Why the Undead Minotaur is not a great tank?
The Undead Minotaur has melee attack and no fancy ability like opportunity, sneak or reach to attack from the safety of distance. Therefore it has to be used on the front line as a tank. Unfortunately it isn’t a good tank.
In order to be a good tank you need 2 qualities :
- Deal lot of melee damages
- Have lot of HP to withstand lot of damages
Let’s see how the Undead Minotaur performs again 3 other Death monsters :
- the Animated Corpse
- the Bone Golem
- the Undead Rexx.
It doesn't deal much damage
When it come to the ability to make damages, the Undead Minotaur can deal twice one damage, so 2 damage in total. This is as good as the Animated corpse, which is 2 mana cheaper. In comparison to the 5 damages of the Undead Rexx, the Minotaur is quite weak. If you can afford 3 mana extra I think that the Undead Rexx will always be a better choice of tank.
Moreover each attacks of the Undead Minotaur deal only one damage. If you opponent’s tank has the « Shield » ability, the Minotaur attacks become completely ineffective. And there are quite many tanks with shield ability. This weakness will be fixed only if you invest in a level 4 Minotaur, which will have 2 melee attack strength or if you get a Daria Dragonscale summoner.
It doesn’t have much HP
When you look at the HP/mana ratio, the Minotaur is bellow 1. The undead Rexx has a perfect ratio of 1 for 1 ; the Bone golem has a ratio of 1,14, and the Animated Corpse has an amazing ratio of 1.5.
So if you want a tank which withstands many damages to protect your long range monster, the Minotaur is not a good investment.
Does it get better with level up?
Levelling up the card will fix some of its limitations
HP/mana ratio reach 1 from the level 2.
The monster deal extra damage from the level 4 and is finally able to go through a shield.
From level 6 it will get the Retaliate ability, which is quite OP ability.
However levelling up your other death tanks might be a better investment :
-If you want hight mana/hp ratio the best is some level 2 animated corpse
-If you want to deal domage the Undead Rexx and Bone Golem can both get the trample ability, which can be devastating
When to use the Minotaur
So when can you use the Minotaur ?
As the Minotaur has a low HP count, I do not recommend to used it on the front line. Therefore I would use it only in a game where all melee monster can attack (either with Melee Mayhem or Super Sneak setup).
Like for example this game : https://steemmonsters.com/?p=battle&id=e66b7a836ccb88372578439635618dbb13607b9c
The setup was :
- 30 Mana cap
- Super sneaky
- No Healing
With 30 Mana I could line up all the tanks I have describe in this article. They are all sneaky so they can all deal damages. In addition to them I put Shadowy Presence at the tail. In a sneak game I’m expecting the tail to get lot of damages, and the Shadowy presence is a nice low cost way to protect it as it give 4 HP for 1 only one mana.
Things didn't go as expected, as my opponent didn’t align many melee monster, making my tail protection overkill. My Undead Rexx dead (for a second time I guess) on the round 2, making me loss my strongest unit, and moving the Minotaur to the front line :
The Minotaur died soon after and I barely made it to the 4th rounds…
Morale of the story, I don’t think that the Minotaur is a good card, and it kind of makes sense that it is a cheap card on the market.
Great rundown.
I do think this is way more of a support card for specific situations rather than a tank (which is what it appears to try to be at first glance).
Thanks for sharing!