It's been a few seasons now since Escalation, a Conclave Arcana mini-set, was released, which introduced new cards and new abilities that once again shake the game's meta. The mini-set has consisted of 43 cards in total, with 12 commons, 12 rares, 8 epics, and 11 legendaries, not including the promo cards that can only be acquired by participating in the set presale and the additional Archons that will be airdropped through conflicts soon.
In this post, I want to take a look at all the Earth units from Escalation.
The Escalation Earth units consisted of cards under different bloodlines, so, depending on what their bloodlines were, it is possible for them to be used by Archons from other elements and benefit from their Bloodline Dominion abilities. But aside from that, they had these new abilities that could affect the result of the battles.
Living Berm
Living Berm is an Elemental range unit with a max damage of 5, partnered with some decent speed, health, and armor. But using this card can be quite costly, since it requires 10 mana to use. Even so, it has some good ability synergy with its Decoy that will draw attacks from enemy units that have the Snipe, Apex Strike, and Opportunity towards it, then when it is defeated, it can give Poison on the card that defeated it, as well as the units adjacent to it. It also won't immediately be useless when it goes to the first position since it has the Thorns ability that will inflict damage when it is attacked by melee units.
As an Elemental unit, it immediately gets the Poison ability when used along with the Water Archon, Loving the Moo, but if you want more power, using it with Risqruel Drath may be the way to go. But if you want to spread out the effects of the Poison Burst to your opponent's team, using this card with the Earth archon Elowen Sylphie may be a good option if you give this card the Resurgence ability, so that it can revive with full health after it was defeated.
Decoy - Draws the attacks of enemy units with Snipe, Apex Strike, and Opportunity unless an allied taunt unit is present. Does not affect enemy units in the first position.
Forlorn Geomant
On the other hand, Forlorn Geomant was a magic Djinn, which, like the previous card, also takes a lot of mana to use since it has a total of 13 mana, but it is also quite a strong card for having 5 magic damage with some decent speed, health, and Armor. As far as its abilities, it only has two, being Impede, which reduces the speed of its target each time it hits the target, and Wingbreak ability, which prioritizes attacking units with Flying ability, but that just makes it a good counter card when the opponent plays Flying units during Earthquake ruleset, not to mention, the additional 2 damage it will inflict when it attacks a Flying unit.
When it comes to Archon, it can be summoned by the Death Archon, Brave the Bull, as a Djinn unit, where it gains the Last Stand ability that will increase all of its stats when it is the only unit remaining in your team and if you gave it the Execute as tactics, it may even be able to attack twice if the target only has 2 or less health after a successful attack while Armored Strike may also be utilized by this card during certain rulesets, like Equal Opportunity.
Earthwork Sentinel
Moving on with the rare units, we had Earthwork Sentinel, which is a 3-mana non-damage unit, so the only way that it can attack was if it was placed next to a card with Weapon's Training ability, particularly with Croire that will give it melee damage, and in return, it can give that card the Shield ability from the effects of Shieldward. But even without attacking, this card can still be a good support since it has the Slow ability that reduces the speed of all opponent units and Triage that allows it to heal back line units that have taken damage. Aside from that, it also has the Reveal ability that will remove the effect of the Camouflage ability, which will allow those cards to be targetable by your team.
Since this was also an Elemental unit, it can obviously be pulled out by Brave the Bull, but I may want to use it more along with the Earth Archon Eternal Tofu to further boost its backline healing ability by adding multiple Triage units.
Empusan Darkguard
Empusan Darkguard, on the other hand, was a melee unit with the Fiend Bloodline, but an Archon for such a Bloodline currently does not exist. Still, this card has plenty of use as an Earth unit since it has the Resurrect ability that will allow it to revive an ally unit that was defeated in battle. And even though it was a melee unit, it could hit the opponent with the lowest health, regardless of its position, since it has the Opportunity ability. But most of all, it has the Shadow Focus ability that gives all units the Determined ability and +1 to their damage, so long as this card was in the last position, though the ability will also prevent the card from attacking.
Shadow Focus - When in the last position, gains Camouflage, cannot attack, and all allied units gain +1 Power and Determined.
Sable Dustpaw
For the only Epic Earth unit, we have another magic unit with Sable Dustpaw, which has a Canisan bloodline, making it a card that can be summoned by Loving the Moo and gains the Poison ability and it can also give Poison ability if an adjacent unit has the Kindred Will ability as an effect of its Kindred Spirit ability. It also has the Decoy ability, making it to taunt attacks from units with certain abilities towards it, as well as Reflexes that will make all subsequent attacks from an opponent that hit this card to miss during that turn.
By the way, for an epic card, this unit only costs 3 mana to use, so it can be used on low mana and little league battles.
Tilly Gearspring
Moving to the legendary units, we have Tilly Gearspring, which is a melee unit with the Gnome Bloodline, so it gains the Closerange ability from the bloodline skill when used with the Fire Archon Razi Clnaktrap. It does not have much health and damage, but it still deserves to be a legendary unit, since it does not cost any mana to use, and can attack backline units with its Sneak ability. Aside from that, it has the Bloodline Pact ability, which is kind of similar to Bloodlust, but will trigger if any of the cards that share bloodline with this card defeat an opponent, which will increase the damage of all the cards with the same bloodline.
Bloodline Pact -Allied units that share this unit's bloodline gain +1 power when any of them defeats an enemy and take 1 true damage when any of them is defeated. If this unit is defeated, allied units that share its bloodline take 2 damage and lose all power gained from this ability.
Azr the Relentless
Being a Djinn unit, it can be summoned by the Death Archon Brave the Bull and gain the last Stand ability, and given that it has two attack types, giving it Execute my prove to be useful for this card.
And that was it for my early assessment of the Escalation Earth units. It seems that a good number of cards can be used by the most recent conflict Archon Brave the Bull, but at the same time, can also work well with the Earth Archon Eternal Tofu. Either way, the cards were all pretty decent, but none in particular stood out for me.
Thank you, and see you on the next post!
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![[ES/EN] Splinterlands - Escalation – Earth](/assets/noimage.svg)