Hello there.

Today I'll share my battle using the Spirit Hoarder. But first, I will share some of my thoughts regarding the monster. From my experience, I frequently use the Spirit Hoarder in my Bronze/Silver battles. This is because of its Triage ability and it is a Neutral Monster. It is a Neutral, Legendary, Chaos Legion card. At 1 BCX, it is a 3 cost monster with 1 Magic damage, 1 Speed, 0 Armor, and 3 HP.

Being a Neutral monster, it can be used in all teams as long as no Rulesets prevent it. Having Magic Damage, it is already pretty good, since it can ignore armor most of the time. Having the Triage ability makes it even better, and can be used in a lot of scenarios and teams. The cherry on top is that it only costs 3 mana, so it is very easy to squeeze it in a team even at low mana.

Spirit Hoarder is one of the few monsters with Triage at 1BCX, the other 2 are Summoners [Lilly Shieldpaw and Chanseus the Great], and the other monster is Mermaid Healer. Mermaid Healer doesn't have an attack at 1BCX.

Triage can be use with a lot of Taunt monsters at the back like Wave Brood and Mycelic Slipspawn. Spirit Hoarder can be used in damaging rulesets like Earthquake and Noxious fumes. The Triage can also deal with backline damage like Sneak, Snipe, Opportunity, and Scattershot. There are plenty more strategies where the Spirit Hoarder works perfectly.

Without further ado, let's get into the battle.

The Ruleset

This was a tournament battle, so it was a Bronze battle with Equal Opportunity, Holy Protection, and Heavy Hitters Rulesets. A 45 mana battle is a bit on the high end. I can think of a lot of different strategies for each summoner so I will try to counter as much as I can.

The normal team for Water is a lot of Melee monsters with good armor. For Earth, a Magic team with a Taunt at the back to split damage is the usual. For Life, a lot of Range attack is possible, or multiple Sneak attacks. For Death, they have a lot of options, but it will most likely be Melee attacks.

The Lineup

Card	Ability	Comments
	Decreases the Magic damage and HP of enemy monsters by 1	I want to lower magic damage, and kill my opponents faster
	Protect	I want to stack armor to protect myself from a lot of physical damage
	Triage	I placed a tank at the back and I want to keep it healthy with Triage
	Life Leech	I want magic damage, and since the damage to my team is split, it has enough time to grow.
	Double Strike	This is my main damage dealer. The Equal Opportunity ruleset makes the double strike very effective.
	Protect	Another Protect for me to stack Armor and protect my team
	Taunt	My main tank. I want to split the opponent's damage between my front and back, while also protecting my other backline units.

From the lineups I mentioned above, I saw that there were a lot of options. So I decided to be flexible and counter all of them as best I could. I used Thaddius Brood to weaken Magic damage, and used 2 Protect monsters to increase my armor and block a lot of physical damage. I then had two of my tankiest monsters in the front and back, with the back monster having Taunt to split their damage. I then use Spirit Hoarder to keep it healthy. I'm putting all my marbles on the Possessed Puppet, hoping that it can deal a lot of damage.

The Battle

Link to the Battle

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The Matchup

It's a good thing I was flexible. My opponent used a team that I was not expecting. Two high melee damage in the front, a lot of magic damage in the back, and a Martyr monster to increase their damage. It's a good thing I only have 1 Ranged monster, so Ilthain is not as effective against me.

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End of Round 1

So currently my strategy is working. My Night Ghoul is still healthy, and so is my Arkemis. I was able to kill their Martyr, but the Time Mage is low. If there's something I'm a bit afraid of, it's their 2 front Melee monsters that have high attack damage.

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End of Round 2

Their Drybone Barbarian has 6 attack, and the Corsair Bosun has 5, and both have 5 speed. My Arkemis and Night Ghould can both take 1 more hit each, and I'm hoping my Puppet doesn't miss too many attacks. My 2 Magic attacks are going to have a long time cutting down those two if I only rely on them. I am not expecting my Night Ghoul to get a hit in with this much speed difference.

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End of Round 3

My Night Ghoul missed its attack as expected, but I'm happy my Arkemis was able to hit its attack. The opponent's life totals are not looking to scary now, and I still have the Divine Protection to block a few more hits on my backline.

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End of Round 4 - 5

My Puppet missed both of its attacks in Round 4, but hit both in Round 5, my Ravenhood was able to hit both its attack and made full use of the armor, so I was able to kill the Drybone Barbarian in Round 4 and damage the Corsair Bosun. It will take a minimum 3 attacks to kill my Spirit Hoarder, and the Runemancer Atuat should be stuck on my Ravenhood, which will be healed by the Spirit Hoarder. This battle looks like it's in the bag.

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End of Round 6 - 7

I was able to kill the Corsair Bosun and damage Atuat. At this point in the battle I am sure to win. My Bonesmith has high HP, and my Puppet is still alive. It is just a matter of time before I win.

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End of the Battle

This is the reason why I like to play flexible and try to counter a lot of things. Even though my opponent had strong cards and a lot of damage, I was able to work around that by splitting their damage. This is why I favor Taunt monsters in the back, and healing them with Triage.

The Result

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Conclusion

I really like the changes that they did to tournaments to include Reward cards. The meta that I thought was stale, has been reinvented. There are a lot more options available so it is harder but also more fun. Before the changes I probably wouldn't have chosen Death because they lack damage. But with the Puppet, it provides a lot of the damage missing. If it is possible, try to split your opponent's damage with taunt, and you will see more wins in the future.