@saydie here, playing Splinterlands everyday!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 Neutral units to finally close my deep dive on the Escalation mini-set.
The Escalation Neutral units consisted of 5 cards that were under different bloodlines, so, depending on what their bloodlines were, they could benefit from their Bloodline Dominion abilities. But aside from that, they had these new abilities that could affect the result of the battles.
Steelshield Arbalest is a human range unit with a max damage of 3, which may not be that high, given that it costs 9 mana to use. But it was incredibly fast with 5 speed, and a very beefy card, with 9 armor and 8 health, which is made more effective with Void Armor that makes magic attack to deplete the armor first before its health is reduced. Then combine that with Phase, and it can even evade magic attacks. Aside from that, it also has Reveal that allows it to remove the Camouflage of the opponent once each turn. Furthermore, it has the Decoy ability that forces Opportunity abilities to be focused on it.
In terms of other Archon use, I see that this card can be very useful when used by either Elias Max Pruitt or Brave the Bull during no melee rulesets, so that it can use its armor to attack the opponent with Armored Strike.
Decoy - Draws the attacks of enemy units with Snipe, Apex Strike, and Opportunity unless an allied taunt unit is present. Does not affect enemy units in the first position.
On the other hand, Doomshield Warden was a human melee unit that cost 14 mana to use, but it is very reasonable given that this card has a maximum of 7 damage, 9 armor, and 11 health, while also having the Void Armor ability, making it difficult for magic attacks to defeat this card. Its speed was a little lacking, but it has the True Strike ability that will make sure that it will never miss its attack, and with Relentless Strike, it will inflict true damage +1 on opponents with Shield. It also has the Flank ability, which will give the unit next to it the Reach ability when it is in the first position.
Just like the first card, I also see this card to be a complete menace when used along with either Elias Max Pruitt or Brave the Bull, and give it the Armored Strike ability. And with Brave the Bull as the archon and this in the first position, it is also possible to place Steelshield Arbalest next to it and have 2 units with Armored Strike that can attack back to back, and inflict large damage.
Moving on with the only rare unit, we had another human with Lady Stealthfire, which is a 7-mana range unit, that can provide some good support on armored units with its Repair ability that allows it to restore the armor of an ally unit, and with Inspire, it can increase the melee damage of all ally units as long as it remains in play, which is likely to happen since it has the Camouflage ability that will hide it to any direct attacks.
I can see this card as another vital unit to support the armor-focused teams, especially those teams that use Elias Max Pruitt or Brave the Bull to do Armored Strike plays.
For the Epic Life unit, we have the magic unit Lord Alwen Graymane, which has the Leonine bloodline, so it currently has no Archon with a similar bloodline that it can benefit from, but it was among the very few units that have the Amplify ability to increase the damage from reflected damage by +1, aside from the Silence ability that reduces the magic damage of all opponent units. Though the way it attacks will be random since it has the Aimless ability, but, depending on how it is used, having random attacks can be quite beneficial to it, as it can remove buffs of the opponent unit that it hits.
Among Archons, it can be a good unit to use with Lorkus or for Kaylia Silverleaf.
Moving to the last epic unit, we have Shiraza, which is a magic unit with the Drakoshan Bloolline, so it gains an additional speed when used with the Dragon Archon Kravor Skarn. In terms of abilities, it has the Weapon's Training ability that will allow it to give magic damage to non-damage units, so long as they do not have the Untrainable debilitation. Meanwhile, if it is succesful on attacking its target, it is possible that it can reduce its attack by half due to its Halfing ability, and it can also evade magic attacks since it has the Phase ability.
Since it is a magic unit, it can be a good card to use along with Lorkus, but putting it next to all those non-damage Escalation units can allow them to be able to inflict damage to their opponent.
And that will be the end of my deep dive for the Escalation set, based on each of the card's elements. Being neutral units, these cards offer some very flexible use cases as they can be used with any other element, but there are some situations and Archons in which they can work really well. That is why they were quite necessary, even though they might not be as strong as the other cards within the mini-set in general.
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