Grum Flameblade, Undervalued or Overvalued? Must-have card?

Have you used Grum Flameblade in battles? Do you think Grum is undervalued or overvalued?

Grum is the 6th airdropped card in Chaos legion sales. It was airdropped after 6 million packs were sold. If you purchased 350 packs from splinterlands, you had a guaranteed chance of getting one bcx.

Abilities

1. Bloodlust:
   Every time it defeats an opponent, it gets +1 to all stats. In the Reverse Speed ruleset, -1 to Speed.

2. Void armor:
   Magic attacks hit this Monster's armor before its Health

3. Void:
   Reduced damage from Magic attacks. Attack damage gets halved (rounded up), except attack 1 which deals 0 damage.

4. Giant killer:
   Does double damage against targets that cost 10 or more mana

Stats:
It has 15 - 20 hit points. 4-5 melee damage. 1 speed.
If it kills a monster, all the stats improve by 1.

[ Reactions when stats were revealed ]

Grum is the first and only card that has the ability bloodlust outside of brawls. If you play brawls, you know bloodlust is a great ability. Not only that, it is the only card with void armor and void at the same time (except a gladiator card). So I saw a lot of people got super excited about this card, including me. Cards that have synergy with Grum went up so much. Especially, Qid Yuff was one of the cheapest summoners in the game. The price of quid went up from around $3.3/bcx to $7/bcx at one point.

[ How to counter Grum ]

Countering Grum card is not very hard. Grum's drawbacks are low speed, not having shield ability, and high mana, which prevents you to spend more mana on other monsters.

• Speed:
  Grum has 1 speed naturally. If you can buff your monsters' speed or add blind, dodge, then it is easy to get misses from Grum.

• Melee or ranged damage:
  Grum has void, void armor but doesn't have shield ability. It does have high hitpoints but in high mana matches where you're likely to see Grum, you should be able to add melee or ranged monsters with high damage.

• Sneak:
  Have a tank with shield ability. Just ignore Grum and kill other weaker monsters first.
  

• Don't use low HP monsters
  If Grum kills any monster, it gets all stats buff. So it's better not to have cards like furious chicken, a fiend, or Ooze.

• Armor:
  Grum naturally doesn't have the piercing ability. So having extra armor would prevent getting one-shot by Grum. Qid Yuff summoner gives the piercing ability to Grum. So armor by itself might not be enough counter.

• Divine shield:
  Divine shield makes it very difficult for Grum to get one kill because you can't one-shot the monster and the timing has to be right to get a kill. So Lorna shine is a great counter for Grum.

• Stun:
  If you hit stun, you can most likely stun Grum and stop the attack before Grum attacks because of 1 speed.

[ Cards that have good synergy with Grum ]

Cards that gives speed buff, inspire, piercing, true aim would go so well with Grum.

• Byzantine kitty: it gives 2 speed and true aim to Grum. If prevent Grum missing.
• Yodin: it gives blast ability to Grum. If blast damage from Grum's attack kills a monster, Grum's stats go up by 1.
• Qid Yuff: it gives piercing to Grum. Ignoring the armor.
• Pyre: it gives +1 speed.
• Flame monkey: repair (lvl 5), swiftness (lvl 10)
  Since Grum has void armor, repairs would be good as well to defend Grum.
• other monsters with swiftness, inspire, tank heal, repair

[ Favorable Rulesets ]

• Reverse speed:
  Grum will be one of the fastest monsters in the game. Bloodlust won't affect the speed because the speed is already 1.
• Melee mayhem, Super sneak, Equal opportunity:
  Since Grum doesn't have the shield ability, it'd be better to put him in the middle or back. Speed buff might be a must to avoid misses.

[ My experiences with Grum so far ]

I usually play in Gold or Diamond 3. I found it a great tank against magic.

https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_e14b8f059646b41c867a24d0f97fac6f

In this match, Grum tanked well against 2 top magic monsters in the game, ruler of the seas & phantom of the abyss. While Grum was stopping their magic damage, I was able to kill those two with sneak monsters. Void + void armor with high hitpoints makes him a great tank against magic.

I tried with Melee mayhem:
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_0bd70aa1f27c89596b404c71b47eca1b

29 mana, melee mayhem match:

I tried to increase speed with spirit miner, tried to decrease their armor with living lava's rust ability. Also, Tarsa gives +1 melee, +1 health. I positioned Grum in the third position so that it survives for some time. However, that was not at all enough to kill any of the well-crafted Yodin team.

• Grum vs living lava

https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_0d637b154ece526119d1c153cec106a4

Living Lava's thorns and high damage kills Grum in the 3rd turn. Living lava has shield ability, so Grum can not damage living lava very much, just by 2. Grum doesn't have shield, so living lava does 6 damage per turn with thorns. Living lava is 7 mana, so you have 4 mana that you can spend on other monsters.

• Grum vs Forgotten one
  14 mana poison match
  https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_ad217da6cdbd5637b7c3a910585dee95
  
  I chose the forgotten one as the tank but the opponent used Grum. We both have tank heal. Since I have extra 2 mana, I could put flame monkey and chaos agent.
  Forgotten one has piercing, retaliate, and immunity. Because of that, forgotten one survived longer than Grum even though Grum has significantly more hit points. Especially the retaliate was literally game-changing.

• Perfect Grum counter
  https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_d0f9a06f90a54633a3cf1a25b14ed695

Shieldbearer has shield ability. The life team has protect and double repair. This makes grum extremely hard to get a kill. Having buffed up silvershield assassin kills my backline monsters while my team is struggling taking down the shieldbearer.

[ Conclusion ]

At the time of writing 01/22/2022, I have not yet successfully utilized Grum's bloodlust ability in high gold or diamond 3 leagues. Grum is the only card outside of brawls that have void + void armor with high hit points. It is no doubt that it is a great tank against magic if you're expecting magic focused team in high mana games.

Grum is a great monster in the right context. 11 mana is big mana. I feel that the situations I can use Grum's bloodlust ability well don't come by very often unless you have Yodin or Kitty. I don't own either of them. So in short, I feel that the card is situational. I don't think it is a must-have card despite my initial excitement.

If you have had successful battles using Grum's bloodlust ability in Gold or above leagues (hopefully without OP legendary summoners like Yodin or Kitty), please comment with a battle link. I'd love to learn more about this card!

[ Possible causes of my unsuccessful experiences ]

• I am still in process of learning how to use Grum.
• In high gold or diamond league, a lot of tanks have shield ability. I'm often seeing monsters like Lord of darkness, chain golem, shieldbearer.
• I often fight against the same people in diamond 3. They might be able to kind of tell I'd use Grum or Tarsa.
• My opponents often use OP summoners like Prince Renynn, Yodin, Kitty, Lorna shine. I know those summoners have a high win rate in gold, diamond leagues. I don't own any of those summoners. so my win rate is already not high.