Riftwatchers Cards - Runic Skyclaw

Hello everyone! I'm entering the Splinterlands Social Media Challenge with a series of reviews for Riftwatcher cards. First, I'll talk about Riftwatcher cards in general, what I think about the mini set, and how it was treated. After that, I'll proceed to this post's card: Runic Skyclaw.

I think the Riftwatchers set is well designed, for a mini set. If this were a stand-alone set, there would be too many high mana cards and it wouldn't make for a very balanced set of cards for players to have. However, that's not the goal for this one. It's supposed to be played with Chaos Legion cards. It does that very well and provides alternatives and situational cards that can work better in certain rule sets and mana caps.

I'm not a big fan of most of the summoners in this set. Their abilities are just too weak for most situations. Ilthain is the exception. It is a fantastic summoner. I would have liked for these summoners to have cost 3 mana instead of 4. That way, we'd have 3 and 4 mana summoners within the Chaos Legion group of sets. That would give players more options and make these a little better in low-mana matches. Of course, Ilthain would have to be changed, maybe lose the +1 speed. There is one good thing about these summoners, though. Since they are epic, they have an advantage in the Bronze and Gold leagues. They can play rare cards 1 level higher than the other summoners. This fact makes these summoners a pretty good option for Silenced Summoners in Bronze and Gold. I don't like this, because it seems like an oversight that was accepted and became the norm, but it's a bit weird that epic summoners can play level 3 rares in Bronze and other rarities can't.

An interesting consequence of having summoners as the only epic monsters in the set is that it pushed cards that "feel" epic into rare. It's not about the power level. There are plenty of commons and rares that are way more powerful than many legendaries and epics. It's about the complexity of the card, which is reflected in the number and type of abilities it has. Pelacor Bandit is a good example of a good common card. It has 2 simple abilities: flying and sneak. It never gets any new abilities from leveling up. It's always a solid option for a 3 mana sneak monster. It just gets better stats. Looking at Riftwatchers commons, Septic Slime and Time Meddler could easily have been rare because they have more abilities, can some of them as they level up, and are a bit more complex. As for the rares, Tinderlock, Runic Skyclaw, and Queen of Crows, they all feel epic. If I had to guess just looking at the max level stats, I'd probably say they were epic or even legendary, for Tinderlock. Very few cards have Last Stand and only one other rare has it: Efreet Elder, which has only 1 more ability. We could even argue a few other of these rares could have been epic. What's so interesting about this, in terms of gameplay, is that we're able to use these pseudo-epic cards in the Rise of the Commons rule set.

Each pack was priced at $5 in SPS plus 1 voucher. Everything goes to the DAO, and not the team. This was a mistake, for several reasons. Pricing in SPS was not a great idea. Players are supposed to want to keep their SPS and stake it. There were 2 proposals to fix this by turning the price into 5000 DEC, plus the voucher, regardless of the DEC price. The first time it failed but, more recently, it passed. This isn't a flawless solution, because it punishes those who bought earlier and breaks a promise, but I think it was necessary. The other big flaw, in my opinion, is the price itself. Chaos Legion was already overpriced at $4 and these are even more expensive. I certainly hope we go down in price, in the future. Sadly, I don't see us going back to the $2 packs from the Untamed days, but $3 would be the sweet spot, for me.

Another thing I didn't like was that, soon after passing the Riftwatchers packs for DEC proposal, another proposal passed for burning Riftwatcher packs. This one passed simply because most of the biggest SPS holders had bought enough Riftwatcher packs and they just wanted the airdrops to come out. A way to prevent this type of exploit, in the future, is to not count packs burned for airdrops.

Let's talk about Runic Skyclaw now. I have mine at max level. This monster has very good stats and abilities. Flying ranged monster with Snipe, with 6 Speed on every level. Starts with 3 attack and goes up to 5. Has 3 to 4 armor. This is a beast! At level 5 it gets Reflection Shield. In the next few levels it's just getting better stats but nothing too relevant. For max level, it gets Giant Killer, which is pretty important. It doesn't always come up, but when it does, it is often able to one-shot many big monsters. The good thing is that, since this costs 9 mana, if you're playing it, the opponent might also be playing big mana monsters.

I have been using it very often. In any high mana game where I play Dragon, this is often one of the chosen monsters.

We both have Wave Brood in the back but theirs died first, thanks to my Runic Skyclaw. Reflection Shield protected it from the nasty Return Fire. Mine died soon after, because Deeplurker is such a strong card. Maybe I should have used it instead of Swamp Spitter? After that, I had several unlucky misses, thanks to the Blind from Flying Squid. I was getting worried but my monsters stopped missing and Deeplurker didn't land the poison on my Runic Skyclaw twice. Suddenly, they only had 2 monsters left, while I had 4 and the game was over.

What do you all think about Runic Skyclaw? Do you have this card? If yes, what level? Have you fought against it? Let me know in the comments! Thank you for reading!!