I hardly use it, but when it showed up, it became the chief cornerstone.

Good morning, warrior. This is @zusi78. The grind is getting tougher as the timer counts down, but remain focused — you have come too far to give up now. Wishing you strength and success in reaching your target by the end of the season.

In today’s epic battles, my own (not rented) Empusan Darkguard — the card I barely ever played — stepped up and carried the whole team. Opportunity after opportunity, it refused to stay in the shadows and became the cornerstone of victory.
Never underestimate what the Splinterlands meta can do with underappreciated cards like Empusan Darkguard.

Splinterlands is no walk in the park,but that's what amps up the excitement.A winning strategy weighs stats, abilities, rulesets, mana caps, and beyond. That's why you must factor them all into your deck building.Toss in strong cards to boost your setups, and push hard to rack up as many victories as possible! 🔥FEATURED CARDEmpusan Darkguard is a rare Earth card from the Escalation mini-set.It is built as a sturdy melee unit with solid frontline stats and a strong team-support identity. At base level, it has 9 mana, 3 melee attack, 5 armor, 6 health, and 3 speed.
The card can be upgraded to level 8, where its features like health can rise from 6 to 9, melee attack 3 to 5,and armor 5 to 6 as it levels up.

Card Key Abilities:The three powerful abilities are; Opportunity, Shadow Focus and Resurrect.

At level 1(Bronze),it has opportunity.Opportunity: Targets the enemy unit with the least t health.

At level 2(silver),it unlocks another powerful ability called Shadow Focus.
Shadow Focus:This activates only when the card is in the last position, granting Camouflage to itself and giving all other friendly cards +1 Attack Power plus Determination. That makes it a very tactical card: if you place it correctly, the whole team can gain offensive pressure and an anti-evasion effect.

At max level ( gold/diamond),it gains its final ability called Resurrect.Resurrect: What happens is that it resurrects an allied unit once with 1 health and 100% armor.All magic debuffs are removed,and all magic buffs are reapplied. Though resurrected units skip their turn.

Featured Battles:The total mana cost for this battle was 39 and you are to choose splinters from Earth,Death and Dragon elements.The rulesets are:

All units gain charge(can use melee attack from any position).
All units have reckless.
You can summon 1 wild unit.

This was a battle of blast versus thorns in reckless.And Empusan darkguard held his own.
Game over.Watch the replayThis another battle were he contributed immensely to the victory of my deck.Watch the replay.
Splinterlands is a fun game.If you haven’t joined yet, here’s my referral link to participate:
Join

Thank you for reading and watching my post. @zusi78 signing off.