Splinterlands Social Media Challenge!

Another week, another Social Media Challenge, I will keep doing battles featuring the new cards in these for a while so this time around, I will feature a battle with what has quickly become one of my favorite Conclave Arcana cards, namely Jicarilla the Rime.

Well, Jicarilla seems to be one of the baddies, the big baddies at that, oh well, that matters not, she will still get played regardless of her affiliation.

Alright, we've got some idea of who Jicarilla the Rime is, after glancing at her lore. Let us have a look at her stats and abilities at different key levels now.

Jicarilla the Rime. She's a 7-mana Human Legendary Magic Attacker. At level 1 she starts off with 2 Magic Attack, 1 Speed, 1 Armor and 5 HP. The ability she starts off with is Cleanse Rearguard. At level 2 her stats remain unchanged but she gains her send ability - Tank Heal. That's pretty big as every tank healer is very valuable in general. Next at level 3 she gains +1 Magic Attack for a total of 3 and Phase Ward. This makes her a very viable substitute of the Rune Arcanist whenever Legendaries are playable. Finally at level 4 she gains one more ability for a total of 4 - Amplify. Jicarilla is great support unit and 3 Magic Damage is pretty decent, however, she definitely has to be kept safe from the enemy Opportunity and Snipe units as her 5 Health, 1 Armor and 1 Speed make a very easy prey.

There are 3 rulesets in this battle - Silenced Archons (Archons give no stat buffs or debuffs and neither grant nor use abilities), Equalizer (The initial health of all units is equal to that of the unit on either team with the highest base health) and Explosive Weaponry (All units have Blast (deals an additional 50% damage to units adjacent to the target, rounded up)). The mana budget is 55 which is an above-average amount of mana, so the units can be chosen more freely. The available Elements are Water and Death. I'm obviously going to go with an Archon who supports at least the Water element.

The main tank in this battle is one of my favorite tanks currently in the game - Commander Slade. He's a real powerhouse in term of dodging attacks and striking back the enemies though his abilities. At max level he has 5 Melee Attack, 6 Speed, 10 Hp and 7 Armor, and the following abilities - Enffeble, Dodge, Deflect and Backfire. The one thing his missing - no Magic Damage mitigation or avoidance whatsoever, so what do we do it this case - that's right, we put Jicarilla behind him to grant him Phase and heal him up whenever he gets hit.

In the off-tank spot I have placed our protagonist for this battle - Jicarilla. It's no surprise I've placed her here as this is the place she belongs as an "off-tank" for the combo to work.

In the 3th spot I've got the last RB promo card - Kelan Gaines. At level 1 Kelan starts off with 2 Magic Attack, 5 Speed and 6 Health, and the ability he's starting with is Snipe. Not so great for 8 mana imho, unless you have no other option but ofc could be used in the rare occasion you get a high mana battle in wood/bronze league. As soon as you get 5 copies of him and hit level 2 you get an additional ability - Phase. Now Phase + 5 Speed and 6 Health is not too shabby for a low league Anti-Magic tank. At level 4 things get spicier and he also gains Backfire. Now that's a formidable foe in Silver for sure. He also has 7 Health (gained at level 3). At level 5 he gains 1 more HP for a total of 8 and at level 6 another one for a total of 9. Level 7 gets his Speed to his max potential of 6. And we finally get to his final stats, we've already had a look at, at level 8. I can say that apart from getting a maxed level of him. Worth having levels would be level 2 - for the phase (5 copies). Level 4 for the Backfire (26 copies). Not sure that level 5 and 6 are that worth it for 1 extra HP each considering the exponential increase in price. If you get him to level 7, you might as well get all the way up to max for that Double Strike.

In the 4th spot I've got the Arachne Weaver. The Arachne Weaver was the first unit ever to get Corrupted Healing and she was dominating the healing field in the second part of the RB release, as people gradually leveled her up. There are now a few other units with Corrupted Healing but she is still a very good choice for almost any setup. Specifically equalizer battles make her healing really potent. At max level she has 2 Magic Attack, 7 HP, 2 Speed and the following abilities - Corrupted Healing, Scavenger and Poison.

5th in the line-up is a new CA card - Umbral Elemental. Ever since I maxed him, I've been using him more and more. At max level he has the following abilities: Taunt, Swiftness, Deflection Shroud and Void. His strong suit is granting Deflection to the neighboring units, this battle has Explosive Weaponry, so Deflection is even more useful.

Last in the line-up I have placed my very own mint 41 Heloise the Hollow (yeah I got her at the time the auction was still going for around 1K DEC per copy). She was a max unit out of the box (I say was as there were only 100 copies printed and she's now only obtainable on the secondary market). She has 8 Melee Attack, 7 HP, 3 Speed and the following abilities - Taunt, Opportunity, Spite, Soul Siphon and Last Word. Her Spite ability combined with Soul Siphon is what makes her special. She's a really fun card in general, however, she's also very tricky to play and rarely an auto-win. That's cool cause a card with just 100 copies should never be outrageous OP or even OP.

The Archon does not really matter as their abilities are silenced, so I've just picked the cheapest option, in terms of mana, which supports both Elements - Zeddica. My opponent has done the same. The battle is sort of a mirror, so it should be an interesting battle. I can't really tell who's gonna win by just looking at the initial state of the board