This week's battle challenge was a real challenge: Win a battle using a Grumpy Dwarf. Now I can't be certain, but I don't believe I had ever even tried ro use this irascible imp in battle before. He's never stood out to me as a great option when building my deck. But let's see what we can do with him, shall we?
You may have noticed Grumpy Dwarf in your collection before, since he is a starter card available to all players. At level 1, this feisty fellow is a 4 mana melee monster with 1 damage, 2 speed, 1 armor, 2 health, and the Reach ability.
Wait, Reach? How could a tiny guy like Grumpy here ever manage to hit the enemies from behind a tank? We can only speculate, but I imagine that it involves diving, axe in hand, between the legs of his allies. Hmmm, it must take a lot of trust to fight alongside a Grumpy Dwarf.
But I digress. Those were the stats for a level 1 Grumpy Dwarf. How does that scale as we upgrade him? Well, at level 5, this mad munchkin gains the Enrage ability, and by level 10, he has 3 melee damage, 3 speed, 3 armor, and 4 health.
Those stats explain why I've never used Grumpy Dwarf until this challenge. Sure, at level 10 he can do some work, but at level 1, paying 4 mana to maybe plink out a couple points of damage while hiding behind a tank doesn't seem like an incredible deal. He does have that 1 armor to protect him, but any monster with Opportunity will still make short work of that 2 health, and once the front line falls, Grumpy is sure to follow. Nevertheless, let's give it our best shot.
For this challenge, I rented a level 4 Grumpy Dwarf. My first couple tries at using him... did not go well. However, we had some luck in this battle. Here we were playing under the Little League rule set, which limits us to using monsters and summoners that cost 4 mana or less. You can see that my opponent and I had similar ideas. We both played Fire splinter with a Cerberus up front to tank, and a variety of other monsters to hit from the back line. He went with Malric Inferno to boost his melee damage, while I chose Pyre to boost my speed. Pyre turns out to be quite a good counter when both players have similar, low health teams. Of course under the Spreading Fury rule set, which grants all monsters Enrage, you risk strengthening any enemies that you do not manage to kill off with your first strike. Luckily for us, Little League helps to offset that risk.
Here you can see that after the first few turns, we have already taken out the enemy Serpentine Spy, and Grumpy has just landed the killing blow on the opponent's Cerberus! Our own team has taken no damage in the meantime, thanks to a lucky dodge in a fight between our Cerberi.
And here's Grumpy lunging from behind the tri-dog to take out a Goblin Shaman, leaving us with only a defenseless Fire Beetle to clean up. And our own team is still unscathed (well, no longer scathed, due to our Cerberus' ability to heal). All in all, quite a satisfying battle, and the Grumpy Dwarf easily did his share of the work.
Has this battle challenge altered my opinion of Grumpy Dwarf? Maybe. I am still unimpressed by his level 1 stats. New players using only the starter cards can almost certainly find a better alternative to this short-tempered shrimp for their battles. But as he levels up and packs on some more damage, Grumpy Dwarf starts to come into his own. Being able to hit a little harder from the back row for only 4 mana can be useful in the right situation. I still don't think I would rush to try and max out this card, but I have at least learned to respect him.
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