Hello Splinterlands Community, for this week I will share my personal thoughts about Exploding Rats which is one of the favorite reward cards I love to used in the fire splinter. It is a high risk high reward card that can secure you the victory if the card is utilized very well.

About Exploding Rats

Exploding Rats is a 4 mana rare fire unit that deals melee damage and also belongs to the rewards set. The price of the level 1 regular foil card is $0.018 while the gold foil card is currently listed at $0.738 on the marketplace as of this writing. The price for this card is more cheaper compared to other rare rewards cards because it is a very fragile unit and it is not practical to use on regular battles.

The figure above shows the complete statistics of Exploding Rats from Level 1 to its maximum level which is 8. At level 1 it already has the Blast ability that deals damage to the adjacent monster of the target monster. This is very effective if the target monster is placed in the middle position where the blast ability would affect the two monsters adjacent to it. Upgrading this card up to Level 5 would be great in order to unlock the Redemption ability where all enemy monsters would take 2 damage if this monster was taken down, at the same time at Level 5 it would now deal 3 melee damage and has 6 speed which is powerful in taking down lower health monsters. Since this card is the cheapest among the rare rewards cards in the marketplace, upgrading this card to a higher level would not be too much difficult.

Rulesets

As I said earlier, Exploding Rats is a high risk high reward card that is not practical to use on regular battles. The card has only 1 health and can be taken down immediately if it takes any damage from the enemies. Exploding Rats can be powerful on certain rulesets in the game that I want to share where you can utilize its good amount of speed and melee damage moreover the blast ability that can easily wipeout the enemy unit.

Equaliser

This ruleset is very compatible with Exploding Rats, it makes the initial Health of all Monsters in the battlefield equal to that of the Monster on either team with the highest base Health. Since Exploding Rats only has 1 health regardless of its card level, it would benefit a lot from this ruleset. The only downside of this ruleset is that if both teams decided to deploy low health monsters on the battlefield, this is where Exploding Rats can still be vulnerable and may be risky to play with.

Equal Opportunity

This ruleset also fits very well with Exploding Rats. This ruleset gives all monsters in the battlefield the sneak ability. That ability allows the monster to target the enemy Monster with the lowest health. This allows Exploding Rats to target the lowest health monster on the enemy team and the blast ability can also be huge if the adjacent monster to it is also volatile. However, the Exploding Rats could also be targeted by all the enemy monsters since it only has 1 health.

Melee Mayhem

This ruleset allows all melee monster to attack every round regardless its position in the battlefield. With this ruleset, Exploding Rats is not required to be placed in the first position in order to deal damage, it can now be placed in the middle, last or any position in the team in order to maximize its good melee damage and the blast ability as well.

Super Sneak

This ruleset gives all monsters the sneak ability. That ability makes all the monster except in the first position of your team to target the opponent's monster that is in the last position. Just like the Melee Mayhem and Equal Opportunity ruleset, Exploding Rats can now deal melee damage every turn regardless of its position in the battlefield. The blast ability would also be advantageous to inflict damage to the adjacent monster of the target monster .

Armored Up

Lastly is the Armored Up ruleset it gives all monsters in the battlefield +2 armor. Since Exploding Rats is a very fragile unit, having +2 armor buff at the start of the game would be useful in order for the card to survive the initial rounds. The downside of this buff is when the enemy team used magic dealing monsters where the +2 armor from this ruleset would become useless.

Summoners

Not only the rulesets are need to be considered in using Exploding Rats in ranked battles but also choosing the best summoner that will be use in the match in order to utilize the damage and ability of this card. Since Exploding Rats is a fire rare unit, the card is only available to use on fire element summoners as well as for dragon element summoners if fire element is available on that match . I mostly played Chaos Legion Cards , Reward cards and starter cards that are playable in the game, which is why I am going to only share some summoners that belongs in those sets which I'm very familiar with at the same time tried and tested in a number of battles that I think is the best option to choose if ever you want to use Exploding Rats in a ranked battle.

Tarsa

This summoner gives your whole team +1 Melee Damage and +1 Health. This is probably the best summoner to choose when using Exploding Rats in the match. The additional +1 Melee Damage from this summoner would be massive to take down opponents immediately as well as it boosts the damage that the blast ability would dead to the adjacent monsters of the target. The +1 health buff is also very useful for the Exploding Rats in order to survive a bit longer in the battle.

Pyre

This summoner gives your whole team additional +1 Speed it is also a good summoner to used when playing Exploding Rats. The speed buff from this summoner is favorable for Exploding Rats since it already has a high amount of speed and the speed buff coming from this summoner allows this card to strike first at the enemy and perhaps take down that opponent immediately.

Dragon of Arnak

This summoner gives your whole team +1 Armor at the start of the match and also fits very well with Exploding Rats. The armor buff coming from this summoner allows the Exploding Rats to survive the initial melee or ranged attack coming from the opponent. Since this summoner belongs to the dragon element, you can have the option to use dragon element units in the battle wherein there are some monsters in the dragon element that pairs very well with Exploding Rats. The only downside of this summoner is when the opponent decides to use magic dealing monsters in the battle where the armor buff from this summoner would be futile.

My Battle

This is a ranked battle I want to share where I used my Exploding Rats and other low health monsters to take down the opposing team with the help coming from the Equalizer Ruleset. I used Tarsa as my summoner in this match to buffed up my Exploding Rats at the same time make my other unit more durable. The Equalizer ruleset boost the health of my entire team and that is the reason why I secure this victory. You can also watch this match by clicking this link below.
(https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_4410a73513e0917dde3d64a5d7322c3e&ref=hatdogsensei)

Thank you so much for reading my post, If you haven't tried playing Splinterlands, I'll suggest to start playing right now using my referral link below.
https://splinterlands.com?ref=hatdogsensei