The Next Splinterlands Contestant: Cerberus

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome back to 2pPressStart. I'm your host GiantKiller, and I'm back with another entry into the Splinterlands Weekly Battle Challenge. This week's challenger is the devilish doggo himself, the Cerberus!. Now, without further ado, headpats, or ear-scratches, let's throw this malicious mutt straight into the Arena.

The Challenger!

Before we get into this Contender's stats, let's judge this book by its cover. The Cerberus is clearly the direct result of some bean-counting wizard deciding that the best way to improve the efficiency of a guard dog is to increase its heads-to-paws ratio. Unfortunately, the end result turned out to be much, much less efficient. Now, every time it encounters another monster, ol' Cerberus here has to sniff its butt three times, instead of once.

In terms of gameplay, this very good boy is a Fire/Red rare from the Alpha/Beta sets, featuring (at first level): 2 Melee Damage, 3 Speed, 5 Health, and the Heal ability. These are very solid stats for a 4-mana creature, and healing is just the icing on the artisan doggy biscuit. However, since the Heal ability heals for a percentage of the creature's max HP, we likely won't be seeing huge heals out of this 5-health critter...

The Game Plan

...Or will we? Ordinarily, the Cerberus would get blown over by a stiff breeze in all but the tiniest-mana-pool of games (and, hopefully the 4-Mana Cap Rule). But, this week's theory is that Cerberus will do better if we can significantly boost its health through the Equalizer Rule. We'll also toss in our ridiculously OP buddy Yodin Zaku, who will increase Cerberus' health even further, and give him explosive doggy breath to boot. Beyond that, the general plan will be to select Yodin, put Cerberus out front for my tank, and then smack my face against the keyboard until some ranged shooters appear behind him. This big-brained strategy is usually enough to score a win in Gold II, even with my woefully under-leveled cards.

The Line Up

I ended up finding a beefy 44-Mana match, the kind where a lowly Cerberus typically wouldn't stand a chance. Luckily for Huckleberry Hound over here, this match came with the Equalizer and Poison Rules, making it perfect to test my theory. Yodin, angry at being pulled away from a nearby furry convention, begrudgingly led the team. Cerberus, as planned, went out front. He was followed up by a Sand Worm, who can provide massive blast damage - if it hits. Then came a Zalran Efreet and Cornealus, both of whom could keep themselves alive despite the Poison damage (through Life Leech and Healing, respectively). Moreover, the all-seeing eye's massive twelve(!) HP ensured everybody's life total would be huge, so we'd get great big heals out of Cerberus. My Snipers du jour, the Fire Beetle and Ferexia General, brought up the rear. They were ready, willing, and able to spread some burnin' love around the entire enemy lineup. I mean, why focus fire when you can just... burn everything with fire at the same time? In any event, all of this careful planning turned out to be completely unnecessary, as my opponent turned out to be a bot. Ugh. Anyhow, here's a Furry's-eye view of the battlefield just before the carnage began:

The Battle!

I triple dog dare you to watch the replay of the battle right here. Once again, everything went according to plan. The bot did happen upon an interesting combination of Goblin Mech and Grog. Had the mech fallen first, it would've been resurrected with all 6 armor intact, which can be fairly strong. Also Grog, who usually sports only one health, loves the equalizer rule even more than the Cerberus. However, that plan quickly fell apart when Grog got absolutely sniped and blast-damaged into oblivion. My opponent was completely out-gunned (he had zero flamethrowers to my one) and his back line crumbled quickly. The Cerberus' self-heals kept him topped off enough to survive not only the enemy team, but also the poison. In the end, only my Ferexian General was killed in this battle. At least he died the way he lived: choking on the smoke billowing from the flaming corpses of his foes.

Final Thoughts

Cerberus is a consummate badass in small-cap and 4-mana-or-less matches. It turns out that with the help of the Equalizer rule, and the right supporting cast, he can also punch above his weight class in higher-cap games. I'll probably be looking to pick up another couple of copies soon, to at least get him up to L2 (the cap for my L1 Yodin). Final rating 14/10, would pet carefully.

That's it for this week's Weekly Battle Challenge! What are your thoughts on the Cerberus? Does it have any hidden potential I've overlooked here? Got a great replay where this Devilish Dachshund carried your team to victory, or let you down in a big way? Let me know in the comments. If you liked this little adventure in bot-stomping, please leave me a comment, heart, like, thumbs-up, upvote, or free-tip, and consider following me for more Splinterlands and other blockchain gaming shenanigans in the future. Thank you kindly, and happy hunting!