Thumbnail for the weekly challenge provided by @splinterlands
Carrion Shade is featured this time in the weekly battle challenge hosted by 
It's a Common Death Monster from the Chaos Legion set. Right now I don't have a Gold Foil for this one yet. My regular foil is currently at level 3, which looks like this.
At level 1 and 2 it doesn't have any abilities. It gains the Flying ability at level 3. So it's definitely important to get it leveled at least to 3 to gain some chance to dodge attacks. At level 5 its Speed increases to 3, at level 7 its Attack to 2 and at level 10 it has 3 Health. No new abilities are gained.
The battle I want to share for this week's challenge is one where I used Contessa L'ament against Quix the Devious. Here is a screenshot of the lineup.
Here is the link to the battle: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_001b63594f5e220585fa6c01f2d48cd2&ref=athunderstruck
In this battle all of the Elements were available with a Mana Cap of 15. There were two rules:
All elements were available, but Monsters with Magic attack could not be used. The lower the Speed the better for this ruleset. I decided that I wanted to reduce the attack of my opponents. With low mana it's usually better to reduce the Melee attack, but General Sloan can use a few low Mana and low Speed Monsters. So I ultimately decided to go with Contessa L'ament to reduce my opponents Ranged Attack instead of using Zintar Mortalis or Camila Sungazer to reduce the Melee Attack.
I decided to put the Furious Chicken in the front, with 1 Speed it might be able to get an attack off and then tank a hit. I brought the Haunted Spirit as the main tank with low Speed and self heal. Then I placed Shadowy Presence in case my opponent would bring a Monster with the Snipe ability. If it'd come in the first position it would also be able to tank a few hits while my Ranged Attackers could still deal some damage.
I've put Haunted Spider up next, with low mana and low speed I wanted to bring it as its Poison Ability could help out quite well with dealing more damage. Then the Halfling Alchemist, also low Speed and the Halving ability could render my opponents tank quite weak. I placed the Carrion Shade in the back in case my opponent would bring Monsters with the Sneak ability. Thanks to the Reverse Speed ruleset and its Flying ability it could have a good chance to evade attacks.
Well that's a bit of a yes and no 😅 I was having a dilemma between reducing my opponents Ranged Attack or Melee Attack. Usually Melee is the better choice with this low mana, but General Sloan could be played effectively too. When I looked at my opponents lineup with only Melee Attackers, I realised I made the wrong Summoner choice. As the debuffs from my Summoner didn't do anything. My opponent decided to use Quix the Devious though. It decreased my Haunted Spider's Ranged Attack, but that Speed debuff actually helped me due to the Reverse Speed ruleset.
That Speed Debuff made sure that my Halfling Alchemist and Haunted Spider would go before their Djinn Chawala. Making its Melee Attack go down to 1 and the Haunted Spider landed a Poison quickly. My Furious Chicken managed to get an attack off first, taking down 1 Armor, but then immediately dying to Thorns.
My opponent did bring a Sneak ability monster, and my Carrion Shade with the low Speed and Flying was able to dodge that first hit! So this placement was definitely a successful pick. Unfortunately in round 2 it did get hit and immediately died due to its 2 Health and my opponents 2 Melee Attack. If I used Zantir or Camila, it could've taken this hit as the Uraeus would've only had 1 Melee Attack then.
The rest of my team dealt with the Djinn Chwala rather quickly though, thanks to the help of the additional damage from Poison. Once the Djinn Chwala was dead and my Haunted Spirit still alive, it went quickly to defeat the Uraeus too and win the fight.
It's kinda hard to say if I really like it or not as I've hardly ever played it in battle so far. So far I've probably only used it about a handful of times. Thanks to this weekly battle challenge I have looked into an opportunity to use it again this week.
In low mana battles, and especially in the Earthquake ruleset I think the card can really shine though. As it won't take the Earthquake damage and it can take a hit to protect the backline. A combination of the Earthquake and Reverse Speed rulesets with low Mana Cap seems to me like that would be its absolutely best moment to shine.
I had a dilemma between reducing my opponents Melee or Ranged Attack. Ultimately went for reducing Ranged, because General Sloan could shine in Reverse Speed and low mana with monsters like Halfling Alchemist and Xenith Archer. Choosing to reduce Ranged instead of Melee turned out to be a bad choice, as my opponent only brought Melee Attack Monsters.
Despite the wrong choice of Summoner I still won the fight. The placement of my Monsters was good. I found a great moment to use the Carrion Shade, and it successfully dodged an attack.
Thanks for reading my weekly battle challenge.
If you haven't signed up for Splinterlands yet and want to check it out, you can do so with my referral link at: https://splinterlands.com?ref=athunderstruck
