In addition, the Creeping Ooze also helped increase my team's overall evasiveness to buy more time for the Pixie again.

In a nutshell

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In conclusion, I’ve noticed that generally speaking, in low mana matches, counting on several monsters often trumped relying on a single overpowered one. Fortunately enough, this little battle was no different.

See you all in the next challenge!

Thomas

For new players interested in joining this amazing game, you can support me by using the following referral link (at no extra cost to you!):

https://splinterlands.com?ref=tt88

Thank you.