Welcome back to another fresh and juicy Splinterlands post guys, and I hope all of you are doing pretty great in your lives and enjoying an awesome day with your loved ones. Now, if you are also like me, then I guess your Splinterlands journey is going well for this ongoing ranked season, and you are enjoying the chase while pushing and shoving yourself upwards in the ranks. If we take a quick peek at the ongoing season's clock, the current ranked season still has around 2 days and 20 hours remaining before it comes to an end, which means the season is now entering its final stage and there is not much time left to continue the trophy grind. So whether you are trying to reach a particular league tier position and just want to increase your season rewards, or make it to the leaderboard for a position among the top champion players, I wish all of you the very best for the remaining days of the season.
Now, talking about my own progress in the Frontier mode, I am currently battling in the highest Gold I league with 3,680 trophies. As usual, my first objective is to reach the 4,200 trophy milestone, and after reaching that point, I will see whether I have enough Battle Energy and time remaining to make another push toward the leaderboard. Looking at the weekly raffle progress, I currently have 33 raffle entries collected. There are around 2 days and 19 hours remaining before the raffle ends, so I still have some time left to increase my entries. My target this time is to reach somewhere between 54 and 57 entries.
Today's Frontier Daily Wheel marks my 102nd consecutive daily streak and I received just 100 Sparks along with an additional 25 bonus Sparks, bringing my total Sparks balance to 26,997. Anyways, irrespective of the small gain today, I am slowly moving closer to the 30K mark again, so hopefully the upcoming daily rewards will help me get there soon.
Apart from that, today I also opened 5 Foundation Packs that I earned from the last two days' Frontier missions. The opening turned out to be quite decent, as I managed to pull 1 Legendary card, 1 Gold Foil Rare Archon, and another 7 Rare cards, including 3 Archons. I also received 1 Gold Foil Common card, while the remaining cards were regular Common cards. Overall, it was a pretty satisfying opening, especially with a Legendary card and the gold foil Archon coming out of only five packs.
Now moving on to today's featured monster, let us take a closer look at another interesting monster from the newest Reward card set. As you have already seen in the title and thumbnail above, today we will be discussing Skrag the Gnaw. So, if you are interested in knowing more about this card, then let's take a deep dive without any further ado.
Skrag the Gnaw is a monster type card that belongs to the Earth element and comes from the Gnome bloodline. It is listed as a Legendary monster card, which needs a total of 11 cc cards to be upgraded to max level, but Skrag's scarce supply makes it more difficult to upgrade compared to Common, Rare, and Epic cards. Skrag the Gnaw costs 8 mana to deploy, so it is suitable for medium to high mana limit matches. This monster uses Melee attacks and its statistics already make it a heavily defensive monster with a good combination of Armor and Health, while its Melee attack becomes even more powerful at the maximum level. However, the most interesting thing about this monster is that it possesses a total of five different abilities at maximum level, allowing it to damage and punish enemy monsters in several different ways. Let us now take a closer look at its stats and abilities across different leagues.
At Level 1, Skrag the Gnaw possesses 3 Melee attack, 3 Speed, 3 Armor, and 8 Health. Even at its initial level, it already gains its first ability called POISON BURST, which allows it to punish enemy monsters even after being defeated.
POISON BURST – When defeated, has a 100% chance to apply Poisoned to the attacker and a 50% chance to apply Poisoned to units adjacent to the attacker. Poisoned units lose 2 Health at the beginning of each round.
At Level 2, Skrag the Gnaw maintains 3 Melee attack, 3 Speed, and 8 Health, while its Armor increases to 4. At this level, it unlocks another powerful defensive ability called REFLEXES, which protects it from repeated attacks by the same attacker during a round.
REFLEXES – After the first successful attack by an attacker against this unit, all subsequent attacks from that attacker against this unit miss for the rest of the round.
At Level 3, Skrag the Gnaw maintains 3 Melee attack, 3 Speed, 5 Armor, and 8 Health. At this level, it unlocks two new abilities called CRIPPLE and THORNS. Cripple reduces the maximum Health of an enemy target after every successful attack, while Thorns punishes Melee attackers by returning physical damage whenever they attack this monster.
CRIPPLE – Reduces the target's maximum Health by 1 after each successful attack. Does not affect units with Immunity.
THORNS – Returns 2 physical damage to the attacker when hit by a Melee attack.
At Level 4, Skrag the Gnaw reaches its maximum form with 4 Melee attack, 3 Speed, 5 Armor, and 8 Health. At maximum level, it unlocks its final ability called REBIRTH, giving it another chance to return to the battlefield after being defeated.
REBIRTH – Self-resurrects once per battle with 1 Health and 100% Armor. All Magic debuffs are removed and all Magic buffs are reapplied. The resurrected unit skips its turn.
I think Skrag the Gnaw is a very cool Legendary monster because of its heavy defensive stats and the huge number of abilities it possesses. First of all, the combination of high Armor and Health gives this monster good survivability, while its high Melee attack, especially at maximum level makes it dangerous on the offensive side as well. On top of that, its five abilities make it a monster that can continue causing problems for the enemy throughout the battle. The Poison Burst ability is especially interesting because even when this monster gets defeated, the enemy attacker has a 100% chance of becoming Poisoned, while the adjacent enemy units also have a chance to receive Poison. Then we have Reflexes, which can become very useful against monsters with multiple attacks or Retaliate, because after the first successful attack from the same attacker, all further attacks from that attacker will miss for the rest of that round. Cripple is another useful ability because it slowly reduces an enemy monster's maximum Health after each successful attack, making that target easier to eliminate as the battle continues. Thorns is a pure anti-Melee ability and punishes every Melee attacker by returning 2 physical damage whenever they successfully hit this monster. Finally, Rebirth gives Skrag the Gnaw one more chance to return to the battlefield after being defeated. Overall, I think Skrag the Gnaw is a powerful and versatile monster with a great combination of defensive stats, strong Melee damage, and abilities that can keep hurting the enemy in different ways. If used in the right lineup, this monster can definitely become a serious problem for the opposing team.
