I wrote a detailed analysis on Grum Flameblade on the first post here
@yukihyakubai/grum-flameblade-undervalued-or-overvalued-must-have-card
Today, I want to continue the analysis with more case studies & with more emphasis on the Modern league that is coming soon!
[ Previous post ]
I haven't had much success with Grum's bloodlust ability. I concluded that the card is a great tank against magic but it is situational with 11 mana. It is weak against melee or ranged attacks despite the high hitpoints. I was also facing great tanks with shields like lord of darkness, chain golem, etc. I was aware that I was still learning how to use Grum.
However, with more experiments, I have found better ways to use this card. It changed how I view the card, Grum Flameblade. So today, I want to show how we can better utilize Grum.
[ When should we consider using Grum? ]
One reason why I didn't have much success with Grum's bloodlust ability is that I was not 100% on point on when to use Grum. I had success with these rulesets.
1. Spreading Fury Ruleset
All Monsters have the Enrage ability.
Enrage: Increase Melee attack and Speed when damaged. Values are multiplied by 1.5 and rounded up. Prefer Melee monsters with Sneak, Opportunity in the back row.All Monsters have the Enrage ability.
When Grum gets attacked, his speed and melee attack increase. So it helps Grum kill a monster.
2. Fog of War
Monsters lose the Sneak and Snipe abilities.
Under this ruleset, most of the monsters attack the front monster except monsters with opportunity. That means we are more likely to see magic monsters and fewer melee monsters. Grum is good against magic. so Grum is more likely to be able to tank better. It also means that support monsters in the backline usually don't get attacked.
3. Reverse speed
Monsters with the lowest Speed attack first and have the highest chance of evading attacks.
Grum only has 1 speed. So he is going to be one of the fastest monsters to attack. He is much less likely to miss his attack.
3. Armored up
All Monsters have 2 Armor in addition to their normal Armor stat.
In this ruleset, people like to use magic attacks because it bypasses armor. If the opponent uses magic and less melee or ranged attack, Grum can tank better.
[ Monster synergies ]
Cards with skills like repair, shutter, swiftness, slow, inspire would be great to use with Grum. I listed a couple of cards that go well with Grum.
Repair is especially great because if you repair Grum's armor, even a magic attacker has to hit again to remove the armor.
Flamesmith:
Flamesmith has the best synergy with Grum. It is because it shatters the enemy's armor before Grum attacks except for the reverse speed ruleset. If you level up to 6, it gets the repair ability. So it repairs Grum's armor.
Flame monkey:
Level 5 gets you repair ability. Level 10 gets you swiftness.
Swiftness is great because Grum's biggest drawback is speed.
Scavo Hireling:
It has repair. Level 6 gives it camoflage which helps him hide from monsters attack. Level 10 gets slow ability, which slows down opponent's monsters. It also helps Grum attack faster with less chance to miss.
[ Case study ]
Let's look at battles where Grum shines.
- Spreading Fury (Enrage) Ruleset
https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_41ba35016defd9a397b1a9a3637138e5
The opponent used Robo-Dragon Knight as the tank, which is 11 mana and gets double damage from Grum. Their backline had slow and swiftness, which makes Grum harder to hit a monster.
I have 3 repairs from flame monkey, flamesmith, scavo hireling. Flame monkey increase speed by 1. I used Tarsa, so it increases melee attack by 1.
Early on, Flamesmith shatters the robo-dragon knight's 8 armor. Without him, it would have been so much harder to take down their tank. Grum landed a hit after flamesmith shatters the armor, doing 12 damage with Giant killer!
After Grum killed the tank, things gets much easier because their backline doesn't have so much health. The last hurdle was the enchanted pixie because it has flying, which adds 25% dodge chance. After 2 misses, Grum landed a hit. At last, Grum had 13 attack and 12 speed, 11 armor, 13 health. Absolute beast πͺ
- Reverse speed, heal out, 30 mana
https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_5389a180769406ae4b81f2b6472451c8
Grum has 1 speed which allows him to attack first. No heal also helps Grum because the opponent can't heal but we can repair his void armor, which is pretty similar to heal.
I brought flamesmith and flamemonkey. Flamemonkey adds +1 speed, so it's not ideal used in reverse speed ruleset. I decided to use it anyway because I wanted more armor with 1 mana.
It seems that the opponent forgot that it's reverse speed. So this game was not so difficult.
- Armored up, earth quake
https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_fd39fab2ba11fc6291b7f276b072e22c
Everyone has armor but the earthquake ruleset. Since everyone has armor, people tend to use magic.
They used Delwyn Dragonscale Grum +1 magic damage. However, Grum tanks magic very well. Again, robo-dragon knight was used. Great for Grum because of Giant killer ability.
Flamesmith does a great job shattering robo-dragon knight's 10 armor. Grum does 8 damage after that and the earthquake takes him down. After that, Grum tanked the magic damage very well but eventually was taken down. To be fair, they had 2 good archery units.
In this battle, I just wanted to show how good of the tank Grum is when magic is expected. Also, taking the robo-dragon knight fast was very pivotal in this match.
- Fog of war 1, 16 mana match
https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_c39449617b3b244d701c235b2aa3e836
The opponent has a bunch of low hp monsters. However, Grum's weakest point speed was a big problem in this match. The chaos agent had 5 speeds after their speed buffs. He also has dodge ability. I used lvl 6 Qid Yuff that has piercing. I didn't use Tarsa because of the low mana match. Qid was so helpful because the opponent's summoner adds 3 armor to their monsters.
Grum missed twice against chaos agent. The first hit didn't kill him. Grum misses until turn 16! Grum survived because of the void armor and flame monkey's repair. After killing the Chaos agent, Grum had a much easier time killing other monsters.
- Fog of war 2, 40 mana match
They used Obsidian, +1 magic. They have a lot of magic monsters including Kron at the end!
https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_74cab5f492ba7e81ac57df6fc2728e71
This battle was also heavy hitters ruleset where all Monsters have the Knock Out ability. I brought 3 repairs and spark pixie with stun and lava launcher with stun.
I had two monsters with stun that attack before Grum. So by the time Grum hits, the frontline monster was already stuned. It helped Grum one-shot those monsters including Kron!!!
In the end, Grum did 28 damage against Kron!!! Kron is 10 mana. So he gets double damage from Grum because of Giant killer. Kron was also stunned and everyone has knock-out ability, so Grum's hit did quadrupled the damage!
[ Conclusion ]
Grum did great in the rulesets such as spreading fury, fog of war, reverse speed, and armored up with multiple repairs and a shatter. I truly believe that flamesmith is the best card to use with Grum because of the shatter and repair ability.
The biggest takeaway is that Grum could be a must-have card in modern format because it is one of the best counter cards against Obsidian team. We will see a lot more Obsidian team, or earth magic team when we lose all the beta magic buff summoners like Delwyn, Arlic, Valnamor in the modern format. That means we will see more Kron in the back.
On top of tanking magic attacks, being able to one-shot Kron is huge! Grum basically doesn't get any damage with the void armor + repair. That is big as well, making Grum the No.1 Kron counter card.
Even though I was having a lot of losses with Grum at first, I learned how to use Grum better. This is thanks to advices from TNA guild members including Dwayne & Oscu!
I hope this helped you using Grum!
I appreciate it if you can upvote this post if you liked this post. I spent hours trying to play Grum well and sacrificed my energy capture rate to wait for the right ruleset. Now my ECR is less than 20% haha