This week’s battle challenge focuses on the Angelic Mandarin.

Card Details

A Chaos Legion edition rare level monster from the Water unit at level 3:

• Estimated cost: $2.827

• Melee attack: 1

• Speed: 3

• Health: 6

I may be biased or suffering from recency bias, but it does feel like a lot of the battle challenges lately have been focused on lower mana cost cards, and the Angelic Mandarin fits the bill to a tee. The artwork of the Angelic Mandarin is a part frog and part fish. The frog part artwork reminds me of the toads from Naruto's ever-popular anime show. It would be interesting to see a live artwork version of the Angelic Mandarin as I am intrigued by how it would battle. The Angelic Mandarin has excellent health to mana cost ratio, good speed, and low range damage. Where I think this monster shines is at higher levels, where it unlocks the Triage ability, more damage, and speed. And therefore can be used in conjunction with other famous healing monsters in the Water unit like Crustacean King.

Battle - Full Battle Replay

Battle Details

• Mana cap: 28

• Rulesets(s): Enrage

Lineup Details

• Kelya Frendul (Summoner): +1 speed and +1 armor to all friendly monsters.

• Djinn Oshannus: primary tank with Void ability.

• Kelp Initiate + Albatross: no attack monsters acting as a meat shield for the magic and range backline monsters.

• River Nymph: support magic monster to cleanse any debuffs on Djinn Oshannus.

• Supply Runner + Angelic Mandarin: support range damage with high speed to ensure hits land.

Did your strategy work? What will you try differently next time?

This battle was underwhelming; I was underpowered and could not deal with my opposition's double Sneak and Opportunity melee monsters. My opponent barely broke a sweat, and their Djinn Oshannus proved to be an excellent tank for them through healing and repair. How did the Angelic Mandarin fair? Well, not good. It was the first monster on the team and didn't have any real impact with its one-range damage. Then again, I wouldn't blame the card but rather a poor execution strategy on my part. Back to the drawing board, I also learned how certain powerful combinations could be from my opposition, so not all too bad.

Do you like the Angelic Mandarin? Why or why not?

I was surprised to find out the cost for a single bcx copy of the Angelic Mandarin, which at the current time is $0.2. It's smack bang in the middle in terms of cost when you compare it against all regular foil rare edition Chaos Legion cards, and that pretty much sums it up. It's not a bad card, but also not a great card. Unlike my performance above, it may be a worthy addition when leveled up and used correctly. But I think it requires a particular skillset to play it and not a plug-and-play sort of card that you can plug into any battle.

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