Riftwatchers Cards - Whelp Herder

Hello everyone! I'm entering the Splinterlands Social Media Challenge with a series of reviews for Riftwatcher cards. First, I'll talk about Riftwatcher cards in general, what I think about the mini set, and how it was treated. After that, I'll proceed to this post's card: Whelp Herder.

I think the Riftwatchers set is well designed, for a mini set. If this was a stand-alone set, there would be too many high mana cards and it wouldn't make for a very balanced set of cards for players to have. However, that's not the goal for this one. It's supposed to be played with Chaos Legion cards. It does that very well and provides alternatives and situational cards that can work better in certain rule sets and mana caps.

I'm not a big fan of most of the summoners in this set. Their abilities are just too weak for most situations. Ilthain is the exception. It is a fantastic summoner. I would have liked for these summoners to have cost 3 mana instead of 4. That way, we'd have 3 and 4 mana summoners within the Chaos Legion group of sets. That would give players more options and make these a little better in low-mana matches. Of course, Ilthain would have to be changed, maybe lose the +1 speed. There is one good thing about these summoners, though. Since they are epic, they have an advantage in the Bronze and Gold leagues. They can play rare cards 1 level higher than the other summoners. This fact makes these summoners a pretty good option for Silenced Summoners in Bronze and Gold. I don't like this, because it seems like an oversight that was accepted and became the norm, but it's a bit weird that epic summoners can play level 3 rares in Bronze and other rarities can't.

An interesting consequence of having summoners as the only epic monsters in the set is that it pushed cards that "feel" epic into rare. It's not about the power level. There are plenty of commons and rares that are way more powerful than many legendaries and epics. It's about the complexity of the card, which is reflected in the number and type of abilities it has. Pelacor Bandit is a good example of a good common card. It has 2 simple abilities: flying and sneak. It never gets any new abilities from leveling up. It's always a solid option for a 3 mana sneak monster. It just gets better stats. Looking at Riftwatchers commons, Septic Slime and Time Meddler could easily have been rare because they have more abilities, can some of them as they level up, and are a bit more complex. As for the rares, Tinderlock, Runic Skyclaw, and Queen of Crows, they all feel epic. If I had to guess just looking at the max level stats, I'd probably say they were epic or even legendary, for Tinderlock. Very few cards have Last Stand and only one other rare has it: Efreet Elder, which has only 1 more ability. We could even argue a few other of these rares could have been epic. What's so interesting about this, in terms of gameplay, is that we're able to use these pseudo-epic cards in the Rise of the Commons rule set.

Each pack was priced at $5 in SPS plus 1 voucher. Everything goes to the DAO, and not the team. This was a mistake, for several reasons. Pricing in SPS was not a great idea. Players are supposed to want to keep their SPS and stake it. There were 2 proposals to fix this by turning the price into 5000 DEC, plus the voucher, regardless of the DEC price. The first time it failed but, more recently, it passed. This isn't a flawless solution, because it punishes those who bought earlier and breaks a promise, but I think it was necessary. The other big flaw, in my opinion, is the price itself. Chaos Legion was already overpriced at $4 and these are even more expensive. I certainly hope we go down in price, in the future. Sadly, I don't see us going back to the $2 packs from the Untamed days, but $3 would be the sweet spot, for me.

Another thing I didn't like was that, soon after passing the Riftwatchers packs for DEC proposal, another proposal passed for burning Riftwatcher packs. This one passed simply because most of the biggest SPS holders had bought enough Riftwatcher packs and they just wanted the airdrops to come out. A way to prevent this type of exploit, in the future, is to not count packs burned for airdrops.

Let's talk about Whelp Herder now. This is a really nice 3 mana melee monster that can attack from anywhere, just like Pelacor Bandit and Uraeus. This one has Opportunity instead of Sneak, which tends to be the better ability. At Bronze, level 3, it has 2 attack. Nothing crazy but playable. Pelacor Bandit only has 1 attack, at this level. At level 5, for Silver, it gets Snare. It won't always be relevant but it can be game-changing. At level 8, for Gold, it gets 3 attack and it is a significant improvement. When fully maxed, it gets the super important Dispel. It's the only card in the game with Opportunity and Dispel.

This is a monster that you always want to have at the max level for each league. That's because the other levels don't offer anything important. I can't imagine myself going from 60 BCX to 150 BCX just for 1 extra speed and health point. I'd either go to 220 BCX or focus on other cards, if I couldn't. It's also a card that is more important in Gold and Diamando (and Champion) than in Bronze or Silver.

Thanks to Lily Shieldpaw, my Whelp Herder attacked their Uriel, taking away the flying. I killed their Vruz 3 times, which made their Uriel huge and able to take out my Agor in one hit, after the armor was gone. It got Resurrected and Uriel died before doing any more damage. Whelp Herder even Dispelled all the Martyr Buffs but it was irrelevant. They took out my Agor but Jared Scar and Corsair Bosun were dealing a lot of damage and taking out the enemy monsters. The game quickly showed to be a win for me, at this point.

What do you all think about Whelp Herder? Do you have this card? If yes, what level? Have you fought against it? Let me know in the comments! Thank you for reading!!