Strategy Chat: Carrion Shade - Dead Weight (Pun intended!) + Check out the video of the battle!

almost 4 years ago (Edited)

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Sometimes you just come across a card which isn't awesome, but it does everything you need it to do. For me, that card will usually be a very cheap shield, whose primary purpose is protecting your stronger assets in a battle. Join me in exploring one of the most significant card shields!

To do this, let's start with CARRION SHADE:

On it's surface, this is a pretty awesome card. And that awesomeness has a lot to do with it's mana cost. 1 mana - some would call that an absolute bargain! The low mana cost means that this card can be incredibly flexible in filling up teams, or providing a very solid shield in your team.

What this means is, if I put him as the last card on my team, he might absorb a SNEAK attack, that would otherwise start to hurt a stronger asset I'm 'shielding' with this card. Similarly, he could be 2nd in my line-up, and have a similar effect.

His attack is only 1 - this will be unlikely to hurt your opponent, so I think we can safely ignore that, although, if he was promoted to the tank position mid-round, he might get a hit off. But that's not his primary function.

What's better is his 2 Boots - this, paired with his flying ability, means he has the potential to dodge attacks from your opponent, making him potentially tricky to knock down. In that sense:

This guy is amazing!

My card is Level 4, and it is leveled so I can make use of it in in my Silver league battles, but I did want to check out it's complete stats, just for some perspective.

In the end, I became convinced on the merits of actually levelling this guy up. The FLYING ability he gets at Level 3 adds a lot of benefit to this guy's shielding. He's a really cheap CHAOS LEGION card, so there is no reason not to push him to that point at a minimum.

To celebrate the card, I decided to buy an additional card. There are currently 150,000 of this card in print, so it is a long way from being considered uncommon or rare, but - it is also a cheap card to push to Level 10 - and if you start combining lots of 400, that will certainly have the potential of lowering the print. It costs 4 cents per card, or 12.509 DEC and in return, you gain 5 card power. To me, that's a cheap way of growing my card power - anything less than 1 cent per 1 card power I consider solid. I won't combine this guy into my Lvl 4, I'll just let him sit there and hang out.

The next consideration is how to make is this card's FLYING ABILITY. Let's take a very quick look at what it means:

This FLYING symbol has a couple of considerations.
1 - It will make him harder to hit, and more likely to dodge.
2 - In an Earthquake battle, he has the ability to stay alive, while those without this symbol lose 2 health or armour per round.

This week, I thought I'd look for an EARTHQUAKE battle to give him a whirl.

So let's get to the EARTHQUAKE battle ruleset:

This ruleset is very interesting, and one you see often. The 'Earthquake' skillset is always interesting, and it tempted me to go into a flying line-up, which sometimes can be weak - however, having such a high mana count means that I will be able to play a very strong line-up. For this battle, my strategy is to keep is really simple. Just outlive my opponent by putting in a good defense, and waiting for the Earthquake ability to destroy my opponent's card.

To help me out, I put my DJINN CHWALA out the front. This is one of my go-to tanks in situations where I want to inflict damage on an opponent. Again, with the EARTHQUAKE ruleset, I value this guy because he has huge speed and he is able to both hit my opponent's tank with his melee attack, but then in turn inflict +2 thorn damage. By playing this guy out in front, it also means that if my opponent plays 1 mana cards like the CARRION SHADE, that as soon as they try and attack me, they end up killing themselves - if he has buried his key cards behind 'meat shields' the DJINN can quickly work to expose them.

My Backrow:

Looking at my backrow, you'll note that the mana limitations this week have meant my team has a lot of depth. I was happy to pay a higher mana price in order to meet my balance between aggression and defense.
46 Mana:

4 Mana for my DRAGON Summoner - this summoner is, in short, amazing for playing in the EARTHQUAKE skill set. He gives every one of your cards FLIGHT, which means you won't be taking 2 damage every round - across 6 cards, this is 12 damage - if your opponent takes 12 damage, and you don't - you've going to be well on your way to victory.

I then play the 7 mana Djinn Muirat. I like this guy for a few reasons as my off-tank. He is mighty enough to be a tank in his own right, so if he gets promoted, I'm not worried. His +2 Magic attack is epic, and will certainly hurt an opponent. But it's his magic void skill which is awesome here - if my opponent uses magic to drop my tank, he'll struggle to break my off-tank.

I follow this up with the 5 mana Magi of Chaos. His +2 magic is why I want him; you see, if my Djinn is playing +2 magic, and my Chaos is +2, I know that will hurt my opponent's tank to take at least 4 magic damage this round. Simple, eh?

I then play the 6 mana Magi Necrossi - a very good card, because he is also magic, but he has the SNIPE ability. This means he'll be starting to target my opponent's backrow, and ignoring their armour, can often mean 1 hit kills. In an Earthquake battle, he should speed up the deaths of the support cards my opponent plays.

Then comes the 9 mana worm. His role is damage. I want him belting the backline of my opponent with SNEAK, and - between him and the EARTHQUAKE, my opponent's backline should struggle.

Finally, I play the 1 mana CARRION SHADE. I put him in this position to be a shield - that's his role after all, being dead weight. If my opponent plays SNEAK, I want him wasting hits on this useless card, rather than starting work on my worm or Magi Necrossi.

This is how the battle gets underways:

Ok, let's have a look at how the battle went, have a look at this video. Trust me, it's short!

As you can see, this battle was on from the start. My opponent played a gold foil team with a lot of depth and it included some FLYING cards too. I was actually a little bit nervous. The reason for this was because my strategy was about attacking in a few directions. 3 of my cards focused on his tank, 1 on the back-line front, 1 on the back-line rear - and another card which didn't attack. I was concerned that I split my focus, rather than putting all my energy into dropping the tank.

At the end of round 1, you can see, the initial hits have taken a lot of armour from both sides, but my CARRION SHADE stands strong:

But then the EARTHQUAKE kicks in, and my opponent's position was weakened far more than me. At this point, I deserved to be confident, knowing my MAGIC VOID Djinn was moving to the tank position. It was going to help protect my rear cards, while the EARTHQUAKE took hold.

How did Round 3 start?

How did Round 4 start?

How did Round 5 start?

So what's the verdict?

CARRION SHADE is a very useful card; I had a 46 mana battle and played bang on 46. By only being 1 mana, I had so much flexibility to invest into my other cards.
He did what he was supposed to do, be my rear card. That's exactly what he did - he got lucky to stay alive in this battle, whereas I focused on a few places to hit, my opponent was targeting my tank each time.
I would definitely use him again, but I need a greater understanding of the DEATH splinter, it's my least used splinter - down there with LIFE. I have a leveled summoner and leveled cards, but I just need to invest more into figuring out the right strategy.
Yes, go buy yourself a CARRION SHADE, when he is removed from the starter set, his price will rocket.

Thanks for joining me, for another Splinter Chat! This blog was put together as part of Splinterlands' weekly 'Share-Your-Battle' challenge. Have you put yours together yet?
LordTimoty

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