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Community Engagement Challenge #01: Halfling Refugee

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What a weary time those years were -- to have the desire and the need to live but not the ability.
by Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye
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There's one unit in the new Reward Cards set that is growing on me. At first, I thought it was weak because of the new debilitation ability, which gives debuff instead of making your unit get stronger. The other side of this is having that said unit with debilitation a higher stat than normal making these debilitations a double-edged sword. This week, we will explore one of these new units that makes you wonder, "Is this unit really strong as he says?"

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Lore

Since the Chaos Empire conquered Praeotria, the land has seen a refugee crisis the likes of which it has never before known. With major cities and smaller villages alike torn apart by war, famine, and disease, very few sanctuaries remain.
In the Great Lowlands, many of these refugees travel to Fireboro, where the republic’s former chancellor and those loyal to him have established safe havens for those who lost their homes to the empire. Among them are the Republic of Fireboro’s Praetorian halflings, whose shires were mostly destroyed by the legions of Chaos. They remain defiant, yet it’s hard to keep fighting the good fight when you’ve lost everything you hold dear.

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^{For full lore of this card, visit this website:
https://next.splinterlands.com/card-detail/700/regular/13?tab=lore}

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Buy and Rental Costs

This card is soulbound. It is unable to be transferred, rented/delegated, burned, bought or sold until the cards go out of print. It is tied to the account that has earned it through gameplay/chests. Gladiator cards are also Soulbound.

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Card Stats

For a 1 mana unit, Halfling Refugee has very good stats. In fact, he has the best stats so far among all 1 mana units. This is because of the new type of ability called, "Debilitations." These are abilities that causes disruption or damage on your own team instead of helping you and in exchange, the unit is given better stats.

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Card Effects

Weary

Each round, Weary units have a 10% chance to become Exhausted. This chance increases by 10% every round, up to a maximum of 80%. Exhausted units skip their turn and cannot Retaliate.

At first, I thought Weary was bad. It makes your unit skip its turn with a stacking 10% chance every round. It's like if Halfling Refugee gets stunned every few rounds which sounds bad but if you treat him as a unit with no attack like Chaos Agent, he doesn't seem so bad given that he only costs 1 mana.

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Heal	Restores a portion of the Unit's health each round

His high health comboed with Heal is very disgusting. You can use him as a free blocker and if your enemy was not able to kill him, he can get a few health back per round.

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Strengths & Weaknesses

Strengths
Halfling Refugee's stats are very high. The 5 damage is very tempting as well but don't be baited and use him for his damage. Treat him as someone without any attacks like Chaos Agent to reduce the stress you may get from Weary debilitations.

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Weaknesses

It's funny that to me, his weakness is not the Weary Debilitation but him being an Epic unit. Epic units costs 7500 glint on the shop and this is only a chance that you may get him and not even 100% sure. So, that makes this unit very hard to level up unless you constantly grind in the high level, probably diamond and above, with millions of SPS. If you only have a few thousands of SPS, or in lower league, it would take you a very long while to increase this card's level to unlock his full potential.

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When To Use

Back to Basics

Units lose all abilities.

Since debilitations are treated as an ability and all units lose their abilities, you are now left with a very strong, hard hitting 1 mana cost unit without any abilities.

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Blood and Sunder

All units have Corrosive Ward.

Since this unit does not have any armor, he isn't affected by this ruleset when attacking. On the other hand, enemies gets reduced armor when attacking this unit due to Corrosive Ward from the Blood and Sunder rule set.

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Maneuvers

Units with melee attacks gain Reach.

I think a good placement of units is Halfling Refugee at the front and then your other stronger unit behind him like Coastal Sentry. This puts Coastal Sentry on a safer side and makes Halfling Refugee acts as a shield for Coastal Sentry.

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When Not To Use

Up Close & Personal

Only Units with Melee attack may be used in battles.

Since there would be very limited positions for melee units, I think it would be better to choose another one than Halfling Refugee if you have more choices.

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Healed Out

All healing abilities are removed from Units and Summoners.

This rule set removes the Heal ability of Halfling Refugee making him less useful in higher league. It doesn't make him useless and you can still use him but he's just less effective.

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Noxious Fumes

All Units start the battle Poisoned.

Due to the nature of Weary debilitation, a long fight isn't good for Halfling Refugee. Not only the poison counters the healing from Heal, it also allows the enemy to kill him earlier.

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Battle Sample

^{https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_019d9687862e8f2512f792d9947cc247}

Due to the limited mana, I chose my main carry, Kulu Swimhunter, then added low mana cost units that would act as blockers for my team in order to delay Kulu Swimhunter reaching the front. I intend to reduce the number of opponent's units first before reaching the front and killing the last few units with Kulu Swimhunter and Trample from Possibilus the Wise.

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Final Thoughts

At its core, I see Splinterlands as a stat check game. The higher stats your units have, the higher your chance is of winning. In the end, the player who depletes all their unit's health loses.

Debilitation is a fun ability. While it certainly gives you quite a number of disadvantages, it really depends on how you look at it.

Halfling Refugee's mana to health ratio is so unfair in my opinion giving you 6 health unit for almost no mana. I've used this unit a lot and had quite a number of success. As I go more into the game, I hope I could also see more overpowered uses for these debilitations. For now, I'll just enjoy my time with Halfling Refugee.

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If you have suggested combos or questions, feel free to comment it down below.

If you are planning to play and is inspired by my post, please consider using my referral link: https://splinterlands.com?ref=kpgamingch

I do not own any of the photos in this post. All credits goes to:

• Splinterlands
• Peakmonsters
• Canva
• Giphy