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Card Highlights #40: Grund

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We all have a dinosaur within us just trying to get out.
by Colin Mochrie
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Grund, a powerful melee unit, can carry games with his strength. He's versatile and works well with various summoners. While he can be a good carry, for each summoner, strategies may differ. While he has high health for taking and absorbing damage, don't rely on him as your only tank due to his lack of abilities that reduce the enemy's damage. The units in the fron are the ones who take the most damage normally so without Shield, Void, Flying or abilities like that, it would be quick for your enemy to reduce that health to 0. His high expensive mana can be a turn off at times but his strengths make up for it. To maximize Grund's potential. In this battle, I will show you one way to use him as well as the different rule sets that I advise getting him in. I hope this would help you get higher rating than you are now.

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Lore

Grund has spent his entire life in the lowlands of Praetoria and has grown to love the land and its people. First introduced to the lore of battle as a hatchling, he has studied it ever since with enthusiasm. When he became a juvenile his hands found steel, an old rusting sword abandoned and forgotten in the swamp by some intrepid explorer.
Before long it became an extension of himself as he applied all he had learnt, quickly mastering blade work. From then on, he became obsessed with the art of armed combat and he practised with any weapons he could get his hands on.

^{For full lore of this card, visit this website:
https://next.splinterlands.com/card-detail/376/regular/7/?tab=lore}

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Buy and Rental Costs

A max level costs you $4.46 which is good due to his good stats and abilities. If you are to regularly use him, a $4.46 carry is pretty worth it.

If buying is out of your budget, renting is your friend. You can get a level 4 Grund for 1.71 DEC per day. Decent but not the best. If you want the best, a rental of 4.16 DEC per day is the cheapest now on the market.

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Card Stats

Grund has great stats. He has high damage, high health and great abilities. The only problem is that he has high mana, no abilities to reduce damage and no armor so you may get in trouble if you use him as your only tank.

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Card Effects

^{Double Strike}

Unit attacks twice each round.

Double Strike is a really strong ability for any unit. It doubles their attacks per round providing another damage on the same unit if that target is still alive. Otherwise, it does another attack to the enemy instead.

^Trample

When a Unit with Trample hits and kills its target, it will perform another attack on the next Unit on the enemy Team

Trample works well with Double Strike as each attacks can trigger the Trample ability. This means it can give you a maximum of 4 attacks per round considering each attack would kill an enemy.

^Cripple

Each time an enemy is hit by a Unit with Cripple it loses one max health

Cripple is a good bonus. If your enemy did not die from that attack, it would Cripple them reducing the max health. It doesn't fit the idea of Grund but lore-wise, I think it's good.

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Strengths & Weaknesses

Strengths
Grund's strength is his damage and complimenting abilities. Both Double Strike and Trample works really well with each other especially since Grund has high damage.

Weaknesses
Grund's weakness is his lack of protection. Grund doesn't have armor or any abilities that would reduce the damage. This makes him a very bad tank to use in the front unless you combine him with summoners like Immortalis, which would give him Void to reduce magic attacks.

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When To Use

^{Blood and Sunder}

All units have Corrosive Ward.

The Corossive Ward from Blood and Sunder only affects the attacker's armor. Since Grund doesn't have any armor in the first place, then, he won't be affected by this rule set.

^Stampede

The Trample ability can trigger multiple times per attack if the trampled Units is killed.

Grund has Trample which is the prerequisite for Stampede rule set. In addition to this, he has Double Strike ability as well, which means Grund can use Stampede twice per round.

^Maneuvers

Units with melee attacks gain Reach.

Since Grund doesn't have good armor or abilities that reduce opponent's attack, then the Reach that this rule set gives is perfect for Grund. You will be able to use him in a safer prosition while not suffering any disadvantage.

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When Not To Use

^{Briar Patch}

All units receive the Thorns ability at the start of the battle. Enemy units that use melee attacks receive damage back.

Briar Patch gives Thorns to all units. Any melee units that attacks a unit with Thorns suffer 2 damage. Since Grund has Double Strike and melee attacks, he gets up to 4 damage each round which is really bad for him.

^Equalizer

The initial Health of all Units is equal to that of the Units on either team with the highest base Health.

While Grund will probably not be affected by Equalizer, and in fact, he is a good unit in this rule set due to the damage he can provide, you also can't deny that his high health might be the source of enemies getting health, which means you just helped your enemy get absurd amount of health for free.

^{Holy Protection}

All Units have the Divine Shield ability.

The first portion of your attacks are negated. If your enemy has Protect or any armor, Grund will attack that next making his first round for each unit invalidated.

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Battle Sample

^{https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_9c098ff2976165c8014fec2abc3bea35}

In this battle, since I wasn't able to do a Kron the Undying-Scarred Llama Mage combo since I cannot use Legendary units, I went with Grund. I placed a martyr unit in front so I could gain more stats before I apply the Last Stand to him and one-handed carry the game. The only problem with this combo is unlike Kron the Undying, Grund doesn't have Heal so it's either kill or be killed.

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Final Thoughts

Grund is a really strong unit. If you need a melee unit that can carry the game, he's your man. You don't need to have Scarred Llama Mage to be your summoner and can work with a lot of variety of summoners but the strategy you will need is a bit different.

He can't be trusted with being a sole tank though. While he has high health and can take quite a bit of damage before he dies, the mana you used is too high for him to just die in the first few rounds.

Partner Grund with a unit with Flank to be his shield as he deals damage from behind or use summoners like Immortalis to give him Void or the new unit, Mana Warden, for the Shield Ward to give Grund Shield. To use the latter, you must have a dual element summoner like Risqruel Drath, Brewmaster Abraxas, or Eternal Tofu to have both of them in one team.

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If you have suggested combos or questions, feel free to comment it down below.

If you are planning to play and is inspired by my post, please consider using my referral link: https://splinterlands.com?ref=kpgamingch

I do not own any of the photos in this post. All credits goes to: