So I just tried Skullbeard finally … its worth noting that there won’t actually be skull matches made with his move, I don’t know if that’s intended or not but for balance reasons I would assume that it is. It creates skulls then explodes random gems without checking for matches.
Regardless… pretty good budget exploder at 11.
Same mechanics there like with shegra or giant slime. Only no convert on second part of the spell, but explosion.
Exploding 14 gems is nothing to sneeze at. I used him for a little bit yesterday and was pleasantly surprised.
Although without the double bonus from event it would only be 8-10 (depending on kingdoms and troop colors)
I have a feeling that will still be good. Right now I’m using him in a team of Johhny Bronze / Skullbeard / Kraken / Bonnie Rose and it really isn’t a challenge. He fills with only 11 mana and then it’s just fire, fill, fire, fill. Kraken does his thing, Bonnie Rose picks people off.
Try Nobend Brothers instead of Bonnie. The guaranteed extra turn makes them ideal for slipping in during a cycle.
I might try that, although it’s more of a novelty thing to pick up a couple maps here and there for the event. 
I tried with Pirate instead of Kraken. Water Link is nice, its another gold generator to max out Bonnie, the attack buff is enormous… also nets 4x Rogue and 3x Human bonuses, like that matters 
Of course with an exploder you sort of want to get all six colors in there.
I was getting the impression LilJonny is the weak link in there as well, easily causing more harm than good sometimes.
Yeah, I tried with and without Johnny. Of course, I’m in PVP against an endless stream of Wraith / Bone Dragon teams. He’s impervious, so I found trying to go without him just ended in a loss.
I found that the team just isn’t fast enough to stop BD casting, or defensively strong enough to handle that happening.
Yeah, it’s kind of a “pick your poison” thing. With a team like this, I tend to mana deny BD since I can take the skulls from Wraith without having to worry about Death Mark.
The problem with changing it out is that it might be possible to kill BD before he casts but it only takes one match of 3 skulls to mess everything up.
I really hate Wraith.
While the explode comes before skull matches are resolved, skull matches that still exist after the exlode get resolved before the board gets refilled and the gems fall into place aswell as after they have fallen into place. So it will be interesting to see if without the event bonus to his magic and less gems exploding the chance of actually causing skullmatches with his spell might increase.
Then again with just 5 skulls generated the chance for creating skull matches is rather small to begin with unless we get a way to reliably generate at least one map.
Huh, that’s a good point actually. Similar to BD making what is effectively too many skulls. Will have to see, then, yeah…
I don’t know if anyone else commented on Skullbeard’s lack of coordination but - there needs to be time between his create the skulls and firing off. I keep seeing 3 skull matches (and a 4th today) but the explosion occurs right after they lay down so they are not getting the full impact as they were matched before the explosion.
(I am watching the defense teams/AI). My troop should have died one of the rounds but because the explosion happens and the skull match didn’t - the damage was minimal.
I’ve seen at least couple time that Skullbeard did skull damage while exploding (I’ve tried to get a screenshot when that happened but always failed, lol). I think we will see that kind of act more often next week once boost from event gone because then he will exploding less gems (?).
Matches get resolved after the explosions but before remaining gems fall into place and the board gets refilled(if a match survived the explosions) , aswell as after the board is refilled.
Skullbeards spell already is very manaefficient, if it were to resolve skullmatches before the explosions take place in addition to the two times skullmatches are already resolved in his spell, his manacost would have to go up significantly.
Well he may have been last week with the bonuses, but I just PVPed three Mythic - fully traited Skullbeard teams and let me say PATHETIC.
6-10 points damage on 1 person. All because those 5 skulls are not allowed to go off before the explode.
No - he’s not magnificent - he’s whimpy compared to other Epics…(Say Rowanne or Cthyryzyx for example)
His damage is indeed pathetic, but i don’t think he was ever meant to be a damage dealer.
He is a budget exploder and as such he feeds your team with mana, and he is doing a great job at this. His manacost is very low and he is ready to fire in two matches or even a single 5-match, and generally feeds the team much more mana back than he costs to fire. Coincidental skull matches as rare as they are, are merely a bonus on top.
He will definitely have a place in several new teambuilds of mine in the future, i like the niche he fills as a bl/gr budget exploder.
Captain Skullbeard pairs well with the Leafstorm troop Aurai. Since the storms are turn based duration the way to maximize their effect is to create as many gems as you can, so an exploder will do that. With leafstorm up Skullbeard will fill himself, and match-4 more often.
I use him with Necrezza KoS combo. Nasty Damage by those two