Riftwatchers Cards - Cabalist

Hello everyone! I'm entering the Splinterlands Social Media Challenge with a series of reviews for Riftwatcher cards. First, I'll talk about Riftwatcher cards in general, what I think about the mini set, and how it was treated. After that, I'll proceed to this post's card: Cabalist.

I think the Riftwatchers set is well designed, for a mini set. If this was a stand-alone set, there would be too many high mana cards and it wouldn't make for a very balanced set of cards for players to have. However, that's not the goal for this one. It's supposed to be played with Chaos Legion cards. It does that very well and provides alternatives and situational cards that can work better in certain rule sets and mana caps.

I'm not a big fan of most of the summoners in this set. Their abilities are just too weak for most situations. Ilthain is the exception. It is a fantastic summoner. I would have liked for these summoners to have cost 3 mana instead of 4. That way, we'd have 3 and 4 mana summoners within the Chaos Legion group of sets. That would give players more options and make these a little better in low-mana matches. Of course, Ilthain would have to be changed, maybe lose the +1 speed. There is one good thing about these summoners, though. Since they are epic, they have an advantage in the Bronze and Gold leagues. They can play rare cards 1 level higher than the other summoners. This fact makes these summoners a pretty good option for Silenced Summoners in Bronze and Gold. I don't like this, because it seems like an oversight that was accepted and became the norm, but it's a bit weird that epic summoners can play level 3 rares in Bronze and other rarities can't.

An interesting consequence of having summoners as the only epic monsters in the set is that it pushed cards that "feel" epic into rare. It's not about the power level. There are plenty of commons and rares that are way more powerful than many legendaries and epics. It's about the complexity of the card, which is reflected in the number and type of abilities it has. Pelacor Bandit is a good example of a good common card. It has 2 simple abilities: flying and sneak. It never gets any new abilities from leveling up. It's always a solid option for a 3 mana sneak monster. It just gets better stats. Looking at Riftwatchers commons, Septic Slime and Time Meddler could easily have been rare because they have more abilities, can some of them as they level up, and are a bit more complex. As for the rares, Tinderlock, Runic Skyclaw, and Queen of Crows, they all feel epic. If I had to guess just looking at the max level stats, I'd probably say they were epic or even legendary, for Tinderlock. Very few cards have Last Stand and only one other rare has it: Efreet Elder, which has only 1 more ability. We could even argue a few other of these rares could have been epic. What's so interesting about this, in terms of gameplay, is that we're able to use these pseudo-epic cards in the Rise of the Commons rule set.

Each pack was priced at $5 in SPS plus 1 voucher. Everything goes to the DAO, and not the team. This was a mistake, for several reasons. Pricing in SPS was not a great idea. Players are supposed to want to keep their SPS and stake it. There were 2 proposals to fix this by turning the price into 5000 DEC, plus the voucher, regardless of the DEC price. The first time it failed but, more recently, it passed. This isn't a flawless solution, because it punishes those who bought earlier and breaks a promise, but I think it was necessary. The other big flaw, in my opinion, is the price itself. Chaos Legion was already overpriced at $4 and these are even more expensive. I certainly hope we go down in price, in the future. Sadly, I don't see us going back to the $2 packs from the Untamed days, but $3 would be the sweet spot, for me.

Another thing I didn't like was that, soon after passing the Riftwatchers packs for DEC proposal, another proposal passed for burning Riftwatcher packs. This one passed simply because most of the biggest SPS holders had bought enough Riftwatcher packs and they just wanted the airdrops to come out. A way to prevent this type of exploit, in the future, is to not count packs burned for airdrops.

Let's talk about Cabalist now. This is a strong card that works well within the Death Splinter. Even at level 1, it pairs really well with Cursed Windeku, because it has Amplify. It gets better in Silver because it gets Giant Killer at level 3 and 3 attack at level 4. Giant Killer can be great, especially in magic attacks. You can even have the Giant Killer on this card in Bronze, if you use an epic summoner. However, it's at max gold level, level 6, that this monster becomes a beast. Demoralize can be a very powerful ability against certain teams. At max level, it gets 4 attack. Very good and still under 5 so it escapes Forcefield.

I have it at max level. I wouldn't say this is one of the most important cards to have in your collection, but it can be useful in many situations. If you play in Gold league or above, it's good to have one at level 6. If you play in Silver or below, you should consider this but there are likely other priorities.

Our teams are not quite the same, but they share some similarities. We both went with Quix and chose Death. I opted to go bigger on the Thorns strategy with Djinn Chwala in the front and Cursed Windeku in the back, as well as Amplify (having 2 monsters with Amplify is the same as having 1). Weirding Warrior's goal was to remove the armor from the enemy team while Cabalist's main appeal was the Demoralize and the 4 magic damage. I was hoping to hit a Thorns monster with Vruz in the second position. They went with Vruz in the first position for just 1 martyr buff but getting a certain quick death. They also had Demoralize on Disintegrator and Ravenwood Warden for more armor, negating my Weirding Warrior and also buffing with Inspire. My Vruz attacked their Disintegrator, got retaliated but dodged. Their Vruz died to Cabalist and my Cursed Windeku got poisoned. In round 2 I finished their Windeku but lost my Djinn. In round 3 things were not so even anymore. They lost Crypt Beetle and Uraeus having only Disintegrator and a Ravenwood Warden that couldn't attack. At this point it was over, Retaliate and/or misses wouldn't matter.

What do you all think about Cabalist? Do you have this card? If yes, what level? Have you fought against it? Let me know in the comments! Thank you for reading!!