This week the Share Your Battle challenge monster is the Shadow Snitch. It is a Death Splinter common Chaos Legion card with a mana cost of 4.
The card at all levels has the Reach ability. Melee Monsters with this ability can attack from the second position.
Back when I first started playing Splinterlands year ago, I would frequently use cards with the reach ability in my lineups. However, over time I have stopped using them.
The reason being that most of the time I prefer to pack in as many ranged or magic attack monsters as possible. If my strategy in a certain match is going to be sneak attacking the other team, I prefer to pack my lineup with sneak attack monsters. I simply use small mana non-attack monsters like the Furious Chicken to act as a buffer since the Reach attack monster has the benefit of acting as a secondary small tank behind the main tank.
For this week’s challenge, I have chosen to share a 26 mana match with a Standard: No modification to gameplay ruleset.
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_4845dbefe69dcecdc1fa7f44e44cc6aa&ref=ninjamike
For my lineup, I chose to put a Cursed Windeku in the first position. It has turned into my favorite Death Splinter tank with its Thorns and high health at only 6 mana. In second position I of course placed my Shadow Snitch. Behind the Shadow Snitch I placed a couple non-attack cards. I finished out my lineup with a couple of ranged attack monsters.
In the first round I defeated my opponents Tank. Now they have a non-attack monster with the 'Flying' ability in first position. Good thing I have a Ranged monster with the 'Can't Miss' ability.
In the second round, I defeated my opponents non-attack monster. One of my opponents Sneak attack monsters has moved into first position. However, my last monster has been defeated by my opponents sneak attack and they still have one more Sneak attack monster in the backfield.
In the previous round, my Shadow Snitch became the only attack monster that I have left. It defeated one of my opponents remaining monsters but still faces two more.
Both of our remaining attack monsters have 1 health remaining. My opponents monster has the speed advantage over mine. Fortunately for me Ranged attack monsters can not attack from the first position and so my Shadow Snitch won the game for me.
Overall the strategy of my lineup worked in this match. The Shadow Snitch's ability to attack from the second as well as first position turned out to be handy. I might have been able to achieve the same victory if I had put a Magic attack monster in second position instead. The Magic monster would have taken damage from my opponents Snipe monster but would have avoided the Thorns of my opponents tank.
I purchased a Shadow Snitch for the purposes of this week’s challenge. However, I do not think that it is a card I will use much if any going forward. For one thing to feel more confident using it I would have to upgrade it to level 4 where its Melee attack is increased to 2. This is because there is always the risk of facing a tank with the Armor ability.
At Level 4 or above, this would be a nice card to have in a ‘4 and under’ ruleset. It would be an amazing card to have in a ‘4 and under’ and ‘Reverse Speed' ruleset match. However, I don’t think I could justify spending the resources to invest in this card for use in just a couple rulesets.
