Byzantine Kitty - most universal summoner for Silver league?

Howdy fellows,

Welcome to my the next episode of my Splinterlands diary. In this post, I will share some of my thoughts about legendary summoner Byzantine Kitty and it’s utility for Silver league. Hope you’ll enjoy it.

Since I am learning and trying different strategies for being competitive in Silver league, I discovered that after achieving certain rating, it’s really difficult to progress without usage of heavy canons, which usually means that harnessing top-notch cards (in terms of rarity and level) is a must to beat the enemy. Beause my deck is mainly Life plus Water as backup, and I do not own any legendary summoner yet, I initially was using rented Chanseus as my first-choice summoner for high mana cap battles, in combination with Shieldbearer and tank heal cards such as Divine Healer and/or Venari Crystalsmith. This was working pretty nice but then I got Dragon daily quest and I wasn’t able to win single match using Drake from ghost deck.

Thanks to rentals, I just rented 2 lvl Byzantine Kitty worth around 2,5k USD for such low amount as around 120 DEC per day and I started to combine it with my leveled Life cards. The output was really awesome, I nailed through daily so easily, therefore I utilized Kitty further and discovered that it works pretty decent with all the splinters nevertheless if your main attack will be magic, melee or distance.

Now Kitty is my number one for rental choices and yes, I cannot really image to live without this cute,flying, death-bringing cat. Here are my few favorite card combos which I tested so far in the battlefield and I saw extraordinary performance and of them in the Silver league (card levels in brackets):

• Kitty (2) + Kralus (2)

• Kitty (2) + Oshannus (1 or 2)

• Kitty (2) + Phantom of the Abyss (1 or 2)

• Kitty (2) + Sandworm (5) in the backline

• Kitty (2) + Dragon Jumper (2) in the backline

• Kitty (2)+ Spirit of the Forest (1 or 2) - this one is really interesting, even if Spirit will remain last card, it still has chance to win due to fatigue mechanism, flying skill as well as very high speed, making this monster pretty unable to be hit by low-speed meele and dist monsters. Check out those battle examples to see what I mean:

  https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_b1892dc0b57256fe611b0f5b2dcbd049

  https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_5f0ba7b77ac6733af6f7d7f8c2caee92

• Kitty (2) + Flesh Golem (although here Llama would probaly offer better synergy)

Generally speaking, the biggest synergy occurs with healing, sneak/opportunity capabilities and overall speed and damage of card.

Byzantine Kitty Pros:

• When using kitty, you are avoiding miss hits even if oponent's card has flying, dodge and high speed stat.
• Works well with all kind of elements, attack type and rule sets
• Gives you option to combine dragons cards with your favourite element in single battle
• Makes slow monsters more useful and fast monsters even more powerful
• Not occuring freqently in opponent's deck (at least in my battles) - people do not really know how to setup counter deck against Kitty
• Relatively cheap rental for Silver league

Byzantine Kitty Cons:

• Not really usable in low mana fights, you would need alternative low-mana summoners anyway
• Must be combined with leveled-up cards to release full potential (Kitty alone without strong cards won't be a game changer)
• Extremely expensive to obtain (around 700-800 USD per BCX, and you need 3 BCX for using Kitty in silver properly)

For me, Kitty is no-brainer choice in my league with my rating (around 2000). I wonder, how it's dealing in higher leagues, anyone of you have the experience?

Not sure if @byzantinekitty or @byzantinist was involved in the card design, but if yes, then kudos to you for the great graphic outline which I personally love and due to that great look I am starting to think how to raise the funds to purchase this lovely cat for my own.

Be not distracted by cuteness and fluff,
Byzantine Kitty is cuddly but tough,
If you dare to think kitty is merely a pet,
You haven’t faced kitty in battle just yet.

Stay tuned for next updates, cheers!