Who needs Lord A. when you have CUBE? High mana match

Dear @splinterlands fans in this article I want to show that there are occasions
where Gelatinous Cube performs much better than Lord Arianthus.

Cube and Lord A. are both no damage tanks and can be used as main tanks, secondary tanks or separators between your tanking monsters and damage dealers. We usually see them on second positions, although Cubes are often seen further back, while Lord A. is often seen in first position.

At lower card levels they are quite similar, but later Cube unlocks very powerful heal ability that have excellent synergy with innate scavenger ability and very high health. Sadly my Cube have not ate enough to get there yet.

Let’s get into today’s battle analysis, it is in high gold league and rules are:

First thought that came into my mind was Melee Mayhem – Its buffed Exploding Dwarf’s time.
And not only that, but my favorite Fire Splinter also have often underrated Molten Ogre,
which can be easily played in such high mana match and his ability Demoralize will shine.
Here are my thoughts when I was building my composition:

Summoner of our choice is Daria Dragonscale because vast majority of our monsters will be melee and +1 buff to their attack will go long way. Her level will also allow us to summon high level Goblin Mech.

For our first tank Shield ability will have high value and it need to be durable because having Daria as summoner means probably lack of speed. Chain Golem as main tank is no brainer here – it fits this role perfectly. So Chain Golem goes into 1st position.

Next monster to place is Molten Ogre. He is valuable support card and we want him to survive as long as possible. He is also durable enough to take few sneak hits and can work as back-tank, so into 6th position he goes.

Time to place ultimate glass cannon – Exploding Dwarf.
5th position is good spot from where he will be able to
deal tons of damage.

Goblin Mech is also our damage dealer so we want him protected. 4th position is place where he will live without much worries and also acts as last line of defense before Exploding Dwarf.

Now, when the core of our composition is complete, it’s time to think about what opponent can do to us. Let’s start with mind games and my favorite trick – using full magic composition in Weak Magic match seems weird, but very few opponents defends against magic damage here and it still bypasses Shield ability, which is almost guaranteed in both player’s compositions. So we ideally want some degree of protection against that if possible. Continuing with usual suspects Sneak is not a threat because Molten Ogre is durable enough, Snipe is something we need to have countermeasures against and Opportunity is something we can’t stop, but we can do something to get bit of value from opponents possible Opportunity, so here comes THE CUBE. Cube gets full tanking value against full magic surprise composition, tanks snipes and grows if our Exploding Dwarf dies to baddie with Opportunity. A lot of contingency plans in one card.

Due to having Cube in our composition we are free to have extra tank or and extra damage dealer as our last monster. So last unit is Living Lava, card that is neither best in tanking nor in damage, but does both reasonably enough. What to place 2nd and what 3rd is difficult decision. Cube 2nd means Lava will live longer and deal more damage, while Lava 2nd means Cube will grow bit more and tank a bit more before opponent gets to our main damage dealers. Possibility of Exploding Dwarf dying to Opportunity, Thorns or Retaliate abilities makes this decision really hard. I placed Cube 2nd, which is small mistake imho, but it’s complicated.

Did it worked as intended? Yes – here is match replay.
As said before I think Cube and Lava should swap their positions.

Do I use Cube often? No, but I think it will change once Heal ability is unlocked. Not enough minerals spare cards to level up… work in progress… This match shown me that every time I wanna use Lord A. is good place to ask wouldn’t Cube work better here? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

Thanks for reading and good luck in the @splinterlands

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