Splinterlands - a Christmas airdrop got me Elias Max Pruitt and I LOVE it!

Hey everyone, welcome back to my Splinterlands blog and Merry Christmas to you and your loved ones!
I'm making this post December 25th early in the morning before the rest of the family is awake, I like it to be quiet so I can think about what to write. 😁

This weeks Social Media Challenge post is the same as last weeks:

🔥 Share Your Most Remarkable Splinterlands Moments: Do you possess a battle of epic proportions that deserves to be seen by all? Have you crafted something extraordinary within the Splinterlands realm? Maybe you've got profound thoughts, insights, or strategies related to stats, cards, abilities, or gameplay that are waiting to be shared? We want it all, and we want it to be nothing short of AMAZING!

To find out how you can participate in the challenge yourself, check out the splinterlands post here.

When I'm doing my daily splinterlands battles on two accounts I like to save cool battles to later make posts about, and this was my plan for this weeks post too, but then this thing happened yesterday evening that made my day even better!

So, I was just grinding my ranked battles after my last work day of the year so it already was a good day, knowing I have extra time for the things I like to do and spend with my family.
On the waiting for opponent screens I usually browse trough Hive posts other members made or read posts on X and then I saw @coolguy123 reacting to messages like 'drop SOL wallet for christmas presents here'.

I don't usually do this but I figured, it's Christmas, might as well give this a try too so I dropped my SOL wallet address in a couple of messages, and after an hour or so I was checking my Phantom wallet to see a message I was eligible for a PENGU airdrop, I'm not in to altcoins much, and I don't know for sure my eligibility came from me dropping my address in these posts but it sure was a coincidence!

I want to mention, this is NOT financial advice and always do your own research but you might want to check your eligibility yourself at the pudgy penguins airdrop page here.

Crpyto, with all the scams and rug pulls has made me VERY paranoid but this message came from within my Phantom wallet so I figured it's legit, and it showed I was eligible for just over 1800 $PENGU, it would cost me about 0.002 SOL, or 40 cents in fee's and I actually was hesitant to go on, not knowing anything about these small coins but I figured it's only 40 cents and I claimed the airdrop to see it was worth $65! 😍

Did I mention I don't like small random coins? 😆 so I immediately swapped to SOL to secure it and being a hardcore @splinterlands player, it wasn't hard to come up with ways I'm going to spend this Christmas present on since I'm working hard last months to build my new modern Rebellion deck for the big change when Chaos Legion rotates out of modern.

It's great nowadays it's easier to bridge funds from other chains to splinterlands, so I used Tribaldex for this and then swapped it from SOL to Hive and then to DEC to buy a summoner I was eyeballing for a while but I was focusing on other cards first...

I'm getting this to silver level but waiting for a well priced third, some patience is required... 😄

My own accounts are primarily Chaos Legion Gold and Diamond level so at this level I can't use them, but I have a unused alt account I can have fun with lower level cards for now when I have some spare time, with this account I'm helping my guild fill frays in the brawls at the moment because it's hard to find active, dedicated players for this.

Tactics summoners are a great addition to splinterlands and although they're around for a while already, they're new for me to use and for now I only had the pleasure of playing with Underboss Fabino and a Risq. Drath.
Because I still needed to submit my brawl battles this morning I started with those, can't afford to forget it!

So, the battle I saved to make this post is just a fresh one from this morning, I'm filling the novice level Rebellion fray with this alt account and this was a high mana battle for this relatively small account, it doesn't have a whole lot of cards so Elias was perfect, being able to combine the cards it has for two splinters, together with the boost and tactics it brings. The rule set combination is Equalizer / Aim True, so speed is of less importance although it's still useful to be able to fire first, before your opponent does. With the Equalizer rule set, I like to focus my fire but because I don't have a lot of cards, I still ended up using a sniper in the back.

First look at the battlefield:

Rosa as my opponent, and Mantaroth as the tank, it's a great card and the shield might be a problem, since I'm still learning to play with Rebellion let's see how this goes!

My Line-Up:

• Summoner: Elias Max Pruitt - reason: access to water and life splinters.
• First position: Commander Slade - reason: Great tank at level 1.
• Second position: Relenor Cleaver - reason: Reach together with high armor makes this a great synergy with Elias to use armored strike.
• Third position: Janni Rebel - reason: +1 melee damage for my team.
• Fourth position: Anachron Bolter - reason: -1 ranged damage, two attack types.
• Fifth position: Meriput Magician - reason: Tank heal.
• Sixth position: Luceheim Demon - reason: Filler card to use the leftover mana.

I'm not used a lot to Rebellion just yet so I need to look at the names every time... 😅

The Battle:

Round 1: That was a good start of the battle, the synergy between Relenor Cleaver and Elias is crazy, boosted even more with Janni Rebel's inspire, it's doing a whopping 14 damage in two strikes and it pierces armor, this is crazy, especially at these low levels!

Round 2: My tank is almost dead but it survived long enough to let the rest of the team inflict some serious damage to the other team. My opponent is spreading the damage around on two cards, so that's good for me. I think it's better to focus fire to kill off cards as soon as possible so they can't attack anymore. The Cleaver even got a kill so it's bloodlust is now making it do 16 damage! 😅

Round 3: There's no way to stop this monster now!

Round 4: The Cleaver ended up with doing 19 damage every round, it's an awesome win!

You can watch the battle unfold for yourself here.

This is it for this post, it's time to start making Christmas breakfast preparations to enjoy with my family, I hope to see you on my next post, or maybe we will meet on the battlefield!

Thank you for reading!!!

If you haven't made an account already, please consider using my referral link to sign up, I'll happily send the amount I get for your signup back to you in DEC or SPS to help you start.

Also, when you require any help to get you started,let me know, I'm here to advice and guide new players and maybe I can help you with card delegations too!

Have a great day!