[Splinterlands] Is getting more single-mana monsters worth it?

Untamed Edition marked the first time summoners with a seven-mana cost emerged. Monsters with mana of eight and up also increased in numbers. As mana requirements went up, so did battle's mana caps. It's much rarer to get into matches with low mana pools. Thus, in some cases, the player who can bring out the most heavyweights wins.

With great mana pool comes great monsters.

Well, it's not that low-mana pool battles were wiped out. It's just that it happens way too less often. It makes me question if owning or renting low-mana cards is cost-efficient (read: brings me more wins). If I buy this one-mana monster, how often will I be able to use it, given that I usually have a surplus of mana points to use for costlier monsters?

But this is not a complaint about the game. I understand that Splinterlands would be forever changing, breaking the current meta and plays to keep the game exciting and fresh. My musings were brought about as I pondered what to do with this week's featured monster in the Battle Challenge. I've got no real misgivings towards the game's changes, lol 😅

_{Edit: This post was missed during Splinterlands curation. But I wanted to re-submit the original Battle Challenge, so I had this content refurbished. This revised post contains different, but related, content than what it initially was. I had at least made it unique to avoid outright spamming.}

The Rare Low-Mana Cap Battles

I was hoping to battle with a low mana cap, so I would be compelled to use a one-mana monsters. However, it feels like I'm only getting two or three battles with a mana pool of 20 or less for every ten matches. I checked my last 20 bouts to confirm this, and it turns out I was right.

Only 20% of my 20 recent matches were low-mana battles, while matches with moderate to high mana pools were more frequent at 80%. Normally, small mana battles are not that hard to come by. It's usually around 40%, so I'm not sure why I'm not getting much today.

Use Case for One Mana Monster #1: Optimizing Equalizer in Low Mana Caps

Catch the live battle here

The Equalizer ruleset increases all of the monster's health equal to the health of the highest monster in the battle. Even if the monster is on the opponent's side, you'll still get the health bump. All monsters will start with the same amount of health, unless health buffs and debuffs are in play.

In Equalizer, it is best to fill up your lineup with as many monsters as possible. Note that a monster that had originally one health, such as Exploding Rats used by my opponent, will have a higher than normal health. It's too bad that my opponent was unable to fill up their lineup and had only five. But that works for me! It's a definite advantage that I got one monster more than them. Such a shame, we only reached five health points as the highest.

Use Case for One Mana Monster #2: Taking Aggro Away from Key Monsters

The Equal Opportunity ruleset allows all monsters to attack from any position. The target? The opposing team's monster with the lowest health point. In a battle with a large mana cap, I'd likely pull out all the stops to include all high-mana, melee monsters, since they usually have the highest health. But in a low mana-cap battle, we get very limited options and are usually forced to make do with fragile monsters.

Catch the live battle here

For the battle above, I guessed that the Llama-Kron combo would come up. The best way to deal with this is to have a high-health Void monster tank all the damage from a Kron-on-steroids (read: Last Stand activated). Then have a healer heal your tank. Hopefully, you'll have enough mana left to include monsters that can dish out high enough damage to offset Kron's healing.

Now that I have my key monsters, I need to keep them safe as much as possible. In a battle with Equal Opportunity, it's especially dangerous for my Defender of Truth and Divine Healer since they had very low health. Thus, I used one-mana monsters to take away the aggro from them.

The strategy worked and I was able to save my important monsters to battle the OP Llama-Kron combo. It took a long while because we're essentially dealing just one damage per round since Kron heals himself, but we managed to win at last in round 13.

For people not knowing how to deal with Llama-Kron, I hope this strategy helps.

So how are one-mana monsters overall? And what does Chaos Legion offer?

Are low mana monsters worth buying or renting? Small mana cap battles occur infrequently, but it's worth it to prepare a few low mana monsters for it. A safe bet is to acquire low-mana Neutral monsters so you can slap it on any team. Also, when getting cards, focus on its skills, not on mana costs.

One-mana monster market is already quite fierce. Several awesome single-mana monsters were already available before Chaos Legion was released. Most of them own amazing skills that were absolute game-changers in matches. So bet your money on skills!

Come to think of it, the other new Chaos Legion monster with a single mana cost looks underwhelming too. Earth's Mycelic Morphoid has a useful Thorn skill but its health is too low. Thorn skill will likely only be inflicted once or twice before it gets knocked out.

Check out all of Splinterlands' one-mana monsters in their full glory, each shown below at their highest possible level. I think the new one-mana Chaos monsters are severely outclassed by its older peers, even comparing it with monsters of the same Common rarity.

All One-Mana Common and Rare Monsters

All One-Mana Epic and Legendary Monsters