The Amazing Legionnaire Alvar

Hello, Splinterfans!

This time I thought I'd write about a single card, a single monster, I have grown quite fond of. Even though this certain unit is a legendary one, I wasn't that much in awe when I first pulled it, in fact, I was a bit disappointed at his relatively weak attack strength and was struggling to come up with use cases for it.

However, battle after battle I have learned more and more ways to utilize its ability and stats with different rulesets and combinations. This monster is none other than Legionnaire Alvar. In this post, I will share some tips on how I use Alvar and how it can thrive from other monster's abilities as well as his own.

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Closer Look

First of all, let's take a quick look at ALVAR LEGIONNAIRE'S basic stats and ability:

• As I mentioned, for a tank unit Alvar's melee attack strength is somewhat weak compared to many other tank-like monsters.

• Also, his speed(2) and health(6) aren't on such a high level as we are used to in this mana cost category.

• What he is lacking in those areas, is being compensated for having a pretty damn strong armour of 8 hit points.

• The strong armour combined with his Void Armor ability is the key in making him such a powerful monster and a very, very good tank unit.

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Using The Void Armor

Here comes the fun part. Thanks to Void Armor, magic attacks made by the opponent will first reduce Alvar's armour before his health. This will make him an excellent choice against magic teams as his total base hit points will then be 14.

One of my basic strategies to drive all-magic teams crazy is to use the Resurrect ability to bring Alvar back to life. The best thing about doing so is of course the fact that Alvar comes back to the world of the living with full armour. Even though Alvar now has only 1 health point, the enemy will have to dismantle his armour all over again and obviously, this applies to magic as well thanks to the Void Armor.

There's another very interesting aspect to this that I just recently discovered. Now that Alvar is resurrected and has only 1 health point, the opponent Opportunity monster will now target him instead of some weaker back row monsters. This has actually saved some lives of important but weak monsters and bought valuable time as they are banging their heads against Alvar's armour.

The third ability that will help Alvar and the whole team is Repair. Using a well-placed unit with this ability will buy Alvar even more time and combined with the two previous strategies I mentioned will hopefully shatter the nerves of your opponent as Alvar just won't die!

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Almost Like Him

Alvar Legionnaire isn't the only one with this great ability and I would like to compare him to IMPERIAL KNIGHT of the Life Splinter. One other reason for this comparison is that I just pulled this gold foil Imperial Knight from a daily chest and wanted to show it around. Gold Foil version has a little bit higher stats but these on the left show it as a level one monster.

While the armour effect isn't so strong with Imperial Knight, it has a bit more health and costs less mana. That leaves more mana to use for other monsters and is something I always fancy but we must take note that the Knight can only be used with Life while Alvar, being a Neutral monster, fits with any Splinter.

This will obviously make Alvar much more useful as it can be squeezed in whenever there is a Born Again ability in play for example.

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Alvar In Action

Speaking of examples, I do have a battle to demonstrate the greatness of Alvar! You can check it out HERE or/and continue reading my analysis of the battle.

Besides Alvar, I had chosen "the usual suspects" of my Water Splinter deck including Djinn Oshannus, Riverboat Captain, River Hellondale, and Nerissa Tridawn - all very powerful magic monsters thanks Alric Stormbringers +1 magic buff. They will all do some serious damage if Alvar can hold as I'm planning to.

I was up against Possibilus The Wise, a powerful legendary summoner with a quite strong team as well. Alvar is an excellent choice against teams that contain mixed attack-style monsters. In this case, we have both melee and magic ones and all will be equal in the eyes of Alvar Legionnaire and treated as the same.

In this 42-mana battle we had two rulesets: Armored Up and Broken Arrows. The first one will of course underline the importance of Alvar's ability since there is now more armour for the opponent's magic units to penetrate.

ROUND 1

In the first round, the enemy monsters got through Alvar's armour but the cost was high - they lost their tank, the Diemonshark.

ROUND 2

When the second one began, it was their Coastal Sentry who used its Double Strike ability and managed to kill the beloved Alvar. Fortunately, River Hellondale was there to resurrect him as I had planned and Alvar came back with a full 10 hit points armour.

Pretty soon after that their Deeplurker unit attacked Alvar using its Opportunity ability. Alvar was now the monster with the least health and Deeplurker would have otherwise targeted Riverboat Captain who was unprotected. So much better this way and a great example of how a resurrected Alvar is so useful.

ROUND 3

Alvar still had 5 armour and 1 health as he was facing the Deeplurker. The rest of the opponent team seemed weak while I still had my other monsters healthy and clean.

Pretty fast our team started to take out their units one by one and even though they still managed to perform attacks, the resurrected Alvar stayed alive with a single health point left.

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Conclusion

Alvar Legionnaire is an amazing all-around tank unit. If you are unsure about your opponent's lineup, Alvar is a solid choice since he is so good against mixed teams. He is also a very good pick against all-magic teams if he is supported with Repair or Resurrect abilities.

I am actually quite surprised that I don't see my opponent's using him more often but then again, better for me, I wouldn't really want to against that guy. Currently, Alvar costs $1.69 on the Splinterlands market which is a very good price in my opinion. Also, if you wish to start upgrading him, he will learn some crazy good abilities such as Giant Killer, Demoralize, and Deathblow making him insanely good.

That's all, thank you for reading!