First challenge of the week!
Theme and card of the week is Feral Spirit
Thoughts: Before the Chaos Legion update, this is a card/monster which I had thought was pretty decent to use in Life decks, for both low and medium mana requirements. It was especially useful when Silvershield Knight was part of the starter deck, it elevates Sneak/Reach/Opportunist cards, somewhat similar to what the current Water deck with Demented Shark is currently.
| Theme | Feral Spirit |
|---|---|
| Edition | Alpha/Beta |
| Rarity | Common |
| Element | Life |
| Attack | Melee |
| Abilities | Sneak |
Battle Rules
| Symbol | Effect |
|---|---|
 | No modification to the standard gameplay rules and mechanics. |
Mana cost: 25
Usable elements: All elements
Team Composition
Role: Summoner
The moment I saw the opponent's battle history of playing the typical Death deck with thorns, I figured I had to use General Sloan. I had to make use of ranged attacks in order to deal with the commonly used Cursed Windeku, hence the +1 ranged attack boost from General Sloan will prove to be critical.
Role: Tank
The first in position and a very useful pick for the type of deck I wanted to use. With the Taunt skill, it attracts enemies' attacks to itself, buying time for my glass cannon ranged damage dealers at the back.
Role: Healer
A decent card that will heal our essential tank whilst dealing a decent amount of damage at the same time. The heals buys extra time for the later damage dealers to wipe off the enemy's team before the tank falls.
Role: Backline Hitter
Our card for the week and also a card I tried to use to clear out the pesky hitters at the back of the opponent's team. With most of my cards hitting the frontline, I always try to include at least 1 Sneak/Snipe/Opportunist just in case to deal with any strong damage dealers at the back.
Role: Damage Dealer
A very strong damage dealer when coupled with General Sloan, dealing 6 damage in total in a round. Its low hit points would be it's negative, hence why the Shieldbearer with the Taunt skill would be essential in this case.
Play by play
> Round 1:
Start of the battle. My opponent, too, used up all 25 mana to put out Cursed Windeku (6), Riftwing (4), Silent Sha-vi (5), Undead Badger (2), Life Sapper (3) and a Chaos Agent (1) in corresponding order.
Feral Spirit, being the card with the highest speed in the battle, struck first and took out Chaos Agent quickly. This, however, gave Riftwing an extra hit point due to its ability *Scavenge*.
The whole lineup on the enemy team took a turn whittling down Shieldbearer's armour and a little of the HP before the rest of my team got to do anything. My team finally took action and finished off Cursed Windeku in a single turn, with most of the damage dealt by the Pelacor Arbalest. Even though a heal also came in to put Shieldbearer back to full HP, Windeku's thorns returned some melee damage, leaving Shieldbearer at 6 HP. This also brings Riftwing up a hitpoint due to a death on the field.
> Round 2:
Feral Spirit starts the round off again. In this battle, it seems that Feal Spirit would be maintaining Life Sapper's HP, preventing accumulated HP due to lifesteal. Again, the opponent team used all their attacks to hit Shieldbearer, yet they still could not take him out.
With Venari Crystalsmith and Pelacor Arbalest's ranged attacks, Riftwing is off the field. Shieldbearer, healed up, ended the round by hitting Silent Sha-vi once it came to the frontlines.
> Round 3:
After regulating Life Sapper's HP, the opponent just barely managed to knock out Shieldbearer by using up all their attacks. This left Venari Crystalsmith to take over the front lines, whilst being unable to attack. The final turn went to Pelacor Arbalest who eliminated Windeku, but unfortunately missed the second attack on Undead Badger.
> Round 4:
What's left was simple as despite the opponent's attacks, it was all for naught as Pelacor Arbalest took both out in one turn.
Strategy Talk
Since this was on standard battle rules, all I had to do was to look at the opponent's battle history for clues to win the battle.
Death decks was always relatively hard to play against. With Thaddius Blood the Summoner (-1 Magic Damage, -1 HP), it already half-defeats Earth deck users who typically uses magic. To add on, the commonly used Cursed Windeku with the *Thorns* ability poses some difficulty to most other decks who like to make use of melee monsters.
Since I saw the opponent's last played decks were a whole row of Death decks, I knew I had to look to using the Life deck coupled with General Sloan in order to win.
Feral Spirit had always been fun to use due to its relatively decent stats for a 3 mana card. It manages to outspeed most cards that have a similar mana cost. In this battle, it did not prove to be the best of use due to the opponent's choice of backline monsters. Removing Chaos Sapper and keeping Life Sapper at 2-3 HP was not very useful as both cards were not that much of a threat. If there were other ranged Death cards at the backline, Feral Spirit might have proved more worth.
To pull out more potential from Feral Spirit, it would be good to put down a Silvershield Knight who increases allies' melee attack. Coupled with Feral Spirit's Sneak and its speed, it could prove fatal to the opponent team.
Thanks for reading!
It was fun to revisit this card again as it was not in the Life deck meta for a while. We keep on going. Cheers.
Link to the battle: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_6df838f76daa2e06a2810280dbf79236&ref=tertius