Hello, Splinterlands friends and family! 👋

For this week's Splinterlands Social Media Challenge!, I decided to dedicate a post to Heloise, the card that is currently going up for auction. 🃏✨

I had this post planned for a while, but I thought it would be perfect to release it today since the first GF Heloise was just sold in the auction house! 🏦💎

As of this post, the highest bid for a GF Heloise was an incredible 14,000,000 DEC that's nearly $14,000! at peg💸😱 Pretty impressive for a single card, probably the most someone has paid for a card directly from the shop. 🚀

Introduction: 🌟

It's been over two weeks since the auction for the Heloise the Hollow card kicked off on November 6th, and the numbers have been nothing short of amazing! 🚀

So far, the card has sold for amounts ranging from 1,050,000 DEC to 1,400,069 DEC—that's over $1,000 per card! 💸 Pretty incredible when you think about it.

What makes **Heloise ** so special? 🤔 This premium card is limited to just 100 copies, making it extremely scarce. On top of that, the card appears to be very powerful (we’ll dive into its abilities later in the post), so the premium price people are paying might be well worth it.

The numbers climb even higher for the GF (Gold Foil) version. With only 5 GF copies in existence, just five lucky players will have the chance to use it in GF tournaments and brawls. If Heloise lives up to the hype, owning her could be a huge strategic advantage! 🎯✨

The auction is set to end 100 days after it began, wrapping up on March 4th. Once it ends, no more copies of this exclusive card will ever be minted or sold. ⏳ Don't miss out!

First, a Bit of Lore: 📜✨

Heloise was once a beacon of hope, valiantly leading the Dawnbringers in their desperate fight against the Chaos Empire. Her unwavering strength and loyalty inspired countless allies, making her a symbol of resistance throughout Praetoria. 🌅

But the endless toll of war broke her spirit. On the slopes of Mount Praetorous, surrounded by defeat and loss, Heloise faced an impossible choice: perish alongside her comrades or sacrifice them to gain the power needed for victory.

She chose power. 💀 Betraying those who stood by her, she siphoned their life force, defeating her enemies but forever corrupting herself. Her compassion gave way to a ruthless desire for control, transforming her into an instrument of chaos. She became known as "Heloise the Hollow"—a chilling reminder of the devastating cost of her choices.

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Lore Meets Gameplay: 🕹️

Heloise’s story directly influences her abilities, Spite and Soul Siphon, perfectly capturing her tragic fall and dark powers:

• Spite:
  This ability ensures Heloise counterattacks upon her defeat, embodying her unrelenting resolve. Even in her darkest hour, she refuses to go down without taking her enemies with her—a trait forged during her final, desperate stand. ⚔️

• Soul Siphon:
  Her resurrection ability reflects the pivotal moment of betrayal, when she sacrificed her allies for power. Just as in her lore, Heloise draws strength from others, resurrecting herself with full armor and partial health, while inflicting Weary and draining life from an ally. This cruel mechanic mirrors the corruption she embraced, always gaining at the expense of those around her. 💔

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A Tragic Hero:

Heloise’s mechanics perfectly embody her transformation. Once a noble leader, she is now sustained by the lives of others, wielding devastating power at an unimaginable cost. Every action she takes is a grim reflection of sacrifice, betrayal, and the darkness that defines her journey.

Secondly, Let’s Take a Look at the Card: 🃏✨

**Heloise ** only comes at max level, so the level progression shown above is relevant only in settings with level restrictions like tournaments, brawls, or when using an underleveled summoner. Let’s break it down by levels:

• Bronze Level (Lv 1):
  Heloise doesn’t offer much here. A card with 7 damage for 9 mana isn’t a bad combination, but her Taunt ability means she’ll likely go down quickly. To make her viable, you’d need other Taunt units to shield her, but even then, this might not be the best use of the card.

• Silver Level (Lv 2):
  At this level, Heloise gains the Spite ability, which makes her useful in certain scenarios. If you can combine her with other resurrect cards, she could function as a tank/damage dealer hybrid. Be prepared to spend a lot of mana, though!

• Gold Level (Lv 3):
  Heloise improves slightly with more life and attack, but her role doesn’t change substantially compared to Silver.

• Diamond Level (Lv 4):
  This is where Heloise reaches her full potential, gaining the Soul Siphon ability.

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Heloise’s Unique Abilities: 🛡️⚔️

Heloise introduces two new abilities that define her gameplay:

1. Spite:
   

   • When defeated, Heloise counterattacks 100% of the time.

2. Soul Siphon:
   

   • As long as there’s a non-Weary allied unit, Heloise self-resurrects with 100% armor and 50% of her max health (rounded down).
   • Removes all magic debuffs and reapplies magic buffs.
   • Inflicts Weary on the allied unit with the highest health, reducing their health by 50%.

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How These Abilities Work Together: 🔄

Heloise’s abilities are designed to synergize in a unique and powerful way:

• Taunt forces enemies to target Heloise, but her relatively low health (7) and lack of natural armor mean she won’t last long.

• Once she dies, Spite ensures a counterattack, while Soul Siphon resurrects her with restored armor and partial health. This cycle repeats as long as there are allies to inflict Weary on, giving her the potential to resurrect multiple times in a single battle!

• Pairing her with armor-replenishing units or abilities can significantly extend her survivability and effectiveness in battle. 💪

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Is Heloise Worth the Price? 💰

Before you invest, consider the following:

1. High Mana Requirement:
   Heloise shines in matches with 35+ mana, where you can field a full roster to sustain her Soul Siphon ability.

2. Ruleset Limitations:
   As a melee card with Opportunity, Heloise is ineffective in rulesets like:

   • Fog of War
   • No Melee
   • No Legendaries
   • Only Commons, and more.

3. Counters Exist:
   Being melee, she’s highly vulnerable to summoners like Tofu, which can apply Thorns, making her less effective in certain matchups. If Heloise dies when attacking because of thorns she wont Counterattack.

While Heloise has immense potential, she’s not a card you can blindly use in every match. Her strength lies in strategic deployment under the right conditions. 🌟

Fight 1: How Strong Is Heloise in Practice? ⚔️🃏

On paper, Heloise seems incredibly strong and possibly even overpowered. But how does she actually perform in matches? Is she really as dominant as her abilities suggest? 🤔

Unfortunately, I don’t own a copy of the card (and probably won’t, given its steep price even in regular foil), but I simulated a few battles using the Challenge feature to test her potential.

Since Heloise is likely to pair well with Tofu, it raises questions about the best strategies to use alongside her. Here are two approaches I considered:

1. Triage + Scattershot:
   By pairing a Triage unit with a Scattershot ability, you could maintain your team's health and heal Heloise while exploiting Heloise’s frequent deaths to buff the life pool of a single unit. 💉🎯

2. Divine Shield:
   Giving Heloise the Divine Shield ability is another strong option. Since her shield refreshes every time she resurrects, it provides additional protection with every revival. 🛡️✨

Both strategies seem viable, so I decided to test them. Let’s take a look at the results!

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The Matchup

Both teams followed the current meta, using similar cards:

• Blast Protection:
  Both teams included Olivia to guard against Blast damage.
• Summoner Choice:
  Both picked Tofu as their summoner.
• Tank Setup:
  Grim was the primary tank for both sides.
• Support Units:
  Both teams used Mycelia and Goblin Psychic for their utility.

The difference lay in their approach:

• The top team leveraged a Gladiator card to capitalize on Heloise’s frequent deaths.
• The bottom team focused their strategy entirely around Heloise.

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Turn 1: Heloise's Power Unleashed 💥

At the start of Turn 1, we immediately see Heloise’s devastating potential:

• Katrelba managed to kill Heloise early in the round (as expected) but died from Heloise’s 12-damage counterattack (boosted by the Enrage ruleset).
• This counterattack also wiped out Mycelia and the Rat in a single hit! 😱

The Heloise team hadn’t even made their first attack, yet they already eliminated three enemy units. That’s the sheer power of Heloise’s counterattack. Every time she dies, she strikes back ferociously.

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The Outcome: Heloise Dominates 💪

After this explosive opening, the match was practically over. Heloise kept returning with half her health, dealing massive damage thanks to her Blast and Enrage buffs.

Although the top team managed to kill Heloise two more times, they couldn’t keep up with her endless resurrections. The synergy of her abilities made her nearly unstoppable.

Key Observations:

1. Olivia’s Armor repair:
   Interestingly, Olivia from the top team survived Heloise’s counterattacks by stealing repair buffs. Every turn she gained armor, which shielded her from counterdamage.

2. Team Contribution Matters:
   While Heloise was the star of the match, her supporting team eventually finished off the buffed Olivia, proving that Heloise isn’t the only damage dealer and the only threath to worry about.

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Conclusion

Heloise’s performance in this match demonstrated her immense strength when paired with the right team and strategy. While her abilities make her seem overwhelming, understanding her counters and limitations is essential for balancing her impact in future matches. 🔥💡

Fight 2:

Fight 2: Heloise Meets Her Match

For this second fight, I decided to showcase a match where Heloise is defeated. Once again, both teams rely on meta cards and solid strategies.

Match Details:

• Ruleset: Reverse Speed 🐢
• Mana: High, making Rage a viable ability.
• Key Units: Both teams field Grimbardum Smith as the tank, Goblin Psychic for healing and support, and Runi for damage output.

An important variation in this fight is my choice to equip Heloise with Divine Shield instead of Triage + Scattershot. Both setups seem effective, so I opted to test them under different conditions.

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The Interaction

This fight takes an interesting turn because the Lily Shieldpaw summoner on the opposing team nullifies Heloise’s Opportunity ability. Instead of targeting weaker backline units, Heloise is forced to attack the tank in the first position, reducing her offensive impact.

However, Heloise’s Spite ability ensures she still retaliates against her killer, potentially damaging the enemy backline.

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Turn 1: Heloise Takes Heavy Damage

In the first turn, Heloise is immediately overwhelmed with damage and gets taken down by Rage. However, she still manages to retaliate with a counterattack. Unfortunately, Rage’s armor absorbs all the damage, rendering the counterattack ineffective.

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Turn 2: Weary and Counterattacks

By the start of Turn 2, Heloise has already been defeated once and applied Weary to one of the allied units. However, her counterattack doesn’t have much of an effect since Grimbardum Smith restores Rage’s armor, nullifying Heloise’s efforts.

At this point, it’s becoming clear that Heloise’s team is in trouble. After just two attacks from Runi and Goblin Tower, Heloise dies again. Goblin Tower’s armor once again negates Heloise’s counterattack. With Grimbardum Smith now being Weary, Heloise’s chances of turning the tide seem slim.

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Turn 3: Rage Unstoppable

After a few more exchanges, Rage kills Heloise once again. This time, Rage has no armor to protect him, but it doesn’t matter much due to his immense life pool and Life Leech ability, which continues to grow with every hit. Meanwhile, Goblin Psychic in Heloise team falls victim to the Weary debuff.

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The Deterioration of Heloise’s Team

As the battle continues, it becomes clear that Heloise’s team is being slowly dismantled. Each time Heloise dies, she inflicts Weary on her allies, weakening her team’s overall effectiveness. And her melee counterattacks dont seem to be that effective since the enemy is constantly repairing and regaining armor and life.

Although Heloise manages to kill Goblin Tower once, it’s resurrected by Oshur, and the cycle continues. With Heloise’s team now completely Wearyed and lacking enough damage output, it’s clear that the match is slipping away from them.

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Final Stage: Heloise's Last Fall

After Heloise dies for the final time, the battle is pretty much decided. As shown in the image below, the entire bottom team is now Wearyed down, significantly reducing their effectiveness.

Despite Lord Thanalor gaining a huge life pool from Scavenger and the multiple times Heloise died, his ability to turn the tide is limited by the Weary debuff. With all of his allies and himself affected, there is little they can do to recover.

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Conclusion

This battle clearly shows the potential drawbacks of relying too heavily on Heloise. While her Spite and Soul Siphon abilities are powerful, they can backfire if the team has enough armor or health to sustain though Heloise counterattacks. In matches with high armor and life leech capabilities, Heloise’s resurrection cycles may not be enough to secure the win. If you are building a strategy around Heloise you will probably want to bring one or 2 Rust abilities to deal with the opponent armor.

As the match progresses, it becomes evident that Weary can be a powerful debuff that will shut down a team relying on Heloise. Despite Heloise's strengths, a well-rounded team with armor, healing, and strategic debuffs can often prevail.

Conclusion: Heloise – A Double-Edged Sword

Heloise is undeniably a powerful card with unique abilities that can turn the tide of any battle. Her Spite ability ensures that any enemy that kills her will face a deadly counterattack, while Soul Siphon allows her to resurrect multiple times with a substantial portion of her health and armor. These abilities make her an exceptional tank and damage dealer, especially in matches with high mana, where her potential can truly shine.

However, Heloise is not without her weaknesses. Her low health pool and lack of natural armor mean that she can be easily overwhelmed if not properly protected. While her Spite retaliates fiercely, she can still be defeated by strong enemies with high armor or healing abilities. The Weary debuff can also severely limit her effectiveness, as seen in the second fight, where her team was gradually worn down by this crippling effect.

It's important to note that I didn’t explore every possible strategy with Heloise and Tofu, as there are many viable tactics and card combinations that could potentially shift the outcome of battles. Options like Triage, Scattershot, and Divine Shield can provide additional layers of defense, while Tofu's healing powers offer opportunities for sustained durability.

I also didnt test Heloise combined with a bunch of resurrects on her team. This strategy would mean she will come back 2 or 3 more times but it also probably means the enemy will be equiped with better tools to deal with it because it would require a very high mana ruleset.

Ultimately, Heloise is a formidable card, but her true potential requires careful planning, strong support, and a well-rounded team. She can be incredibly effective in the right conditions, but spam and win type of card. In summary, Heloise offers incredible potential, but like all strong cards, she must be used wisely to overcome her vulnerabilities.

I would love to hear what you guys think of Heloise and if you have faced her in ranked or even if you own one how good shes been for you.