Sneak Attack - Using Death in Battle!

This week's Share Your Battle challenge features Magi Necrosi! Magi Necrosi is not in our battle for this week, but in honor of the occasion I would like to make a few comments about Magi Necrosi before moving on to the battle. The death splinter has plenty of sneaky indirect attackers, and Magi Necrosi is an excellent example of one of them. Magi Necrosi is very reasonably costed at just 6 mana - that is a fair price for the 2 magic attack (at level 1) alone. But on top of that 2 magic attack, Necrosi has a solid stat line of 4 speed and 4 health, giving it a degree of evasion and sturdiness that many magic attackers lack. Finally, Magi Necrosi comes with some solid abilities - with both Snipe and Camoflage, Magi Necrosi is perfectly suited to hide in your back line and pick off your opponent's weaker monsters one by one.

Alas, as I mentioned earlier, Magi Necrosi is not in the battle I will be sharing this week. Instead we will be taking a look at another lineup which showcases Death's strength at another type of indirect attack - Necrosi is not the only game in town!

If you wanted to jump right to the action, the Battle Link is right here. Want to hear some more about the lineup? Read on further!

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First up: the ruleset. Death excels in low to medium mana cap battles, and 21 mana certainly fits into that category. Death also has plenty of solid odd mana cards while many of the better Earth cards in my collection are even and therefore ineligible for this fight, making our splinter for this battle a relatively easy decision.

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Thaddius Brood is a great all-around summoner. His -1 health debuff will be helpful against any monsters with more than a single health point. And if my opponent happens to use Obsidian in this battle then Thaddius' magic attack debuff will negate their summoner bonus, allowing my monsters to fight an unbuffed enemy team while also having the advantage of having more health.

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We'll start off the lineup with our tanks, which in a low mana battle will be prioritizing cost efficiency. Pelacor Deceiver gives us a very reasonable amount of bulk for its cost - 5 mana gets us a beefy 8 health, paired with 2 attack and decent speed, not to mention Flying for a bit of evasion. Chaos Agent doesn't attack at all, but could potentially buy the back line a little more time as an emergency tank thanks to Dodge.

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The middle of my team had some support and a bit of damage. Spirit Hoarder's Triage could potentially help out my back line monster, and Soul Strangler is another cost effective attacker, giving us 2 ranged attack for the bargain price of 3 mana.

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The final monster of my team (and the unofficial star of the week with its Sneak-y damage!) was Silent Sha-vi. Silent Sha-vi is a great indirect attacker with Sneak, hitting hard with its 3 melee damage per turn. My plan was for Pelacor Deceiver to hold the front line while Silent Sha-vi took apart the enemy lineup from the back, with some potential Spirit Hoarder healing protecting Sha-vi from any opposing Sneak attacks.

With the lineup set, it's off into battle! When I see the selected teams I am not sure what to think. On one hand, my summoner selection is perfect - my opponent has gone with Obsidian, and my team has clearly gotten the better of the overall summoner buffs. On the other hand, there is a lot more damage on the enemy team than I was hoping to see, and none of it will be getting blocked by my Silent Sha-vi as I was hoping for.

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In the first couple of rounds, plenty of blows are exchanged all around. Silent Sha-vi does an excellent job of taking down a couple of monsters in my opponent's back line. It is a war of attrition though, as the front tanks on both teams get knocked out of the fight as well.

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It actually ended up taking a couple more rounds and turned out to be much too close for comfort, but by the beginning of round 5 the outcome of the battle was clear - Silent Sha-vi was able to pull out the win! And again, if you wanted to see the whole battle for yourself, you can see it right here.

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Silent Sha-vi was amazing in this fight, singlehandedly taking down the majority of the opposing backline monsters. In hindsight I would have been better off placing the Soul Strangler all the way at the back, but without knowing whether my opponent would have Sneak monsters it was hard to say for sure before the battle. Slightly suboptimal monster ordering aside, my strategy of picking apart my opponent's team with Sneak damage while me other monsters held the front worked out well, and was enough for the victory. Silent Sha-vi (and the Death splinter!) have a solid place in any deck, and will remain a mainstay of my teams in battle in the future.

Thank you so much for reading all the way to the end. Interested in seeing some more of my writing in the future? Be sure to give me a follow! In the meantime, if you'd like to see some of my recent posts:

• Splinterlands Economics: Causation - A look at causation, and how we can apply it to Splinterlands!

• Lacks Dax - Using Life in Battle! - Last week's battle challenge, featuring the Life splinter!

• Splinterlands Economics: Ceteris Paribus - An introduction to the concept of Ceteris Paribus, and how we can apply it to Splinterlands!

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Thinking about giving Splinterlands a try but haven't signed up yet? Feel free to use my referral link: https://splinterlands.com?ref=bteim, and be sure to reach out to me if you have any questions!

All images used in this article are open source and obtained from Pixabay or Unsplash. Thumbnails borrowed with permission from the Splinterlands team or made in Canva.