Welcome back to another awesome Splinterlands post, and I hope all of you are doing pretty well in your lives and enjoying a beautiful and pleasant day with your family and friends. For those of you who are actively hustling and grinding this web3 card-based strategy game and tirelessly and continuously growing your NFT card and other assets collection in splinterlands, I think all of you are currently fighting hard in the final hours of this ranked season. If we take a look at the season timer, only around 23 hours are left before the reset happens. So this is the last stretch where every single battle matters, and every win can push you one step closer to your target rewards. So, make sure to use your remaining battle energies wisely and keep fighting with all your best, because the finish line is almost here.
Now, talking about my own progress in the Frontier mode of this game, I am currently playing in the highest Gold I league tier with a trophy count of around 3,940. My goal for this season is to somehow reach the 4,200 trophy mark before the timer runs out and sadly, I had to drop the idea for pushing for the leaderboard due to lack of time and battle energies. It will be a close race, but I will keep trying until the last moment.
On the other hand, if we take a look at the weekly Frontier raffle, I have currently collected a total of 12 entries. With around 4 days and 22 hours left before the raffle draw, I will try my level best to increase this number up to somewhere between 54 and 57 entries over the next few days. Apart from that, I also opened 4 Foundation packs today that I earned from the last two days of daily missions. The results were quite exciting, as I pulled 1 gold foil legendary card along with 4 rare cards, including 1 Archon, and the rest were common cards. That gold foil legendary definitely stole the spotlight today and not to mention, I am very happy with the outcome.
Now moving forward, let us come to the main topic of this post, as today I will be taking a closer look at another interesting monster from the newest Escalation edition. As you have already seen in the title and thumbnail above, today I will be talking about the Darkguard Ironwing. So if you are interested in learning more about this monster card, let us dive deeper without any further delay.
The Darkguard Ironwing is a monster-type card that was introduced in the game with the newest Escalation mini cardset edition. This monster belongs to the Water element and it comes from the Avian bloodline. By rarity, this card is a Rare monster, so you will require a total of 115 CC cards in order to upgrade it to its maximum level. Now, if you want to use this monster in battles, you need to spend 7 mana, which makes it a strong option for medium to high mana limit matches. The attack type of this monster is Ranged, and while its base ranged damage looks modest, the real power of this card lies in its outstanding armor, solid health, and a toolkit packed with useful abilities. At its maximum level, this monster gains a total of four abilities that work together beautifully. Let us now take a closer look at its league-wise stats and abilities below.
At level 2, this monster starts with defensive stats that consist of 1 ranged attack power at 4 speed with 5 armor and 6 health. Apart from these stats, it already gains an ability called Apex Strike from level 1 onwards. This ability makes the monster useful for hunting down the biggest threat on the enemy team.
APEX STRIKE – Targets the enemy unit with the most power.
When you upgrade this monster further to level 4, its stats improve and it now holds 1 ranged attack power at 4 speed with 6 armor and 6 health. At this level, it also unlocks another strong ability called Halving. This can heavily weaken dangerous enemy attackers.
HALVING – Reduces the target's power by 50% (rounded down) after a successful attack.
As this monster gets upgraded further and reaches level 6, its stats improve again and it now carries 2 ranged attack power at 4 speed with 6 armor and 6 health. At this level, it also gains another valuable ability called Repair. This gives excellent sustain to your entire lineup, especially in armor-based battles.
REPAIR – Restores 2 armor (up to max) to the allied unit with the most damage to its armor.
Finally, when you upgrade this monster to its maximum level of 8, it becomes even more dangerous. It now holds 2 ranged attack power at 4 speed with 7 armor and 6 health. At this level, it also gains a unique ability called Armored Strike.
ARMORED STRIKE – If armored, gains a melee attack that deals damage equal to remaining armor. This means the monster can turn its armor into a brutal extra attack while still keeping its ranged pressure.
Last but not least, I think this monster is one of the most interesting defensive rangers in the game. First of all, even though its normal ranged attack looks decent rather than huge, it comes with an enormous health and armor combination along with good speed, making it very hard to remove. Another major advantage is the Repair ability, which can restore broken armor for itself or allied monsters every round. But the real fireworks begin when you combine that with Armored Strike. The Repair ability helps rebuild armor, while Armored Strike converts that armor into extra melee damage. That creates a very dangerous loop of protection and punishment. On top of that, the Halving ability can cut enemy attack power in half, while Apex Strike helps target the strongest enemy unit first. That means it can directly focus on enemy threats and make them weaker at the same time. Overall, I think the Darkguard Ironwing is a clever and heavily armored monster with excellent utility, survivability, and surprise damage potential. What do you think?
