It's been a few seasons now since Escalation, a Conclave Arcana mini-set, was released, which introduced new cards and new abilities that once again shake the game's meta. The mini-set has consisted of 43 cards in total, with 12 commons, 12 rares, 8 epics, and 11 legendaries, not including the promo cards that can only be acquired by participating in the set presale and the additional Archons that will be airdropped through conflicts soon.
In this post, I want to take a look at all the Dragon units from Escalation.
The Escalation Dragon units have the fewest number of cards within Escalation. They have no common units, and there is only 1 card for the other rarities. That said, having many units was not the strong suit of the Dragon element, but its flexibility to be used along with any other element once a dragon archon was used. And with the new bloodline mechanics, Dragon units get many more use cases under different bloodlines, so, depending on what their bloodlines were, it was possible for them to be used by Archons from other elements and benefit from their Bloodline Dominion abilities. But aside from that, they had these new abilities that could affect the result of the battles.
For the rare Dragon unit, we had Ironcoil Bulwark, which is a 9-mana melee unit with the Saurian Bloodline, making it a unit that would gain the Scavenger once used by the upcoming Archon, Dragonlord Mancer.
Ability-wise, it does not have any of the new abilities from Escalation, but it was still quite a powerful tank with an attack of 5 melee damage, which can be further increased once it gets Enrage, and it also has Retaliate that allows this unit to attack if it gets attacked by a melee unit as well as Trample that will allow it to attack again if it were able to defeat its target.
Looking at its overall stats and ability structure, it was like the return of the Chaos Legion unit Diemonshark in modern.
For the only Epic Life unit, we have the melee unit Obsidian Dreadcore, which has the Golem Bloodline, and currently, there is no Archon with the same bloodline that this card can benefit from. Still, it has a good stack of abilities, starting with Charge, which will allow it to attack regardless of its position, while the Determined ability will allow this card to attack again if it misses its initial attack. Aside from that, it has the combination of Demoralize that reduces the melee attack of all opponent units as long as it remains in play, as well as Enfeeble that reduces the melee attack of the target by -1 for each of its successful attacks. Certainly, this card can play an important role in Up Close and Personal ruleset. Finally, it has the Kindred Spirit ability, which will give Execute to a unit adjacent to it with Kindred Will.
Using this card with Akane and giving it Ambush, when against a melee-heavy team, may give you a good use for this card's abilities.
Determined - Once per round after missing an attack, makes a second attack against the same target.
Moving to the legendary unit, we have Okora the Devourer, which is an Ulund unit with both magic and range attack. It may have the lowest attack of all the Escalation legendary units with dual attacks, but I still feel that it was the best among them, given that it has the Bloodlust ability that will increase all of the stats of this card when it defeats its target, along with Enrage that will increase the speed of this card when it receives damage. Furthermore, it has the Opportunity ability that will enable it to attack the opponent with the lowest stats, making it more possible to land that kill to trigger Bloodlust. But that is not where it stops, because this card also has the Phase Ward ability that will give the unit that is in front of it the Phase ability, and its Kindred Will ability allows it to give Mimic to an adjacent unit that has Kindred Spirit.
Using this card under the Dragon Archon Akane, and giving it the Ambush ability, may give it a head start on defeating an opponent unit before round one even starts, and trigger its Bloodlust, but this card can also be used by the Life Archon, Bella Ratajowlski, and gain the Shield ability to make it more difficult to damage this card by melee and range attacks.
And that was it for my early assessment of the Escalation Dragon units. They do not have many of the new Escalation abilities, but their flexibility in how they can be used with other elements may very much compensate for it. And not having the new ability does not necessarily make them a bad card. Sometimes, the old abilities may prove to be more effective and powerful, depending on how they synergize with other abilities and the overall stats of the card.
Thank you, and see you on the next post!
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![[ES/EN] Splinterlands - Escalation – Dragon](/assets/noimage.svg)