TRAITS MAPPING : NEUTRAL MELEE CARD

As usual, just as a reminder before we started, you can find the essential guide to read my traits mapping post here:
@kid.miniatures/traits-mapping-grid
@kid.miniatures/traits-mapping-update-1
@kid.miniatures/traits-mapping-update-2
@kid.miniatures/traits-mapping-update-3

I've been skipping the traits mapping for Neutral Splinter because I thought of them as inferior than the elemental splinter. Based on my experience, I've found several neutral cards with certain mana to have less parameter than the elemental splinter counterpart. But to be sure about this, a throughout overlook into every mana levels of Neutral Splinter must be done. So it is a good thing to do traits mapping over the Neutral Splinter, where we will find the detail and answer to this questions.

As usual before we continue, please familiarize yourself with the mana range grouping used to ease mentioning any particular cards.

Mana Range	Range Term
0 - 3 mana	Low Mana
4 - 7 mana	Mid Mana
8 - 10 mana	High Mana
11+ mana	High-End Mana

Rarity	2 Mana	3 Mana	4 Mana	6 Mana	7 Mana	8 Mana	9 Mana	12 Mana
Normal	1	1	1	2	2	1	1	1
Rare			1
Epic		1			1
Legendary	1			1		1	1	1

The collection have a total of 18 cards with melee attack type (2 cards with dual melee & ranged attack). This collection have almost equal number of cards with other Elemental Splinter, except of course lesser if compared to Fire and Death Splinter. The collection have a well-distributed number of cards, encompassing 2 mana up to 12 mana. There are at least 2 cards for each mana level, with the most one (3 cards) centered on 6 to 7 mana. There are no cards for the 5 mana level which seemed to create quite a gap between the 4 mana and 6 mana. Additionally this make Neutral Splinter less favorable under Odd Ones Out ruleset.

The rarity of the cards looks modest with majority are of Normal type. There are only 3 cards of Rare and Epic type. Meanwhile Legendary type made about a third of the collection. A lot of the Legendary type gathered on the high-end of the mana levels.

The collection clearly showed a very poor starting foot. Most of the cards are of red nodes (1 to 2 speed), with only 2 cards with yellow nodes. Most of the cards doesn't depart beyond the SOUTH-WEST quadrant (except No.12 - War Chaang and No.5 - Xenith Monk). And even the damage-mana ratio doesn't depart far beyond 0.5 tick. Even some low mana-cards started lower than the high-mana cards (take for example No.2 - Battering Ram and No.4 - Uraeus which started more to the left and bottom of the rest of the cards).

The good news almost less than half of the collection started with armor aspect, and some of them are not to be taken lightly as we will see later. Other than that, each cards started with at least 1 abilities (except No.5 - Xenith Monk and No.13 - Elven Defender). So my conclusion, the Neutral Splinter seemingly started with low figure in overall parameter compared to the elemental splinter counterpart. Take for example Fire Splinter which have variety of cards jumped on damage-mana ratio beyond 0.5 tick; or the Death Splinter which have half of the collection with health-mana ratio already in the SOUTH quadrant. But these low parameter are still open to question of whether its due to its abilities and armor aspect, or is it agreed that Neutral Splinter are inferior?

There's several shift with the max level chart, which is justified from the large number of Normal type cards. But there's still a lack in the growth result. The damage-mana ratio still left behind several cards below 0.5 tick. The highest damage would be on 1.0 tick. Meanwhile the health-mana ratio have entered the SOUTH quadrant, but only few would pass beyond 1.50 tick. So basically there's no exceptional card which play a pure Tanker or pure Striker roles. So far maybe only War Chaang (No.12) which consistently show the optimal point in both damage-mana and health-mana ratio.

Speed doesn't showed much improvement. But Battering Ram (No.2) are the only one to gain superior speed jump from 1 to 5 speed. Abilities are beyond expectation as several cards jumped from 1 ability to 4 or even 5 abilities. But still only Legendary type to dominate in large gain of new abilities.