Summoner's Week: Grandmaster Rathe

^{Edited in Canva Pro.}

^{The tips and possible advises in this article are designed for Silver League, in which I am in right now.}

Introduction

A legendary summoner from Life Splinter that has a lot of compatibility with other monsters. Grandmaster Rathe is included in the airdrop given when you bought a number of Chaos Legion cards before. I am really disappointed that I've recently took a liking to him after the airdrop was awarded.

However, even if you cannot get him from the airdrops anymore, you can still buy Grandmaster Rathe in the Splinterlands market and even rent him for you to try.

^{Edited in Canva Pro.}

Grandmaster Rathe is a Legendary summoner from Life Splinters. Legendary summoners are pretty efficient as you only need a level 2 to make full use of a max Silver team or low Gold team without any penalties.

^Abilities:

+1 Armor: Increase the team's armor by 1.

Void Armor: Allows armor to block magic damage before reducing their health.

Amplify: Increase damage of indirect damage such as Magic Reflect, Return Fire and Thorns by 1.

Pros

Very Strong When Pulled Off. - Grandmaster Rathe has a lot of compatibilities with different monsters that you can use. If your opponent focused on one area, and you focused to defend that, it's hard for you to lose.
Flexible Combos. - Pelacor Conjurer's Magic Reflect ability, Blinding Reflector's Magic Reflect ability, and Crystal Jaguar's Thorns ability are good examples of abusing Grandmaster Rathe's Amplify ability.
All-Around Abilities. - Whether you are facing a melee-focused, range-focused, or magic-focused team composition, Grandmaster Rathe's extra armor with Void Armor ability can block them all. It has good overall abilities that can be used at all times provided you have mana to get your whole build.

Cons

High Mana Cost.
- At 6 mana cost, it would be hard to use this summoner if you are playing at 20 mana cap or less. The 2 mana that you sacrifice by playing Grandmaster Rathe instead of General Sloan or other 4 mana summoners means an extra 1-2 monsters for your board. Unless it's very worth it in your eyes, only play this on medium to high mana cap battles.
Defensive Abilities.
- There's no offensive abilities or stat boosts that Grandmaster Rathe gives. That means you must play monsters that have original high damage such as Drybone Barbarian to make up for the damage difference or else you will just be overrun by offensive team such as Tarsa's melee-focused builds.
Legendary-oriented Builds.
- While this summoner is strong, it relies to a lot of legendary and epic monsters for the damage. This is because most common and rare monsters with good armor in Life Splinters belong to Epic and Legendary rarities.

^{Edited in Canva Pro.}

Rank	Rules of Combat	Description
	^{Armored Up}	Gives all monsters on the board +2 armor. With Grandmaster Rathe's Void Armor ability, any armor your team gain becomes Void Armor. This armor can block opponent's magic damage which is good against those kind of opponents. Life also have a lot of monsters that has Repair ability which makes this rule of combat a big plus for them.
	^{Wands Out}	Only monsters with magic damage type can be used during this battle. When everyone can all play monsters that uses magic damage, this summoner is probably the best. It gives everyone an armor that can block magic damage so you can use your Repair ability monsters as well.
	^{Briar Patch}	All monsters on the board gains the Thorns ability. Grandmaster Rathe also gives all allied monsters the Amplify ability that increases the indirect damage by 1. Indirect damage are damages given by Magic Reflect, Return Fire, and Thorns by 1. Since Briar Patch gives Thorns ability to all monsters, when opponent melee monsters attack, they get 3 Thorns damage instead of 2.

^{Edited in Canva Pro.}

Rank	Rules of Combat	Description
	^{Going the Distance}	Only monsters that have range attack can be used in this battle. In this rule of combat, while Grandmaster Rathe is useful, you can use a better summoner, General Sloan, which increases all of your range monster's damage by 1.
	^Unprotected	Any abilities or effects that increase armor or restores armor are disabled for this battle. This rule of combat directly disables two out of three Grandmaster Rathe's effects. Void Armor won't work under Unprotected rule of combat because there's no armor in the first place. The +1 armor also won't work since in this rule of combat, you are not allowed to add any armor to the monsters on the board.
	^{Even Stevens}	Only monsters with even mana cost are usable in this battle. The strongest combos of this card becomes unusable in this rule of combat. Uriel the Purifier and Truthspeaker both have odd mana and cannot be used.

^{Edited in Canva Pro.}

Rank	Rules of Combat	Description
	^{Uriel the Purifier}	Uriel the Purifier has good armor that is very compatible with Grandmaster Rathe's Void Armor ability. This makes him a good candidate for being a tank. At level 2, Uriel also gains Heal ability to restore his damaged health for more survivability.
	^Truthspeaker	As mentioned previously, with Grandmaster Rathe, all armor you gain becomes Void Armor. This means the Protect ability of Truthspeaker that gives +2 armor to your team can block magic damage as well. This makes it a good support monster to use with Grandmaster Rathe.
	^Shieldbearer	I have a very good idea for this monster. Recently, I've been losing a lot to Earth build because of Goblin Psychic's Affliction ability that removes the Heal and Tank Heal effects of my monsters. However, this ability cannot remove the effects of Repair. Here is where Shieldbearer comes to play. Shieldbearer has a decent amount of armor which is compatible with Grandmaster Rathe's Void Armor ability. In addition to this, he also has Taunt ability to protect your back row against attacks like Sneak, Snipe or Opportunity. Have Grandmaster Rathe as your summoner, Shieldbearer as the main tank and multiple monsters with Repair abilities. When the armor is restored by Repair, these armor will still retain the Void Armor ability allowing you to block any magic damage.

^{Edited in Canva Pro.}

^{Photo is from my Peakmonsters Account.}

Since there's a lot of good combinations for Grandmaster Rathe and this is only one of them. This lineup is a pincer build that attacks both side of the opponent's team while making sure that your main tank in the 1st position will survive.

Lineup

^{Grandmaster Rathe}

Legendary summoner that gives a lot of supportive abilities. He gives +1 armor to all allied monsters and adding Void Armor ability on top in order to have the armor block magic damage. He also have Amplify ability that increases damage of Magic Reflect, Return Fire and Thorns damage by 1.

^{Uriel the Purifier}

While the Recharge ability feels frustrating because he only hits once every other turn, you will be surprised as he hits very hard and one shotting a lot of monsters in the game. The high armor and Heal ability is also good for sustaining as he Recharge for that next attack.

^{Djinn Renova}

At level 3, she gains an extra damage to help fight through monsters with Void ability. The extra max health given by Strengthen also increases the heal of Uriel the Purifier while giving the rest of the team an extra point in survivability.

^{Adelade Brightwing}

One of the best legendary monsters for Life Splinter. She has Repair ability to complement Grandmaster Rathe, a Resurrect ability to give a monster the chance to fight back and Flying ability to evade other attacks.

^{Venari Crystalsmith}

Has Tank Heal ability to further support your main tank. At level 4, she gains an extra damage to allow her attacks pass through an opponent's Shield ability.

^{Dumacke Exile}

High damage with Sneak and an armor to deal with the opponent's back row.

^Uraeus

Low mana cost monster with Sneak and 2 damage. Uraeus with Dumacke Exile is enough to chip on the enemy's damage dealers.

^{Edited in Canva Pro.}

Since the rule of combat is Equalizer giving monsters the Opportunity ability that prioritizes opponents with low health, I decided to buff two monsters, Uriel the Purifier and Bila the Radiant by having a Martyr monster, Venari Marksrat in between them. Once Marksrat dies, Martyr activates improving their stats.

Bila The Radiant increases her health over time with Life Leech potentially surpassing Uriel the Purifier. Once this happened, The focus will be on Uriel the Purifier as Bila the Radiant stacks up more health.

^{> > Click here to view the full battle < <}

There's only a few out there that uses Grandmaster Rathe and he takes quite a lot of games to get used to. I'm currently enjoying the combos I get out from this summoner and his compatibility with other monsters.

Right now, along with Possibilus the Wise, Grandmaster Rathe is one of my main team that I've been using in Silver and even right now, I'm still finding out new ways to abuse this very strong underrated summoner.

This post is an entry for Splinterlands Social Media Contest.
Animated Banners and Dividers are edited in Canva Pro.
Other sources that I do not own are cited under their respective photos.
Some of the fonts used are from instafonts.io

_{If I seem to forget to cite other sources, this would be unintentional. Please leave it on the comments below to be added in the post. Thanks.}

If you're interested in playing the game, support me by registering using my referral link here

ℋ𝒶𝓋ℯ 𝒶 𝑔ℴℴ𝒹 𝒹𝒶𝓎!