SPLINTERLANDS | Is SHADOW SNITCH worth playing?

Hey guys, this is my entry to the Splinterlands weekly challenge featuring Shadow Snitch. We'll have some lore introduction, explanation of its abilities, comparing it with some other monsters, my personal opinion with it, and the sample battle I have with Shadow Snitch. Enjoy reading!

Monster Introduction

LORE

Shadow Snitches are created by the conjurers of the Chaos Legion. Weaving Death magic, they breathe life into beings made completely of darkness. The purpose of the Shadow Snitches is to be deployed into lands prior to the Chaos Legion's invasion. Moving from shadow to shadow, they are listeners and watchers, feeding information back to the Chaos Legion.

But once the invasion is complete, the Shadow Snitches still serve a purpose. They can locate and follow high-value targets, reporting back on movements to Chaos Legion leadership.

STATS & ABILITIES

Shadow Snitch Abilities:

Ability	Description, Usage and Counters
Reach	Allows the melee attack monster to attack in the 2nd position. In order to utilize this ability, you need to place monsters with this ability behind a tanky monster. They can act as your secondary tank as well. Melee monsters in the 2nd position can only be attack directly by using Opportunity (if they have the lowest HP) or Sneak (if no other monster at their back). They cannot be targeted by Snipe so they are safe as long as the monster at their front is standing strong. There are scenarios where you dont want to put monster with Reach ability, specially when your opponent has Thorns and Retaliate ability. Monsters with Thorns and Retaliate are usually place at the front to receive melee attacks.
Affliction	Attacks will have a chance to inflict affliction status to target monster, causing it to be unable to heal. This is a good counter to line-ups with a lot of healing abilities (Tank Heal and Heal). These can be easily countered using Cleanse ability. With the release of Chaos Legion, we have seen a lot of line-ups with double heal combination, Wood Nymph + Goblin Psychic from Earth, Crustacean King + Merdaali Guardian from Water, Divine Healer + Venari Crystalsmith from Life .Useless when there is "Healed Out" rule in the battle.
Dodge	Has an increase chance of evading melee and ranged attacks. Combined with high speed, Shadow Snitch has a higher chance of evading attacks except magic.

COMPARISON

Spineback Wolf, also from the Death Splinter, is one of the few monsters you can use to replace Shadow Snitch in your line-up. With max level, Spineback Wolf has 3 melee damage, 6 speed, 2 armor, 6 HP, Reach and Thorns ability for a 5 mana monster. If healing is not a concern and you can spare 1 more mana, I would go for Spineback Wolf instead of Shadow Snitch.

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Horny Toad, a neutral monster is also a good replacement for Shadow Snitch. At max level, it has 3 melee damage, 4 speed, 4 HP, a Reach and Poison ability. With only 3 mana requirement, it can be a better 2nd position monster for low mana matches. The poison helps also deal more damage to your enemy when triggered.

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Magma Troll, a Fire monster which has a similar stats and abilities with Shadow Snitch. It has a 4 mana requirement, a Reach and Affliction ability as well. With 4 melee damage, 4 speed and 5 HP at max level. Since it belongs to the other splinter type, it cannot be use as replacement for Shadow Snitch since the game only allows to use one Splinter at a time (except for Dragon and Neutral which can be use with other Splinters).

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Twilight Basilisk, a Dragon monster with a Reach and Stun ability. It has a 4 mana requirement, with a 3 melee damage, 4 speed, 2 armor and 5 HP at max level. When using a Dragon summoner, we can choose Death splinter as the secondary element to which we will build our line-up.

PERSONAL OPINION

Shadow Snitch is one of the few monster with attack (REACH), support (AFFLICTION) and defensive (DODGE) ability. With only 4 mana, it can fit well for any line-up and a viable tank when Little League rule is in effect.

Death is one of my favorite Splinter with Owster Rotwell as my main summoner. Personally, I have a very low usage of Shadow Snitch, with 1 out of 100 matches pick rate when using Death splinter.

For Silver league and below, Shadow Snitch is not a good option for 2nd position. Specially when fighing against a Death splinter line-up with Cursed Windeku (highly pick) as the tank, the damage dealt by Shadow Snitch is returned with the same or possibly higher damage from Thorns.

For Gold League and above, there is an increasse in pick rate for Shadow Snitch due to its Affliction ability.

FEATURED BATTLE

Link to my battle : https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_d60d7ba5e2ab672e41bb29a4b8733f8b&ref=jpleron

• LINE-UP

Summoner	Owster Rotwell	Provides Magic reflect ability to allied monsters. This is my favorite line-up to counter most Magic attack monsters
1st	Cursed Windeku	Cursed Windeku is a highly pick tank when using Death splinter. It has a Thorns ability which returns 2 melee damage when attacked by melee type monsters.
2nd	Shadow Snitch	As the secondary tank with Reach ability, it can attack the 1st position monster on the enemy team. This is a good strategy when focusing attacks to enemy tank. It also has a high HP which is good for absorbing damage, and reflecting it if in case its a magic damage.
3rd	Silent Sha-vi	Melee attack monster with Sneak ability. Good for taking down back-line monster.
4th	Venari Spellsmith	A neutral monster with Amplify ability to increase the damage dealt from Thorns, Magic Reflect and Return Fire. One of my favorite monster since my play style is more of countering opponents with Magic Reflect (Owster Rotwell), Thorns (Mylow Crowling), and Return Fire (Lir Deepswimmer) abilities. It also has the Dispel ability which removes any positive buffs from the target monster.
5th	Furious Chicken	Placing this on the last position make it a good bait for Sneak and Opportunity attack.

• BATTLE SUMMARY

With a 22 mana cap, a Rise of the Common rules (only common and rare monster can be use), and all splinters are available, I opted to use Death Splinter with the intent to counter Magic damage monster. In turns out that me and my opponent executed the same strategy. We have a similar line-up in terms of Summoner and the tank but differs on the back-line monster.

With the help of Amplify, I was able to deal more return damage both for Thorns and Magic Reflect. Even though my opponent's Cursed Windeku has a higher melee damage, I compensated it with an amplified damage from Thorns and Magic Reflect.

For using Shadow Snitch, as I mentioned earlier, one of the reason why I don't usually pick it is because of the Thorns ability from Cursed Windeku, a highly pick tank from Death splinter. Even though I have a 2 melee damage, it was returned with the same damage from Thorns. If I have a level 3 or lower Shadow Snitch, the 1 damage from Shadow Snitch will be return by 2 melee damage from Thorns. And there are a lot of monsters as well with Thorns, so for me this is not a good risk to take.

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