This week's Splinterlands Challenge of the Week was to showcase the Earth Elemental, from (unsurprisingly!) the Earth Splinter.
The Earth Elemental is a classic Beta card - Price optimum level is 6/8 where he gets his max 3 damage, with 6 health and that oh so useful heal as a protect against sneak.
His weakness: he is slow and does tend to miss a lot as a result!
The battle below features a classic line up featuring the Elemental, in which I win against a higher powered deck.
The Rule Set and Line Up
- 17 mana - I expected single sneak, so the elemental seemed like a good choice. I didn't get it!
- Common and rare only, the Elemental is one of the best rare cards.
- Unprotected - means ranged is OK!
Summoner - Lianna
- Flesh Golem - part of my classic low-ish mana battle strategy -you don't tend to get too much damage in low mana battles !
- The Chicken - to soak up blast
- Screeching Vulture, opportunity is great with no shields!
- Khmer Princess - just a must play - heal and triage.
- Elemental - for the challenge and anticipated (but not actualised) single sneak attack.
The Battle
- Round 1 - My Golem stands strong, the Vulture takes out his chicken (quite glad to avoid that maxed buffed and enraged 5 damage beast!), while my chicken is triaged back to full health, and I take out his Turtle - the Elemental slow on slow doing its bit!
- Round 2 - Disastrous! I lose my Golem tank, and my chicken to blast and then a double miss on his speedy Eels.
- Round 3 - Ha - the Eels miss my also speedy vulture, at least now scavenged up to 10 health and now I get a double hit and his Eels go down, the vulture ends on 8 health, nice!
- Round 4 - My Vulture's looking good, and takes out Ooze, then Khmer and the Elemental take out that Pixie, bit lucky with the Elemental hit!
- Round 5 - It's all over! My opponent only has one card left and I win!
How important was The Earth Elemental?
He played his part, but I got a bit lucky that my opponent played mix of cards that favoured my defence, and attack - that slow turtle gave the Elemental a good chance of hitting, crucial to my making the second kill (after the chicken).
I think I also got lucky with taking out the Pixie, as the Elemental would so often miss a quick flying monster with that slow speed.
The real star of this battle was the Vulture - opportunity and scavenge working beautifully to do damage and 'heal'.
However, the EE did land three useful blows, so that's OK by me!
Final Thoughts: Earth Elemental - How to Use Him Most Effectively?
The best idea is to NOT use him as standard, like way too many people do.
If you had checked out the win rates of cards using @darthgexe's most excellent tool when it was up and running (it's been down for a while now) you would have noticed that the Elemental has a very high play rate but a very low win rate - and on that bases I've recently stopped using it in favour of other low mana cards with higher win rates, such as the Goblin Chef, Vulture, or Dwarven Wizard, all of which work much more effectively because they have better or more buffs, if levelled appropriately.
The truth is in most rule sets he just misses, and he also always gets hits by sneak, and as most people use double sneak, with 6 health having him at the back may mean he doesn't have a chance to heal anyway!
However, there are two rule sets where he becomes a must use - the slow rule set, where he nearly always hits, and the 'ranged always hit their target rule set'.
You can also use him effectively as a second tank and defence against snipe, especially with the 'ranged in first' rule set.
If you don't yet play Splinterlands, why not give it a go?
Anyone using my referral link will receive a free rare card!
