Splinterlands Weekly Battle Challenge featuring Carrion Shade

A carrion shade is a dark-winged bird that feeds off of the dead bodies of animals and people. They often flock to battlefields and dangerous parts of the wilderness where there are sure to be corpses. They travel in small groups and have no natural predators. Most people fear the carrion shades, though. For to see a group following you is to know your life is in danger. Tales whispered by the elder wise women claim that if you see a single carrion shade perched outside your home, then someone you love will die that night.

Carrion Shade is a melee attacker with a 1 mana requirement. An ideal buffer for low mana battles and Earthquake ruleset as it has **Flying** ability at level 3.

Carrion Shade usage are mostly situational like buffer for 1 mana, a decoy for Opportunity, Sneak, or to take the attack from enemy's first turn. It has Flying ability so it has 25% evasion against non-flying monsters.

Stats & Abilities:

Ruleset

In Splinterlands, ruleset provides the condition of the battle. It is what makes the match challenging as you need to strategize based on the current rules of the match, the maximum mana capacity, and the allowed teams (or Splinter). All of this should be the basis of our strategy in choosing which cards to use.

Let's now explain the rules in this matched:

Rules		Description
	Silenced Summoners	Summoners do not give any stat buffs or debuffs or grant/use any abilities.
	Rise of the Commons	Only Common and Rare Monsters may be used in battles.

When Silenced Summoner is in effect, it is best to use Summoners that don't give buffs since buffs provided by Summoners will be nullified. Summoners without buffs normally have lower mana requirement compare to Summoners that give 1 or more buffs. The more buffs the Summoner provides, the higher the mana requirement it needs. For example, Legendary Summoners with 3 buffs require 7 mana cap while Summoners without buff only require 2 mana cap. Aside from the that, you also need to consider the Summoner level since it will affect or limit the level of Monsters the Summoner can use.

With Rise of the Commons, our monster selection will be limited to Common and Rare monsters only. Epic and Legendary monster will be restricted. With this, you need to keep in mind that only common and rare monsters will be available. And you need to build optimum deck based on this.

Splinters:

In Splinterlands, Splinters are basically the team or element in which the monsters belong to. You can only choose one Splinter in each battle. Although there are some exception to these. When you select a Dragon summoner, you can still choose another element to pair with it. So for example, you can use Dragon + Life, or Dragon + Fire.
Also, there are monsters that are considered Neutral. By default, Neutral monsters can be used in any Splinters, unless otherwise restricted by the ruleset.

• Earth, Death and Dragon

Match

Check this link to watch the entire gameplay. I've also recorded a per round gameplay below.
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_c71dbf8d8656d4af014ed443fab0ac2d&ref=zaver

Round 1

In round 1, we were able to eliminate enemy dummy monster at the first position, Carrion Shade. And also deal a lot damage to enemy main tank which is Cursed Windeku Our team also lost 2 decoy monsters at the backline (Furious Chicken and Chaos Agent).

Round 2

In round 2, we were able to eliminate 2 monsters on the enemy line-up: Cursed Windeku on the front line and Silent Sha-vi on the backline.

Round 3

In round 3, we were able to eliminate again 2 monsters on the enemy line-up: Chaos Agent and Undead Badger without casualty on our end.

Round 4

In round 4, we eliminated the last monster on enemy side: Life Sapper

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Cards	Details
	Quix the Devious Mana cap: 4 Normally, this summoner reduces the provides the ranged damage and speed of all enemy monsters. But with the Silenced Summoner, I used Quix the Devious to gained access to Dragon Splinter combined with Death Splinter to increase my monster pool to create a more suited deck.
	Cursed Windeku Mana cap: 6 At its initial level, it already has a Thorns ability ideal when facing melee monsters. Thorns returned a 2 melee damage to melee attackers.
	Twilight Basilisk Mana cap: 4 Melee monster with Reach ability. This monster can still attack even though it is on the 2nd position because of the Reach ability.
	Silent Sha-vi Mana cap: 5 Melee monster with Sneak ability. This monster can attack the enemy backline with its Sneak ability.
	Carrion Shade Mana cap: 1 A 1 mana monster with melee attack and Flying ability at level 3. I placed Carrion Shade at the backline as a decoy for backline attacks line Sneaks.
	Chaos Agent Mana cap: 1 A 1 mana monster with Dodge ability. It has a 25% chance to evade melee and ranged attacks. Same with Carrion Shade, Chaos Agent was also a decoy not only for Sneak, but also for Snipe since it does not have attack.
	Furious Chicken Mana cap: 0 A 0 mana monster which is good to fill empty slots in your deck since it does not take up any capacity. Same with Chaos Agent, it is also a decoy for Sneak and Snipe attacks.

Did your strategy work?

We were able to defeat our opponent with the use of 3 monsters as decoy. Both of us uses Silent Sha-vi as our main damager to eliminate backline monsters. Aside from Silent Sha-vi, my opponent also used Undead Badger with Sneak ability. I was able to counter enemy's strategy to go with Sneak attacking monsters by placing 3 low mana monsters as my decoy. Furiuos Chicken with 0 mana to fill some empty slots. Chaos Agent has the Dodge ability which increased the chance to evade melee or ranged attack from enemy. While Carrion Shade has the Flying ability which also gives 25% increase chance to evade melee or ranged attacks from non-flying monsters. My Silent Sha-vi eliminated all of enemy backline monsters without being targeted.

What will you try differently next time?

My line-up was heavily focused on melee monsters. Instead of using Twilight Basilisk, I may choose a level 4 Venari Bonesmith to have a magic damage dealer as well. Venari Bonesmith also has the Life Leech ability for sustain and Poison ability to deal additional damage if enemy is poisoned.

Do you like the CARRION SHADE? Why or why not?

Carrion Shade is one of the situational monster. It is not something you will always pick. It is best for low mana fights in which you can use it as a filler or as a decoy. It can also be used in times where Earthquake is in effect and you need to build your deck with monsters with Flying ability. Normally, I prefer to use the Summoner Brighton Bloom if I don't have a solid line-up with Flying abilities. Another specific scenario which Carrion Shade can shine would be low mana cap battles with Equalizer rule.

Wanted to start your own journey to Splinterlands, join Splinterlands using this link

• https://splinterlands.com?ref=zaver

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