This week's battle challenge involves the Silent Sha-vi! The Silent Sha-vi is a Death splinter Melee monster that is an excellent card due to its low mana cost and sneak ability. This card is especially strong in Silver Leagues and below.

Silent Sha-vi Highlights

The Silent Sha-vi is a must have card at the lower levels. It starts out with a great combination of power, speed, and health for a relatively low mana cost. Throw in the Sneak ability and it's easy to see why this card is a favorite of many.

Being a Chaos Legion Common card, it is very affordable to buy/rent so you will see this card often.

Icon	Ability Name	Description
	Sneak	Targets the last Monster on the enemy Team instead of the first Monster
	Cripple	Each time an enemy is hit by a Monster with Cripple it loses one max health
	Piercing	If Melee or Ranged attack damage is in excess of the target's Armor, the remainder will damage the target's Health

At Bronze league, the Silent Sha-vi can wreak havoc on the backline when leveled up to Level 3. It gains an additional attack power and has 4 speed. In Gold, it gains the Cripple Ability and in Diamond it gains Piercing. These are all great abilities to have at your disposal for only 5 mana!

So when do I use the Silent Sha-vi?

• Sneak can be used nearly anytime. It's best to have 2 Sneak attackers if possible because a backline unit with Armor will take a few turns to get through. Multiple "bait" monsters can be placed in the back to thwart a single Sneak attacker.
• Rulesets that encourage other types of attacks can be overridden by Sneak. You can be "sneaky" and attack the opponent where they aren't expecting it.
• When you suspect that the enemy will be bolstering their frontline with a ton of support monsters.

This Week's Featured Battle

In this week's featured battle, we have an Obsidian Summoner versus the Crypt Mancer in a poison battle!

Battle Ruleset

	Equal Opportunity	All Monsters have the Opportunity ability
	Noxious Fumes	All Monsters start the battle Poisoned
	27 Mana	This is considered a medium mana battle
	Active Splinters	All splinters are available

• Equal Opportunity
  • Bring out the Magic attackers!
  • Try to bait your opponent is possible
  • Use monster with multiple attacks if you have them
  • Armor can be great
• Noxious Fumes
  • Try to use monsters with immunity and PROTECT them
  • Self healing monsters can also be great assets, especially if they can attack from the backline
  • Depending on the mana, you may be able to simply outlast your opponent without much work on your end
  • Prioritize high health cards
• 27 Mana
  • This is a medium Mana battle so expect to see a full lineup of monsters

With Equal Opportunity, Magic gains a huge advantage. You can bypass your opponent's armor and get directly to their health. Since you're targeting the lowest health first, it's likely that you can score a few kills before your opponent can even respond!

However, Noxious Fumes throws a wrench in this plan. In this case, you want to prioritize a monster with Immunity. If they have high health also, then they won't be targeted by Opportunity attacks and can safely weather the storm by staying in the backline.

I went with the Crypt Mancer over Thaddius Brood because I wanted to have the Speed advantage. I know Thaddius Brood would have been a perfect nerf to a potential Magic attacker but in my mind, I would rather try to hit them first and bait their Magic attacks with low health, low mana cards.

Crypt Mancer also reduces health which can ruin your plans if you were expecting a monster to last 3 rounds of poison but actually only survives 2. Additionally, their Melee damage is reduced by 1 which will be big if/when the last 2 Immunity monsters face off.

Two easy to obtain Immunity monsters are Forgotten One (Fire) and Harklaw (Death) with the former being much easier to play (only needs a level 1 summoner).

Because of this, I went with a Sneak attacker. Sneak overrides the Equal Opportunity Ruleset and many people like to place their Forgotten One in the back where it can stay fresh and ready for battle until all of the other monsters have succumbed to Poison.

The Lineup

Position	Card Image	Card Name	Notes
Summoner		Crypt Mancer	Legendary Death summoner that grants a -1 Melee, -1 Speed, and -1 Health debuff to the enemy monsters
Pos 1 (tank)		Rift Wing	Sometimes it pays to have a high health tank with no attack abiility! The Scavenge ability will help with survivability and Backfire can provide some push back
Pos 2 (secondary tank/attacker)		Pelacor Deceiver	Excellent Chaos Legion card that has great speed and high health for only 5 mana. Perfect for this battle
Pos 3 (attacker)		Silent Sha-vi	Not the greatest amount of health but I really wanted to take down the armor of a potential Forgotten One
Pos 4 (attacker/main)		Harklaw	At Level 2, Harklaw gains Immunity and is perfect for Noxious Fumes rulesets. With Opportunity, it can also attack from here
Pos 5 (bait)		Furious Chicken	0 Mana, non attacking card that is purely used to draw enemy fire. When it dies, it'll also provide Riftwing with 1 more Health
Pos 6 (bait)		Corpse Fiend	This is the same as the Furious Chicken but with the ability to attack. For that reason, I placed it behind the Chicken so that they Chicken would be targeted first, giving me a possibility of sending an attack before dying

Let's Battle!

• My opponent did not play any Immunity monsters but they did go with the Magic approach. I suspect their strategy was to take out all of my monsters before theirs were killed by Poison
• My "bait" monsters did their job by taking on 2 powerful Magic attacks in Round 1. Not bad for 0 Mana spent!
• Ultimately, I had too much health and was able to get the win.

Did it work?

Yes! My backline was able to survive long enough for their strong Magic attacker to die from Poison.

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 Silent Sha-vi is an excellent card at every level. At only $0.11/BCX, it is extremely affordable and should be owned and leveled up by everyone!

Thanks for reading! I hope 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!