The Kitty and the Elder - A Punishing Combination in Low Mana Games

The Contents of this Post

1. Introduction
2. The Byzantine Kitty
3. The Efreet Elder
4. The Kitty-Elder Synergy
5. Battle Examples
6. Concluding Remarks
7. Fun Fact
8. TLDR
9. Copyright
10. Not yet signed up for Splinterlands?

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Introduction

Hello all, I hope that you are doing well today. I've recently been enjoying a new combination of cards in low mana games. This combination consists of two cards. The Byzantine Kitty as the summoner and the Efreet Elder as the monster. I wanted to write this post to show why I like this combination and find it enjoyable, and to provide a suggestion to those struggling in the lower leagues. At the time of writing this post, I'm sitting around 2150 rating, but in Silver three since I tend to rent out most of my extra cards. Due to this, I play both the Byzantine Kitty and the Efreet Elder at level one.
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The Byzantine Kitty

The Byzantine Kitty, as shown above, is a legendary, dragon summoner from the Untamed Edition. From here on out, this card will be referred to as the Kitty.

As a legendary summoner the Kitty, at level one, allows the player to use level three common cards, level two rare cards, level two epic cards, and level one legendary cards. The max level for this card is level four. it costs seven mana to play.

For information on specific levels, a table has been included below. The first column refers to the Kitty's level, and the remaining columns refer to the max level of card that is playable at the common, rare, epic and legendary levels respectively.

Kitty Level	Common	Rare	Epic	Legendary
1	3	2	2	1
2	5	4	3	2
3	8	6	5	3
4	10	8	6	4

As seen on the card, the Kitty grants three effects. The first effect provided by the kitty is a +2 speed increase to all monsters on your side. Its second effect is to grant the True Strike ability to your team, which means that the monsters you've played cannot miss. The final effect the Kitty has is that it uses the tank heal ability at the start of each round. This means that it will heal the monster in the first slot.

The Kitty, however, is not a cheap card. As of posting this, the cheapest it can be bought for is around 400 USD. Although it is much cheaper to rent. Currently, I am renting mine for about 5.925 DEC/per day, something that I can easily make back in the Silver Leagues.

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The Efreet Elder

The Efreet Elder, which will be simply referred to as the Elder from here on out, is the second of two cards considered in this post. The Elder is a rare, fire monster from the Reward Edition.

As seen above, at level one, the Elder costs six mana to play. Before any modifiers are introduced, it deals one magic damage per attack and has three speed and eight health. Again, I have included a table for those interested in the Elder's stats at different levels.

Level	Damage	Speed	Health	Abilties
1	1	3	8	Last Stand (LS)
2	1	3	9	LS
3	1	4	9	LS
4	2	4	8	LS
5	2	4	9	LS
6	2	4	9	LS & Phase (P)
7	2	4	10	LS & P
8	3	4	10	LS & P

As indicated in the table above, the Elder gets two abilities. Last Stand and Phase. The Last Stand ability provides a very interesting effect. Monsters with this ability gain increased stats so long as they are the only monster on the team alive. This applies whether the monster is the only one that was played, or if everything else on the team was defeated. In this case, at level one, the Elder has its stats boosted to two magic damage, five speed and twelve health.

The second ability, Phase, allows for attacks to miss the monster. This uses the same calculation as the one used for melee or ranged attacks. This gives the Elder a chance to avoid taking damage from all attacks headed its way.

At the time of writing this post, the Elder costs around 0.224 DEC/day to rent or about $0.84 to buy.

The Kitty-Elder Synergy

Shown above, is the Elder in two different stages of a battle. The first is before any modifiers have been applied. The second is after Kitty's effects and the Elder's Last Stand ability have been applied. Overall, this is an increase of one magic damage, five speed and four health. This is three-speed higher than what the Elder would have if only the last stand effect is considered. It is important to remember that Kitty also provides healing. In this case, it will heal the Elder for a total of four health per round. In low mana games, this can be very hard to overcome as five damage must be done per round to make progress towards defeating it. Given the Elder's high speed, this can be a hard number to reach as misses can be common. It is important to note that certain rulesets prevent healing. In these situations, I would likely advise against playing this combination.

If your opponent plays a combination that can not die to or is unable to the Elder, you are likely to win in fatigue once the game hits around twenty.

Given the fact that the Kitty costs seven mana and the Elder costs six, the minimum mana available that is needed to play this combination is thirteen. It is important to remember, that the more mana available, the greater the likelihood that your opponent will be able to out damage your ability to heal. With that in mind, I'd recommend playing this combination in the thirteen to twenty mana range.

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Example Battles

To provide credibility to this post, I have provided example battles that show off this combination. Each of the images is a link that will take you to Splinterlands and provide a replay of the battle being discussed.

This first game was against an opponent who played an Earth splinter. Assuming that each attack was to hit, the total damage would only add up to four. This means that at the start of each round, the Elder would be back at full health. This battle highlights the difficulties in being able to out damage the Elder. The team the opponent played likely could have posed a threat had I played a different combination of cards.

This second game shows a battle against a dragon opponent; however, it could also be used to show a game against a death splinter as well. This game emphasizes the fact that, even when the opponent could potentially deal enough damage that the Elder is not restored to full health at the start of each round, all it takes is a miss or two for the damage to be irrelevant. Part of me wishes that my opponent in this game had played Thaddius Brood rather than Drake of Arnak so that I could highlight the ability of this combination to outlast opponents and win in fatigue if needed; however, not everything can go my way, so you will just have to take my word on this.

This third game highlights how even when the opponent is all but guaranteed to hit you, it is still quite difficult for them to overcome the high damage threshold needed to result in a loss of health from one round to the next.

This fourth game goes shows a battle against the high damage per round fire splinter. The opponent here has the potential to hit for up to seven damage per round, which would result in a net loss of three health from one round to the next. A single miss, however, means that no damage is sustained once the next round begins or the Elder starts the new round with more health than it began the last one with. To highlight the fact this combination is not unbeatable had this game had a reverse speed ruleset, the Elder would likely have been defeated.

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Concluding Remarks

The Kitty and the Elder provide an interesting combination of cards that can be played in low mana games. Although not unbeatable, these two cards create a strong team when played together as the opponent needs to be able to deal at minimum, a consistent five damage per round to lower the Elder's overall health This can be tricky given the Elder's high speed. If neither side can defeat the other, the Elder likely will outlive the opponent once fatigue is introduced

The excellent synergy between the two comes from the abilities they provide. These abilities lead to high speed, high health and the ability to heal in a very similar way to that of the more well-known Sacred Llama Mage and Kron the Undying combination. This combination is just for a different element and at a lower mana cost.

Of course, this combination has the added benefit of enjoyment value. It is always fun to watch a single monster decimate an opponent's team and end at full or near full health.

Although I could not say for sure how this combination would hold up at high levels and leagues, I can say that it works quite well at lower mana games in the Silver league given the fact that this is where I am playing at the moment.

If any has any questions or criticism please feel free to leave a comment and I can do my best to reply depending on my RC availability. I will, of course, respond to comments that warrant a response in the order that they were commented in, starting from the oldest and working my way forwards to the newest.

Connected with commenting, if you feel that you learned something new or got enjoyment from this, please feel free to share this with others who could also benefit or give a vote as that should increase the visibility of the post.

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Fun Fact

Only six monsters in the game have the Last Stand ability. The Elder is the only one who starts with it at level one.

The Sacred Llama Mage summoner does, however, grant this ability to any monsters it gets played with.

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TLDR

The Byzantine Kitty and Efreet Elder create a very strong synergy at low mana in most rulesets. When only these two cards are played, the Efreet Elder gets its stats boosted to a high level and is healed for four health at the start of each round. This can be very difficult to overcome with low mana and will result in a win more often than not.
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Copyright Notice

A post detailing how to access the card images can be found here: https://peakd.com/splinterlands/@splinterlands/splinterlands-card-images-by-level.

The images and names of the cards, as well as the names of the abilities detailed in this post are owned and open-sourced by Splinterlands.io.

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Not Yet Signed up for Splinterlands

On the off chance that you have not yet signed up for Splinterlands, feel free to use my referral link. I would, however, recommend using a link from someone you know if possible.

My referral link --> https://splinterlands.com?ref=luckbound