Beginner Strategy and Card Giveaway #7 - To Halve and to Hold

Thank you everyone for your comments on my last post. congratulations to our winner @simonjay for winning last week's cards. We are going to look at something a little more advanced today AND have some fun this week as well with the weekly giveaway. Let's get into it...

For those of you that have been living under a rock for the past couple of weeks then the following card will come as a bit of a surprise to you...for eveyone else that's right I am talking about the Bitcoin halving inspired promotional card:

HALFLING ALCHEMIST

This Epic Neutral Monster was given out on a limited promotional basis. At its basic Level (1 bcx) you get 1 range, 1 speed, 1 shield and 1 life. All this can be yours for only 2 mana. I can hear your enthusiasm. But of course, its base stats are NOT why we love this card. It is for the new ability Halving.

Halving - Each time this Monster hits a target, the target's attack is cut in half (rounded down).

A couple of practical observations to add to this description. It will not round the damage to below 1. It will only be applied once so even if the target takes multiple hits from the Alchemist it will only have the attack reduced one time. Lastly, the damage will persist as an effect even after the Alchemist is taken out of the battle.

But believe it or not, this is not the card I want to discuss. The final point above is that the Halving effect lingers on your Monster even after you have removed the Alchemist from play. So how does one go about regaining your attack strength to its rightful, awe inspiring, fear inducing, levels?

Cleanse - Removes all negative effects on the Monster in the first position on the friendly team.

For the longest time this was only a mediocre ability. Sure, you could use it to remove a slowdown or an affliction but it didn't warrant using a Monster slot to ensure this ability was in your arsenal. With the possibility of an Alchemist in play and your tank being struck with Halving there is far more strategic value to Cleanse.

So why haven't I seen this ability on any of my Monsters?

Only 6 Monsters in the game have it and only 1 of those Monsters comes equipped with it at Level 1. To make matters even more imbalanced, half of those Monsters are in Life Splinter.

HERBALIST
Common Life Monster from the Untamed expansion for 2 mana gets Cleanse at Level 3 (bcx 14). This along with 1 range, 1 speed, and 2 life.

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TRUTHSPEAKER
A Rare Life Monster also from the Untamed release for 3 mana gets Cleanse at Level 5 (bcx 40) along with 2 speed, 3 life and Protect affording your entire team extra shield.

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SILVERSHIELD BARD
This Rare Life Promotional card for 1 mana is the only card to deliver Cleanse at Level 1 (bcx 1). Where you will get 2 speed and 1 life.

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MERMAID HEALER
Our first non-life card to look at, this Epic Water Monster was issued as a Promotional card but you can only get Cleanse at its MAX Level (bcx 46) which delivers a team assisting 1 magic, 3 speed, 5 life along with Triage, Strengthen, and Cleanse.

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ZALRAN EFREET
A Legendary Fire Monster this card is one of the newer Reward release cards. It adds Cleanse to its ability list at Level 2 (bcx 3) at which stage it provides 2 magic, 2 speed, 3 life, and Life Leech to help with that otherwise low life level.

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And last but certainly not least...

DIAMOND DRAGON
This Legendary Dragon Monster from the Untamed expansion adds Cleanse to his jaw dropping stats at Level 2 (bcx 3) at which point it is a 2 magic, 3 speed, 10 shield, 6 life Monster with Flying, Slow and Cleanse.

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That's it for now. Perhaps later as these new abilities mature and see more game play the developers will include both the offensive Halving and defensive Cleanse to a wider selection of Monsters. In the meantime, think about how you can add these cards into your game play. As always experiment, have fun, and play on!!!

Now for the contest rules. Be sure to post a comment to this article. Please include your in game name so you can receive your prize. Vote on which card with Cleanse you think is the most versatile and powerful. We are not going for sheer power here but also playability and team building.

We are going to have two giveaways. The first will be a Halving Alchemist. This will be given at random to one player selected from all the comments. The second will be a voting system. The Cleanse card most voted for will be given at random to a player who voted for that card. You can vote multiple times but only one card per vote.

Good luck to everyone.