Dear splinterlands fans in this article I would like to show two faces of Kobold miner
reliable “filler” card and insane butcher of everything
Kobold Miner brings a lot of memories when I was starting with splinterlands. It was THE BUTCHER when played with bronze level Malric – 3 sneak damage for just 2 mana OMG such power.
At those times having 2 damage was welcomed because it can damage monsters with shields and having 3 damage was just for very strong monsters. Level 3 Kobold Miner is still crazy powerful at bronze level and I would easily recommend him to any starting player who likes fire splinter. Use Malric, some tank and kobold miner + serpentine spy + parasitic growth and you have really powerful low league tank bypass composition that will kill almost everyone there. Or there is infamous 12 mana comp of Malric – Chicken – Living Lava – Kobold Miner. Works really well in lower leagues.
Once in higher leagues Kobold Miner, despite scaling well on paper, loses a lot of its powers though. It is combination of multiple reasons – there is lot more of counterplay (demoralizes, thorn backtanks, heal backtanks) and speed starts to be lot more important than in lower leagues and once you start to prefer Pyre or Yodin Zaku over Malric kobold miner loses his devastating hits.
He is still good sneak forerunner for Sandworm, but armor shredding sneak support for heavy hitter is quite fall from grace. Count in that it is possible to buy kobold miners only on secondary market now and you will see lot less kobold miners in higher leagues.
Major power spikes are quite obvious – level 3 and 8 where Kobold Miner gets extra attack point. Health and speed are both nice, but like most low damage monsters extra damage is what counts most.
This makes power spike at level 3 really enormous. Don’t even try to play kobold Miner before level 3, but once he gets there he is really powerful.
Kobold Miner is no longer obtainable from purchasable packs, so question is whether buy on secondary market or just rent. I am personally on side of renting because as mentioned before he is not that good in champ leagues. Buying might be good option too (currently there are few maxed GF beta kobold miners around $50), but consider if it is best value for your money power-wise.
It probably is not. Renting prices are quite cheap atm.
Kobold Miner is clearly good card. If you like fire splinter go get him, especially if you are starting out.
Let’s get into match analysis, its ranked match from end of climb to champ I.
Newer players might think that only even mana monsters allowed rule does not change game at all, but that’s somewhere between vast oversimplification and plain wrong statement.
Main difference from standard ruleset is that it is very difficult to assemble very specialized team compositions. Its way harder to make dedicated sneak compositions or snipe compositions. When it comes to Magic based team compositions they are possible, because Ruler of the Seas costs 6 mana and is kinda backbone of magic based comps. But in general all specialized compositions will be bit weaker and average team will be lot more “disorganized” then what’s usual in normal ruleset battles.
This makes standard tank and damage dealers behind it compositions even better here and are standard go-to for odd only battles. But you still need to care about possibility of magic based compositions so your tank(s) should have void or some other way to deal with magic comps. That being said, I opted for Chain Golem + Cube for tanking, both heavy duty tanks that performs well against magic comps and for damage dealers core I opted for Pyromancer + Spark Pixies combo.
Pyre’s speed buff is universally useful in higher leagues and nearly uncounterable.
You will always reap benefits from attacking sooner and making your physical attack hit more often.
And unless opponent goes full magic your monsters will also dodge more often.
Very important part in that Pyre does not force you to go full melee/ranged/magic like attack buff summoners do, leaving you more options how to build team compositions which is especially good in odd/even only matches.
Chain Golem is good universal high durability tank.
Shield + armor makes him very resilient to physical attacks and void with supporting healer is solid against magic compositions.
He excels versus mixed damage compositions. Add in decent melee damage and we have well rounded tank.
Cube is great secondary tank, it will be hit by snipes and blasts, which makes heal ability great,
because it will negate most of the damage that is not done to main tank before main tank falls.
And after main tank falls Cube will probably be near full health able to tank lot more incoming damage.
Kobold Miner is amazing low commitment jack of all trades here. Defense-wise he will eat blast-snipes before damage dealers and can tank little bit if our chain golem and cube both falls. Offense wise he can have enough time to chew down opponents weak backliner, kill backtanking chickens or such sacrificial monsters.
Anything he kills also empowers our cube. Obviously he is not most effective monster in any of those jobs but he costs just 2 mana and opponent will have to either suppress him somehow (heal/thorns backtank, melee debuff, …) which will probably cost more resources than 2 mana or he will do his job in time and he will be quite efficient.
Main damage dealer of composition, 4 attack with blast is powerful on its own, but knockout ability pushes it
to even more insane levels giving it both AoE and very strong single target damage.
Stun + Knockout combo is good way to deal with high health heal tanks like flesh golem, cube or any very durable tank in general. AoE is always valuable in battles that will last high number of turns.
Secondary damage dealer and part of Stun + Knockout combo. Also secondary dodge-based back tank. Spark Pixies simply strikes first and if they stun opponent’s tank will not simply attack at all. Damage dealer, support auxiliary back tank all in one card.
Tank healer and back + opportunity tank that will almost always take 2 hits to kill.
Tank heal is powerful on both chain golem and cube and having 2 health + 1 armor makes it very unlikely that it will die to fist hit, usual threat of opponent’s tank with magic reflect is negated by fact that it will be useless ability against rest of the composition and very good chance that opponent’s magic reflect tank will die before Beetle Queen is able to attack second time.
here is link to battle.
Plan worked well, opponent suppressed our Kobold Miner, but as a result
opponent’s tanks were outclassed by Chain Golem + Cube and
damage dealers had plenty of time to devastate opponent’s composition.
As already mentioned in earlier section I don’t use kobold miner a much as before and its mainly for two reasons – it seems to me like game is shifting towards higher mana cap and larger monsters and also its impossible to get kobold miner outside of secondary market right now. That being said I still use him from time to time, but he will never be as powerful as he once was with bronze level summoners.
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