Badger

The **Badger** is a  Tier 3 Pet, available in the **Turtle Pack**. When the Badger faints, it will deal a percentage of its attack to the pet in front of and behind it, regardless of what team they are on. levelling up the Badger increases the percentage of attack its ability will deal as damage.

## Strategy

The Badger has decent stats, but its ability can be self sabotaging.

However, if the Badger is placed at the back, it will only hurt your opponent's animals. This means that the Badger can turn losses into draws, if its ability knocks out the last animal.

The Badger synergizes incredibly well with  Honey. The  Bee will win a draw if on the last animal, and the Badger can draw losses if in the last spot. This creates an infamous combo: the Badger faints the last enemy then creates a Bee, turning what would otherwise be a loss into a win. During the late game,  Mushroom works better although the 1 damage probably won't amount too much. Still, it will against other Bees or Mushroom summoned Pets.

A more niche strategy is to use badgers to trigger hurt abilities. By pilling base stat badgers in front or behind of, say, a camel, you can make it give a permanent stat buff to the friend behind with minimal damage. However, this strategy isn't that great since it require you to roll lots of badgers and  Sleeping Pill and is in most cases worst than just using a  Leech, although it is somewhat useable in the Turtle pack.

A different strategy would be high attack badger in front of a  Mammoth with Mushroom *at the front of the team*. The main benefit to this strategy is that it has a higher potential to destroy a big enemy unit because players will often put their strongest units near to the front. Because the Mammoth's ability is triggered on fainting, it may be beneficial to use this strategy unless, of course, your mammoth is your main damage dealer. In the middle game, you can use an  Ant or a  Flamingo instead. Consider using any Pet whose health doesn't matter ( Deer, Monkey, etc.) behind a front position Badger, since it's attacks likely won't matter anyway. However, you still run the risk of your low attack pet fainting before it can soak up badger's attack, resulting in your badger destroying something important. To negate this, you can either put multiple weak pets behind your badger or have your badger hit a pet that summons something on faint. Alternatively, you can put an  Ox behind your badger. Make sure the ox already has  Melon (this can be accomplished by feeding a Sleeping Pill to any pet directly in front of the ox). This way, when the badger faints, it'll simply break the ox's melon armor while still allowing the ox to gain its melon armor back.

This all sounds good, but the Badger has significant problems. Firstly, if the Badger is killed at the start of battle by a sniper pet like  Hawk,  Dolphin, or  Crocodile, the result will be disastrous friendly fire. Secondly, it's very possible that the Badger's ability won't KO the last animal, or the opponent will have more than 1 remaining animal. Thirdly, while it can win losses, it's important to ask: If you had something better than a Badger, would you be losing in the first place?

## Version History

### 8th June 2023

* Changed the Badger's base stats to 6/3 from 5/3.
* Removed from the **Puppy Pack**.

### 5th May 2022

* Changed the Badger's base stats to 5/3 from 5/4.
* Changed the Badger's ability to "**Faint**: Deal 50%/100%/150% attack damage to adjacent pets." from: "**Faint**: Deal 100%/200%/300% attack damage to adjacent pets."

## Trivia

* Using a pill on a badger in a shop will cause the permanent demise of both your badger and the adjacent friends.
* A team with [Whale] [Badger] [Badger] [Badger] [Rat] will kill itself and then spawn a Rat for the other team before any attacks, making it possibly the worst team in the game.
* A Badger is one of the few Pets in the game that can one-shot a 50/50 Pet with melon armor. Others include 21+ attack Pets with peanut or a level 2 or higher Swordfish with 35+ attack.

## Gallery

The sprite of the BadgerThe classic sprite of the Badger