In splinterlands having cards with good attack, speed and health are important but what really makes the difference is having good abilities to combine and create powerful strategies that will lead you to victory. In this post I'm going to talk about one in particular that I love to have in my battles and that makes a big difference, especially in certain battle rules.
The ability in this post is Heal and I believe that many who already play splinterlands must have already used it or have seen their opponent using it. In my opinion healing abilities like Heal, Tank Heal and Triage are very powerful in battles because they give your cards a chance to survive longer and you can be sure that this makes a big difference in battles.
In this post the focus will be on Heal and I will use the Xenith Monk card as an example, which in my opinion is one of the best low mana cards to have defending in your battles.
Xenith Monk is a rare card from the chaos legion edition that belongs to the neutral deck. Belonging to the neutral deck means that you will have many combinations to try because you can use the cards from this deck with any of the other 6 decks available in Splinterlands (Water, Fire, Earth, Life, Death, Dragon), so Xenith Monk is the type of card you will have available in practically all your battles, the only exception is when the battle has the Taking Sides rule that does not allow the use of neutral cards.
Because it's a chaos legion card, you can use it in Modern format and in Wild format, so it's another bonus to want to have Xenith Monk since you can use it in both formats.
To get Xenith Monk in your battles you will have 3 options: Buy him in the marketplace, Rent him in the marketplace or Buy chaos legion packs and open them.
In the option to buy the card, you will only need to go to the marketplace and filter by Edition - Chaos Legion / Rarity - Rare / Deck - Neutral. After that Xenith Monk will appear and you will only need to click on it and go to For Sale, there you will see other players selling their Xenith Monk cards and you will need to select which one you want to buy and pay in DEC or Credits.
In the option to rent the card you will follow the same steps as in the option to buy but go to For Rent and select which card you want to rent and pay in DEC or Credits.
In the option to buy Riftwatchers packs and open them, first you will need to have the packs and for that you have 2 options: Buy directly at Splinterlands or buy at Hive-Engine.
If you choose to buy in Splinterlands then you will only need to go to the Shop and choose how many chaos legion packs you want to buy, each pack will cost 4000 DEC or 4000 Credits. I advise choosing to pay in DEC because it will be cheaper since the DEC value is currently below $0.001
In the option to buy through Hive-Engine you will need to pay in Hive, the advantage is that the packs sold there are cheaper than buying directly in Splinterlands, but if you buy through Hive-Engine you will not be eligible to participate in the Airdrops of chaos legion edition.
Now that you already know how to have the Xenith Monk in your collection, it's time to know its uses in battles and for that I will explain about its basic statistics (attack, speed and life) and its abilities which are Heal, Void and Magic Reflect.
His basic stats are good in my opinion, mainly because Xenith Monk costs only 4 mana so you can't expect anything too great from him in that regard, but his speed and health are good and I would say his biggest flaw is its attack since it is not high, so Xenith Monk's main function will be as a defensive card.
Its main highlight is in its abilities because they will make the Xenith Monk even more powerful in defense.
Xenith Monk only starts to have some ability after level 2 and that ability is Heal which is the focus of this post and I would also say that it is his main ability. The heal will cause the Xenith Monk to restore 1/3 of its maximum health per round and the minimum value restored is 2. The Xenith Monk's health is not very high so it would only be able to restore 2 health in normal situations, but even if it is not a very high value, it is enough to make a difference in battle.
The Void ability will make Xenith Monk even stronger on defense because this ability reduces damage taken from magical attacks. Cards with a magic attack are very frequent in Splinterlands battles so most of the time this ability will be useful and the less damage Xenith Monk receives the more chances to restore life he will have.
The Magic Reflect ability is yet another great ability against magic attacks since every time a card with a magic attack attacks Xenith Monk it will take part of the damage dealt back to it, so this ability is a great opportunity for Xenith Monk to deal damage. more damage in battle.
In my opinion Xenith Monk is an excellent card to have in your collection (even if it is rented) because battles with low mana or that have the Little League rule are very frequent in Splinterlands and Xenith Monk will be one of your best options for these battles.
Now to get out of theory and show Xenith Monk in practice I will show how he is in battles in Splinterlands.
In the Fog of War rule all cards lose the Sneak, Snipe and Opportunity abilities, so in this rule having a good frontline defense is a very good strategy to achieve victory and for that I chose Xenith Monk since its cost of mana isn't high and my available mana wasn't high either, plus its ability Heal will be of great help, especially with the help of other cards of mine that I choose to support it.
In battle I choose the life deck with Tyrus Paladium as my summoner and it will grant +1 shield to my cards, it has a low mana cost and the shield is very useful against melee and ranged cards so it is a good one choice for low mana battles.
My opponent chose the water deck with Kelya Frendul as her summoner, she will increase the speed of his cards by +1 and grant +1 shield, so she is already better than Tyrus Frendul as a summoner and her mana cost is 4.
The battle started the strategy that my opponent chose was a little doubtful because he had some melee cards that would be useful only when they are in the first position so his initial attack was concentrated in only 2 cards that were the Djinn Oshannus and Igor Darkspear, in addition to In addition he also has the Merdaali Guardian to support his cards.
The battle was a little complicated, mainly at the beginning because my opponent's Djinn Oshannus was very powerful as he dodged most of my attacks and the healing that Merdaali Guardian gave him made him recover all his life several times. On the other hand my strategy was also good but I had more healing and support than my opponent so most of the battle was just an exchange of blows to see who would go down first.
After several rounds repeating the same attacks I finally managed to defeat the Djinn Oshannus and that was a big step towards achieving victory because he dodged several attacks and that prevented me from causing the maximum damage of my cards, after he was defeated everything was easier and even taking more damage from other cards like Deeplurker, my defense remained strong until the end and my Xenith Monk resisted for the entire battle without being defeated.
Xenith Monk was my main star in the battle because I was totally dependent on his defense since most of my other cards were ranged so they would be useless in first position, so having his ability Heal by my side was a big help but so was he he would not be able to win alone since his damage was low and also I had great support cards to help him resist in battle. In the end my strategy turned out as I expected and I love using it because it's really fun to watch my opponent try to break my defense while I destroy his cards one by one.
That was my post about the Xenith Monk card, if you want you can also look and participate in my daily giveaway that can be found on my blog. Bye!
