There could be several answers to this question; just as we all have many friends, Captain Frankie can have many allies too. His first "friend" is the Melee attack type, as the Inspire ability makes these cards incredibly powerful within his supported bloodlines. Looking at rulesets, Trample also appears to be a great ally, granting the attacker the power to launch a follow-up strike of equal strength against the next card after a lethal melee attack. However, the perfect candidate for his "best friend" role is the ShapeShift ruleset. This is because the Inspire ability provided by this Archon applies exclusively to his supported bloodline cards—specifically the Awakened Beast, Rodentian, and Tideborn bloodlines. A major issue here, though, is that the melee cards across these three bloodlines generally lack high health; while Inspire makes them immensely powerful, their low health keeps them vulnerable. Consequently, despite being super-powerful in offense, they become extremely weak when it comes to withstanding attacks. This is where the magic of ShapeShift comes into play: it causes all the cards in your deck to be treated as if they belong to all the bloodlines—which is precisely what ShapeShift means.
With the Shapeshift ruleset in play, cards from any bloodline become eligible to receive Captain Frankie's 'Inspire' ability; this means you can include the healthiest melee cards from your deck in your team. While previously you might have been powerful yet internally vulnerable, now you gain health alongside that power, strengthening both your offensive and defensive positions. Of course, the Mana Cap is a major factor here—if the cap is low, you have to build a team on a tighter budget—but Shapeshift still offers a vast buffet of cards. Empowered by the ripple effect of 'Inspire,' these cards can become a nightmare for your opponent, a glimpse of which you can see in the battle screenshot below.
Since I had a limited Mana cap for this battle, I couldn't summon cards with very high health. Although I could have chosen fewer cards to afford higher-health options, I needed to fill all available slots; so, I selected attackers with decent health to distribute the incoming enemy damage and maximize my own attackers' chances of dealing damage. To balance the power, I deployed a 'Super Magic' card alongside my melee units, but my primary focus remained on melee attackers to fully leverage Captain Frankie's 'Inspire' ability. This strategy paid off effectively in the battle—the best proof being that the battle ended in the very first round. You can catch a glimpse of one of these explosive attacks in the screenshot below, and I suggest checking out this link to enjoy the full battle.
Note:
English is not my first language. So sometimes I use 'Google Translate'. Please don't think that anything I have written in this blog has been copied from somewhere or is AI-generated.
Paragraph Dividers and all the photos are from #Splinterlands.
All the other content images and words are mine unless otherwise stated.
Have a Happy and Blessed day!
