Monthly Reward Cards: Crafting Guide

In The Elder Scrolls Legends Monthly Reward Cards are difficult to acquire. TESL is a great free-to-play game and with enough time and energy you can almost get your entire collection for free. You can even play competitively on a budget, earning all your cards exclusively by spending in-game gold and no real money. For players being a little bit more impatient, real money is also an option, for most of the cards. However, this does not hold true for Monthly Rewards.

You can earn Monthly Reward Cards only by achieving certain ranks in competitive play “on the ladder” in a particular month. The reward will change every month. Thus, if you miss a month, the only option to acquire an older Monthly Reward Cards is by spending Soul Gems. When you spend Soul Gems to acquire a card, we call this “crafting”.

Craft Monthly Rewards Selectively

But which Monthly Reward Cards to craft? Which ones are really valuable? In the past, Bethesda published some really powerful Monthly Reward Cards. As of late, there appears to be a slight shift in this policy. More recent examples mainly provide synergy to somewhat “underplayed” deck archetypes. These cards provide less synergy with decks outside of that archetype and might therefore be less critical to own for players still completing there collection. Still, these cards are fun to explore and with new cards or mechanics their competitive strength might shift considerably. So please understand this article as a recommendation to what is successful today.

How to acquire Monthly Reward Cards?

To complete your collection of Monthly Reward cards, you basically need to do two things.

The first piece of advice is to play against humans in Ranked Play every months. This way, you will get to earn the current Monthly Reward card. Don’t be afraid, it’s really not as difficult as you might think. Based on your achievements, these awards work as follows:

• Get one copy of the Monthly Reward Card by getting to rank 9.
• Earn two copies of the Monthly Reward Card by achieving 5.
• Earn a full playset of three copies by achieving rank 1.

The second piece of advice is to play solo against the computer AI. For every win, you will earn 15 Soul Gems up to a maximum of 300 Soul Gems per day. An epic Monthly Reward Card costs 400 gems. This means, you will need to win 80 games to obtain a full playset of three copies. This might seem a lot, but because these AI games do not have a timer and you can start them on your commute or during lunch breaks and finish at a completely different time of the same day.

Crafting Guide – The Top 5

These Top 5 Monthly Reward Cards are really powerful. If you want to play some of the best decks in the game, you should own three copies of these. They are very versatile and work in a lot of different decks and deck archetypes.

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Dushnikh Yal Archer

Dushnikh Yal Archer is one of the few support removal options in the red Strength attribute. She is very versatile, as she comes with Guard and a ping effect. Dushnikh sees play in many decks in most eligible classes and Houses and finds use in aggro, midrange and control.

Sower of Revenge

Sower of Revenge is one of the top cards in the game for Aggro and Midrange Warrior and House Redoran decks. His Guard keyword protects you in aggro mirror matchups, his stats allow you to trade two for one, and he also deals 5 damage when his Last Gasp ability is triggered.

Black Hand Messenger

Black Hand Messenger is crucial for many Assassin or House Telvanni midrange or control decks. He is less often played in House Dagoth Decks. His ability to remove an early game creature and to gain life is already making him strong. But he is also a great Betray- or self-sacrifice-target and a great card to be fetched back from discard pile.

Ulfric’s Housecarl

Ulfric’s Housecarl has always been a staple choice for card draw in Aggro Crusader. His popularity dipped with the rise of Ash Berserker since the release of Houses of Morrowind. However, since Ash Berserker got nerfed in Balance Patch 2.5, many consider him to be the better option again.

Emperor’s Blade

Emperor’s Blade is frequently included in many Spellsword, Tribunal or Redoran decks to Guard a lane, and to combine fighting for the board with the option to gain some life.

Crafting Guide – The Should-Haves

Once you have the top 5, you can look at other legendary cards that help to explore more deck archeypes or to craft more Monthly Reward Cards. Most Monthly Reward Cards have been created to strengthen a certain theme or deck archetype. While this limits their use in it allows your to strengthen your decks following that particular theme or archetype.

Conjuration Tutor – Atronach, I Summon Thee

Conjuration Tutor is a a staple card for midrange or control Atronach decks. He summons a copy of any Atronach you summon to the other lane which provides such great value. If your collection already includes at least two copies of Temple Conjurer, Breton Conjurer, Mighty Conjurings or Supreme Atromancer you can use it to build very cool combos with Conjuration Tutor.

Dwemer Decks – Mechanical Ally and Steam Constructor

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Mechanical Ally and Steam Constructor are important to build good Dwemer decks. If you do not already have three copies of Halls of Dwemer, you can safely stay away from these two. However, if you want to build Dwemer deck, you will probably want to include at least one playset of these two – probably both. Dwemer decks can be build in any colour and the decks are very explosive and can get you very good win rates on the ladder.

Magicka Ramp

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Blackwood Distiller, Hist Grove and Pure-Blood Elder are options for Magicka Ramp control decks. Magicka ramp decks attempt to control the board and to increase your available magicka pool during this process, so that bigger threats can be played earlier.

Blackwood Distiller can be used actively to control the board. He will ramp your max magicka when he slays, and give you three additional magicka in the turn that he pilfers.

Hist Grove is a support that increases your max. magicka by one. It relies on other magicka ramp cards like Tree Minder, Spine of Eldersblood or Thorn Histmage to be successful. When you reach 15 magicka, Hist Grove will summon two 8/8 dragons which will usually allow to win the game.

Pure-Blood Elder is a strong finisher who will double any max magicka you gain. At 16 magicka, he doubles in power and health and you can usually use this for a big finishing swing. Magicka Ramp decks have been dominating the meta for a long time but see less play in more recent days.

Altmer Dragonknight

Altmer Dragonknight is a card that works well in Mage and House Tribunal decks that are running a good mix of actions or action tutors. The Dragonknight can give you a lot of value over multiple turns if your opponent fails to remove him and is certainly a target for your opponent’s removal spells.

Crafting Guide – What about the rest?

As a new player of The Elder Scrolls Legends, the other Monthly Reward Cards are rather optional. As you play the game longer and longer and your collection grows, you can certainly expand your collection of Monthly Rewards. However, unless new cards with better synergies are released, you can easily focus your energy first on completing the story expansions or potentially acquiring some more legendaries from the regular expansion sets. Note, that acquiring legendaries through Soul Crafting is not optimal when you are planning to optimise use of your soul gems. However, it might get you to more viable, powerful decks a little bit earlier. Our New Starter Guide provides more information on crafting the right Epics and Legendaries.