This week's battle challenge features the Soul Strangler! The Soul Strangler is a Death splinter Ranged monster that is an excellent card due to it's low mana cost and high attack power. You may have to be a little picky on when you use it but it definitely packs a heavy punch for minimal cost.

Soul Strangler Highlights

The Soul Strangler is one of my favorite cards in Silver League. At only 3 Mana, it can deal 3 damage from the backline. The speed is decent for Silver but the Health is quite low so it is susceptible to getting killed before it can deal damage.

It doesn't have any abilities until you get to the max level of 8 where it gains Poison.

Icon	Ability Name	Description
	Poison	Attacks have a chance to apply poison, which does automatic damage to the target at the beginning of each round after the poison is applied. The Poison ability is triggered 50% of the time. Poison does damage at the end of the turn and is not affected by shield or void

So when do I use the Soul Strangler?

• Low mana battles and Little League
• Equalizer is great since it'll get a huge boost
• Rulesets that limit Sneak such as Fog of War and to some extent, Keep Your Distance (No melee means you're less likely to face a Sneak attacker)
• Pair with Dark Ha'on which has Taunt. This will allow the Soul Strangler to be used with less concern about the low health
• Close Range is a decent one as well since it allows the Soul Strangler to attack from the first position. Since its health is so low, it'll likely die once it reaches the front but regardless, it's nice to be able to attack from there

This Week's Featured Battle

In this week's featured battle, we have Tyrus Palladium versus Thaddius Brood in a Non-melee Sniping showdown!

Battle Ruleset

	Target practice	All Ranged and Magic attack Monsters have the Snipe ability
	Keep Your Distance	Monsters with Melee attack may not be used in battles
	22 Mana	This is considered a low-medium mana battle
	Active Splinters	The Fire, Water, Life, and Death splinters are available

• Target Practice
  • Try to use a high health monster in position 2 that has no melee attack with some kind of Magic Reflect, Backfire, Void, or Return Fire Ability
  • Be aware of the placement of your backline non-melee monsters since they will be targeted by the enemy
  • Assuming you use non-melee monsters in your backline, your tank is much less likely to be hit by Magic and will instead be facing another melee monster. Thorns, Shield, Armor are all great for the tank.
• Keep Your Distance
  • Prioritize Magic monsters but be aware your opponent will do the same
  • Keep some Magic counters on hand such as Silence, Void, Void Armor, and Magic Reflect
  • Sneak is much less of a threat (although still possible) so low health can go in the back
• 22 Mana
  • This is a low-medium Mana battle so expect to see a lot of "weaker" monsters

In this battle, we have the interesting combination of Target Practice and Keep Your Distance. This means that with no melee attackers, nearly every attack will be directed towards the backline.

To me, this means I need to have a high health monster in position 2 to protect my backline. My tank will need to be a Magic attacker if I want to attack and the rest of my lineup needs to dish out some damage.

These rules encourage the use of Magic since Ranged attackers cannot do damage from the first position unless they have the Close Range ability. This means that unless my opponent has an Alric, the magic damage they put out isn't going to be insane but it will still be a threat.

Since I don't have an Alric, I went with Thaddius Brood to reduce my opponent's Magic attacks as well as their Health.

My next thought was to put my Riftwing in the backline since I want it to be targeted. It is also placed BEFORE my attackers so that they can be protected. I decided to go with a Magic attacker with Stun as a tank which might allow me to render their tank useless.

After the Riftwing, I placed two monster with the Life Leech Ability followed by my Soul Strangler. The Soul Strangler is my big damage dealer so I wanted to pad the front with Life Leech monsters in order to keep them alive longer.

The Lineup

Position	Card Image	Card Name	Notes
Summoner		Thaddius Brood	Rare Death summoner that grants a -1 Magic and -1 Health debuff to the enemy monsters
Pos 1 (tank)		Revealer	This card doesn't have a lot of health but knowing that it will only be targeted by the opposing tank, I took the risk. I figured Stun would be a major contributor
Pos 2 (meat shield)		Pelacor Deceiver	Excellent Chaos Legion card that great speed and high health for only 5 mana. Perfect for this battle
Pos 3 (backline tank)		Riftwing	Excellent Snipe target since it has Scavenge. It also has a decent chance of Evasion with good speed and Flying. Also, the Backfire ability is amazing
Pos 4 (attacker)		Venari Bonesmith	The Poison Ability is one of my favorites, especially as low mana. Life Leech will also help keep me alive if the Riftwing goes down
Pos 5 (attacker)		Life Sapper	Similar to the Venari Bonesmith but trade out the Poison for an extra Magic damage
Pos 6 (attacker)		Soul Strangler	Big damage for only 3 Mana! I kept him way back here where it will hopefully stay alive

Let's Battle!

• As suspected, my opponent went with Magic as their primary attack so Thaddius was a great nerf
• They used Tyrus Palladium which actually rendered my Soul Strangler useless in this battle
• I think they made a critical error by placing the Pelacor Conjurer in the first position which didn't allow it to be targeted by any Magic other than my tank
• The Life Leech really helped me stay alive. Otherwise, I would've been toast

Did it work?

Yes! I was able to nerf them enough to keep myself from dying. Poison was HUGE for me this battle.

I analyzed the battle with Splintertools and was given a 100% chance of winning the battle. That is always great to see!

Final Thoughts

The Soul Strangler is a cool card but requires very specific Rulesets, positioning, and complimentary monsters in order to be effective. However, it is only $0.11/BCX so it is very affordable to level up!

Thanks for reading! I hoped you enjoyed it!

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If you decide to use my referral link, I'll happily send you a few cards to help you get started!