Carrion Shade - Baiting Your Opponent

A carrion shade is a dark-winged bird that feeds off of the dead bodies of animals and people. They often flock to battlefields and dangerous parts of the wilderness where there are sure to be corpses. They travel in small groups and have no natural predators. Most people fear the carrion shades, though. For to see a group following you is to know your life is in danger. Tales whispered by the elder wise women claim that if you see a single carrion shade perched outside your home, then someone you love will die that night.

Hi all, welcome back again to my entry post for Splinterlands weekly battle challenge. This week we have Carrion Shade from Chaos Legion Death Element for the battle challenge. This tiny puny 1 mana bird is good for nothing, however I believe no matter how weak a monster is, Splinterlands' battle is a 6 monsters team, any monsters can be a good choice if they blend well into the team.

I dont know why, but everytime I see 1 mana monster, I feel like watching a whack a mole game. Other monsters are whacking them, but although they die, their team somehow doesn't look losing

This battle challenge was one of the hardest for me. I might have spent about 25% ECR in forcing my self seeking EQUALIZER Ruleset, because I thought having a gigantic Carrion Shade with 9 health point should be a fun to watch battle. However I couldn't get that ruleset, and my Death Summoner rent was over. In the end I didn't get the battle I wanted, but atleast I have got a few and chose this following battle for this week entry.

• SPREADING FURY ~ All Monsters have the Enrage ability.
• LOST MAGIC ~Monsters with Magic attack may not be used in battles.
• 44 MANA With this amount of Mana, having a 6 monsters team is a must.

With these rulesets, I should go with Life or Water element regarding my Death Summoner was expired and taken back to its owner. However I think I might have a shot with default level 1 summoner due to Lost Magic ruleset. Death monsters are awesome, most of their weakness are low health points and lack of healing abilities. Without any opponent magician, Death monsters would have more chance to survive.

So my Idea of Death Element Team was like this:

• I put Harklaw as my main tank, It has high health and a Shield ability. I would need Contessa -1 range attack to make Harklaw superior.
• I am thinking of making a team without any range or non attack. This will make any opponent which have Snipe ability nulled, and they will end uo shooting Harklaw
• With no Snipping opponent, I should take care my back from any sneakers. I can have Windeku or Crypt Bettle for backline guard.
• Due to SPREADING FURY ruleset, my attacks should be focused. Else I will make many opponent monsters enraged, it's the same as powering up them.

So here is my line:

Position	Card	Ability	Plan and Strategy
Summoner	Contessa L'Ament	-1 Range Attack	She was a better choice than Thaddius Brood due to LOST MAGIC ruleset. She would reduce all range attackers, and I believed it would support Harklaw a lot
Main Tank	Harklaw	Shield	I needed his massive health and Shield ability
Second	Carrion Shade	none	Our main actor for this week. A bait, incase opponent used heavy Opportunist such as Serpentine Spy or Deep Lurker, they would kill Carrion first. It would gave my main attackers an extra turn to hit more opponents before getting killed.
Third	Silent Sha-vi	Sneak	My main attackers. One of the best Sneak Attackers in Chaos Legion
Fourth	Sand Worm	Sneak	My main Attackers. I needed his 5 melee damage
Fifth	Dhampir Stalker	True Strike	I needed it's True Strike, In case opponent using Tank such as Serpent of Eld or Unicorn Mustang, when its enraged, the speed and dodge ability would make most monster unable to hit it
Last	Cursed Windeku	Thorn	This monster job was simple, to get hit by opponent's sneak attackers then died together with them

Disclaimer:

• I was kind of pushing my luck here. The best bait I could put was Crypt Beetle, and the remaining mana was enough for it. However I changed it to Carrion shade for the sake of this week battle challenge
• The reason I didn't include Disintegrator here because I needed a team that could kill fast due to SPREADING FURY ruleset. It's unwise to bring too many slow monsters and put idle monster more than one ( I already decided to set Cursed Windeku on backline)

HERE COMES THE BATTLE!!!

If you want to see the battle directly, you can see it directly here:
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_788e6a1a02501ebe5c517f46ce9b7aef&ref=dewabrata

It wass a Fire Element vs Death Element battle. It's a Silver League battle, however my opponent and I were using Bronze league level monsters. Overall I should be on a disadvantage position due to lower level monsters. This game would be decided based on how long my Harklaw could withstand their Living Lava attacks

Round 1

• The game started as both party buffing and debuffing their monsters and opponent's monsters.
• Opponent had a total 12 damages this round, and my team had a total 9 damages this round. Opponent has higher damage but their total health is lower.
• Their Sparks Pixies and Fire ELemental couldn't deliver any damage to my Harklaw, however a blast almost killed my Carrion Shade
• Their Serpentine Spy killed my Carrion Shade. He took the bait, wasting one of his attack.
• Their Tenyii Striker survived the first round. He could thank to Disintegrator for buffing down my sneak attackers.

Round 2

• Everything went based on my plan. Their Tenyii Striker almost killed my Cursed Windeku however he died first due to Thorns
• Their Serpentine Spy did the same, he managed to kill Cursed Windeku then joined Tenyii Striker, died due to Thorns
• My Sand Worm made a lucky hit, killing the Spark Pixies
• At this poin, I had got ridden their most powerful attack force, Tenyii Striker and Serpentine Spy. Meanwhile my Sand Worm and Silent Sha-vi were still active.

Round 3

• Round 3 started with all my monsters could deliver attacks, but they have 1 monster, disintegrator, who was in idle position.
• My Silent Sha-vi hurted their Fire Elemental, it got raged and increased its speed to 8. now It became new problem due to its speed.

Round 4

• After evading 4 attackes, finally their Fire Elemental got killed by my Sandworm lucky hit.

Round 5 and 6

Round 5 and Round 6 were just formalities, most of the actions were only exchanging damages, because after Living Lava got killed, We had 4 of my monster vs their Disintegrator. No chance of winning

The Key Winning Point are:

• Harklaw managed to hold on until the battle end. It's a Tank job to carry up its whole team. My strategy worked well, All my sneak attack team, Silent Sha-vi and Sand Worm, stayed alive until the end of the battle.
• Opponent main attack force died too soon without disrupting my strategy, all thanked to Carrion Shade and Cursed Windeku.

MY OPINIONS AND REVIEW

This is 1 mana monster, you can not expect this monster to become somewhat of a game changer. In chaos legion set, each Element has one 1 mana monsters like this, and each has a legendary 0 mana monsters. Let see the table below:

All of them have similarities, they don't grow well. When they reach level 3 they will get an ability, then their growth seems none then near their highest level they will grow 1 melee attack. So you should reconsider again if you want to invest heavily on them because due to cheap price, some might think of investing a lot on them to gain some Collection Power (CP) with affordable price.

Generally there are 4 situation when you can optimize 1 mana monsters in battle:

1. As a Bait. This battle challenge is the same reason why I use Carrion Shade. It has the lowest health point so of course opponent who has Opportunity ability will hit them first. For this purpose, Chaos Agent and Hardy Stonefish might be the best, one can dodge well, and the other has a shield.
2. Random Filler... sometime you put everything you need into the team, and you still have a mana leftover and an empty slot for monsters. In Low mana cap, sometime we just put in any small mana monsters in order to get 6 monsters team.
3. Extra attackers. During certain ruleset, such as little league, or Super Sneak, they can become a handy one too. In this case, Radiated Scorchers is the best because it has a Shatter ability.
4. Meat Wall. Sometime we need a meat wall, similar as bait, but meat wall is more likely in front or back, which opponent will definitely hit it. when Equalizer ruleset is on, Mycelic Morphoid and Gargoya Scrapper can become a monster, because they become the perfect wall with a Thorn ability or a Void ability.

in bronze league you often can see this formation which people like me put Carrion Shade in front of Cursed Windeku. The idea is to absorb opponent magic attack, keeping our Windeku on better condition than the opponent's Windeku.

Summary

Usually I list out the pros and cons... but this time I won't do that. Carrion Shade, the same as other 1 mana Chaos Legion monsters, is just an Extra, a Stand-in. We definitely need them, and I recommend to push their level up to level 3... but that's all

If you want to push their level more, it's up to you, but like I said above... just an extra

Thank you for visiting my weekly battle challenge, don't forget to leave your comments and feedback below. There are credits in this post for these people:

• splinterlands : for holding weekly battle challenge events
• carrieallen : for ultimate markdown tutorial
• flauwy : for wonderful divider art