The battle challenge monster this week is the Carrion Shade. It is a common card in the Death Splinter released with the Chaos Legion edition of cards. The monster is a tiny mana card at just one. At only level 3 it gains the Flying ability. For most matches it would best be used as opportunity fodder or in the rear to keep sneak attacks from attacking your more critical monsters.
I think that the card would only be worth purchasing if you plan on leveling it up to at least Level 3. Purchasing just one gold foil copy would get you a Level 3 which is what I plan on doing. The Flying ability reduces accuracy by 25 percent which is important for its purpose which most of the time is absorbing opponent’s attacks. At the low levels with a speed of 2 plus the Flying ability opponent attacks will have a 45 percent chance of missing. The specific case where it would be most useful would probably be a match with the ‘All Melee monsters can attack’ and the ‘Earthquake’ combined ruleset.
For this week’s battle, I decided to showcase a ‘Standard: No Modification to the gameplay’ ruleset with 22 mana allowed.
I of course chose the Death Splinter and used Thaddius Brood as my summoner. I went with the Cursed Windeku for my tank. I then placed three sneak attack monsters plus the Creeping Ooze to slow down my opponent’s attacks. Finally, I put my Carrion Shade in the last position.
The first thing I noticed was that my opponent chose the Death splinter just like me. In addition they used the same summoner and tank as me. But I feel like I have the advantage since I chose to focus most on sneak attacking my opponent and I also have the speed advantage because I put in a Creeping Ooze.
In the first round, with my speed advantage I was able to defeat 3 of my opponent’s monsters in the backfield before they could even attack. The only card I lost was my Carrion Shade in the very back. Now my opponent has only two cards remaining.
I won the battle near the end of the second round. I managed to win in only two rounds. The reasons being that my opponents backfield had mostly low health monsters that my sneak attack monsters went through very quickly and the two Cursed Windeku’s lowered each other’s health very quickly with hits and Thorns.
Overall, my strategy of focusing most on sneak attacking while lowering my opponents speed and health worked well. And the Carrion Shade ended up not really even being necessary for victory.
The Death Splinter already had a couple one mana cards, the Cursed Slimeball and Shadowy Presence. I think that the Shadowy Presence is one of the best 1 mana cards in the game and it has the highest health of any 1 mana card. With the addition of the Carrion Shade, the Death Splinter has a formidable group of 1 mana cards that can be useful for winning battles.
