Hi Splinterlander, I hope this post finds you well! Today, I would like to talk about my favourite neutral cards. There are a lot of them out there, some are really good and others are quite useless. But it is subjective. It depends on what is available, what prices are when bought or rented, what we have lots of and what is scarce in our collections, an so on. Most of all, our preferences play a role, what kinds of strategies we predominantly apply and what simply works best. With the new soulbound reward cards system, another factor comes into play, called luck. You cannot play cards you haven’t earned or cannot play particularly strong ones, while waiting to accumulate enough BCX to level up.
The introduction above serves to say, that I am not trying to be an expert on Splinterlands subjects or argue what the best cards are. In this post, I am going to show you my top five neutral cards according to my frequency of use and explain to you why.
Neutral cards are always available, provided we don’t have a taking sides ruleset. We also need to consider even and uneven mana cost. Other than that, neutral cards can be fielded in most battle circumstances. For my playing style, it is important to me to know certain cards very well: their abilities and stats, their niche advantages and their abilities at different levels. Levels play a significant role, when you drop out of your highest league and have to back-track or when your ranked battles and your brawls are at different summoner caps. Putting neutral cards in your line-up as an underlying global playing strategy, allows me to get to know them extremely well. I get a really good feeling for specific cards that way and it helps me to make the right choices. I kinda know how well Arkemis will perform and use his abilities and what appropriate alternatives to him there are around.
When I rank my top five cards, I guess it goes first and foremost by what abilities I want available in a given circumstance and who I can team him or her up with. Arkemis does not feature as a frontline tank in my lineups very often. He may be in the second position with certain rulesets that enable him to attack from somewhere else, or the combo I love dearly, which is with Possibilus the Wise. I value Arkemis so highly for his halving ability at level 4. Anytime he is able to attack, the opponent’s monster’s attack is halved, rounded down! There is no hit&miss ratio like with numerous other attacking abilities. With 3 melee, 10 health and protect at level one , he brings tons of fighting power to the table and is the ideal backup tank. Once he moves to first position, he can still fight long and hard. Halving is an ability that I love, therefore the Halfling Alchemist was around a lot in my pre-Arkemis days.
I don’t think I would get away with listing my top 5 without giving Doctor Blight a spot. Although he doesn’t feature so much in my battles anymore, I still do send him in quite regularly. A rocket in reverse speed but a lame duck otherwise, he can be very effective with affliction. 50% of the time he can cause the enemy monster not to heal, which can play a big role with so many heal monsters around in Modern League. The good thing about his speed deficit is that he is hidden but lands the odd hit regardless. When you put him in last position, he is invincible through his camouflage ability until he moves to first position. As last man standing, he tends to be just that before my team scores a loss.
This guy has third spot in my top 5, because I am a speed fanatic and his swiftness is part of my general strategic play. I was therefore happy to make the investment to buy 60 BCX to level him up to level 5. The +1 speed buff is so important for me for two reasons. On the one hand I also pay close attention to dodge and flying, which is amplified by swiftness and on the other hand I do my best to calculate the striking order for both sides. Supply Runner gives me a competitive advantage when working with speed differentials and his swiftness ability increases the miss chances by enemy monsters. He also plays an important role as an archer, as good and effective archers are hard to find in some splinters.
URAEUS is one of my absolute favourite cards in general. As a reward card in the Chaos Legion edition, I have been able to collect enough BCX from reward chests alone to level him up to level 5, where he has 4 speed and the poison ability, additionally to sneak and 1 shield. 2 melee for a 3 mana card is also great value. I use him as a ‘plug’ (as a Splinterlands Youtuber likes to call the card in the last position). With 1 shield and 4 speed, it will take at least two hits from an enemy sneak to destroy him. Often Uraeus works hand-in-hand with a second sneak in the team to seriously terrorize my opponent’s backline. In such constellations, Uraeus is usually able to get rid of the enemy’s plug during the first round, especially when he can land a poison load. At 3 mana, he can usually find a spot in low and mid mana cap games.
Here is my personal number 1 neutral card. He features so much in my game, that he naturally takes top spot in my neutral card ranking, whether I like it or not. And I like it! At level 4 he receives a third attack but most of all, I like him for the snipe ability. As a rule of thumb, I always try to include a snipe in my line-up, together with at least one other stealth attack monster, like opportunity or sneak. I find my general strategy most effective, when I can spread my fire across my enemy’s team. Although taunts inhibit stealth, taunts don’t usually last the entire battle. When in the third or fourth round, there are 2 or 3 monsters left on each side and I have the odd stealth left standing, they usually clean up with a single hit each time. Mantoid is definitely included in most high mana games, where neutrals are allowed and there is another reason why I speak so highly of this sneaky little slug and this is a well-kept secret: the price of the GF is basically the equivalent of the RF (BCX ratio, that is, the price of a level 3 GF is almost equal to 14 level 1 RFs), so he also features a lot in my GF fray brawls. Mantoid is not only a strategic high-flyer, I also consider him a solid financial investment for the future. I guess I better go and get a couple more shiny Mantoids before I post ;)
So this is my top 5 neutral cards, but technically, this post should be about my top 6 favourite neutral cards, because there is one more candidate I must mention: Gem Meteor.
GEM METEOR Level 3 - It took me a while to learn to appreciate this monster, but once I decided to level him up to level 3, he began to feature more often in my line-ups. Sometimes, I struggle to find a good mid-mana archer, who can make a sustainable difference on the battlefield. I really appreciate him for his scattershot ability, which until recently had been a rather rare ability. I try to include him in my stealth strategy to spread out my attack as much as possible across the field. With 5 speed this guy often gets first shot and with a bit of luck, he hits the right monster before the enemy can react.
The better I know my cards, the better I can anticipate what they are capable of doing on the battlefield. As neutral cards are often available in combination with other splinters, their regular availability gives me more options and I can monitor their performance more often. In many cases, the individual splinters don’t give me adequate options and otherwise, an ability can often be doubled-up with a neutral monster, such as Silent Sha’vi/Uraeus or Lava Spider/Mantoid. Another factor is the even/uneven limit. For example, when I want field a sniper in an uneven fire team, I can go for the Lava Spider. I don’t have that option in an even ruleset, so Mantoid is a good pick. Statistically, my neutral monsters get picked more often than other, so I have gotten to know them very well with time. As you can see there are many reasons, why you should know your neutral cards well and build your strategies to include them and as I wrote at the beginning of the post, we all have our individual preferences and reasons why we rank our monsters the way we do. I hope you liked this post and I will see you around the Splinterverse!
