This is my submission to the Splinterlands Weekly Battle Challenge. This time it is featuring the "Furious Chicken".

About the Card

The Furious Chicken must be my most-played card. It is the only monster in the game so far with a zero mana cost. You can use all available mana on the summoner and other monsters and still add the Chicken. How great is that? Needless to say, this card instantly became part of the meta when it was released as a reward card edition at the end of the beta period. By now it has run out of print, meaning the only way to get one, is to buy it from other players on the marketplace.
A level 1 chicken is about $0.44 and certainly worth it. If you can't afford a higher level one, just stick with a level 1 chicken. I have seen Champions league players who didn't care to upgrade their Chickens because the level ups don't really do much of a difference with the monster dying instantly on the first hit anyways.

Personally I own three copies of the Chicken:

• A max level version: This Chicken has 2 melee ATK points. When played with Malric, Plado or Daria and buffed by Beetle Queen's and Enchanted Pixie's Inspire ability, this will turn it into a 5 ATK beast! Great in All-Sneak and Melee Mayhen matches!
• A level 1 version: I'm holding this single-BCX version of the card for "Keep Your Distance" rulesets. This allows me to use a Chicken even when I can't use my maxxed version. There's no point in updating to level 2 by the way, as all stats would stay exactly the same.
• A gold-foil version: I'm playing a gold-league gold-foil deck in my alt account and keep a golden Chicken in there. This is such a great card. Being gold-foil it will apply a boost to you DEC earnings when winning the match! This means, you can add a zero-mana card to an empty monster slot in your team and not only profit from stalling your opponent's advance but also earn an additional DEC bonus from it!

By the way: Am I the only one who can't stop being reminded of the chickens in "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time"? Peaceful creatures, but after slashing at them with your sword for a while (who would do that, right?), they would become furious and start chasing and attacking you.

Card Use-Cases

This is pretty straightforward: Use it whenever you have a spare monster slot but no mana left.
There is no downside, except for when your opponent has a scavenge monster which will heal when the Chicken dies. But as there is no way to anticipate that, just go forward and play it.

The question, however, is where to put it. So with the Chicken let us look a bit closer at placement.

I often see the Chicken put thoughtlessly in the 6th monster slot. Probably people assemble their team, realize they have a slot left and put the Chicken in there. I do not believe this is ideal.
While having a backline Chicken provides a shield to Sneak attackers, if your opponent does not use any sneak monsters, the Chicken will just sit there until the end of the match, not being of any actual meaning.
Therefore, I prefer placing the Chicken behind the tank, or when a reach monster is used, behind the reach monster. Following after the Chicken will usually be the sneak & opportunity attackers, than the magic monsters and ranged attackers go in the back. This order has the advantage, that when the tank and reach positions die, the Chicken stalls your opponent from forcing your ranged attackers to the front, where they will sit uselessly unless you are playing a Close-Ranged match, of course.
In this position the Chicken can also absorb the first round of blast damage which otherwise would go through to your backline directly.

There are, indeed, two scenarios in which I would also put my Chicken in the back row. These are the Earthquake and Noxious Fumes rulesets. The Chicken will die at the end of round 1 in these rulesets, so there is absolutely no point of having it sit in the middle of your formation. In these cases I take the gamble and hope for my opponent to use a sneak monster whose first attack will be nullified through this.

In exceptional cases, the Chicken can also work as a tank. For instance in an Equalizer (all monsters have as much HP as the highest-HP monster on the field) match with Selenia or Prince Rennyn as summoner. The Chicken will allow you to use all available mana on ranged monsters profiting from the summoner buff, while serving as a free tank. Equalizer is one of the rare occasions where you may also profit from the Chicken's Enrage ability.

This week's match

Click on the video ^ to play or view the original match on Splinterlands.

This was a Noxious Fumes & Lose All Abilities match. In the latter I often use magic because there is no magic reflect active. However, my only maxed magic summoner is Delwyn, so in low-mana matches with this ruleset I usually go for Ranged attackers instead with the three-mana summoner Selenia Sky.

It has become a part of the current meta to use a giant meat wall with no ATK but lot of HP in front of your attackers (usually Peaceful Giant).

This week's lineup:

1. Furious Chicken: As this was a Noxious Fumes battle where the chicken would die in round 1 no matter what I did, I put it in the first position, where it absorbed an enemy blow before biting the dust and bought my attackers more time.

2. Shadowy Presence: For just two mana this card at my current level 4 provides 5 HP that my opponent has to break through before he can get to my attackers.

3. Peaceful Giant: The main building brick of my meat wall. My opponent will have a tough time trying to get to my attackers through this total of 21 HP in the first three positions.

4. Haunted Spider: I had 8 mana left to work with now. Therefore, I chose ranged attackers that did as much bang as possible for their buck. The spider is one of these with 2 ranged ATK for 3 mana.

5. Undead Archer: This one costs only 2 mana, so let's use it without further ado.

6. Highland Archer: The best of the attackers I put in the back. I wanted this to live as long as possible to have it attack the longest. With its 3 ranged ATK for 3 mana this Archer is meant to be my killer card.

Don't forget that this team gets an additional 3 ATK from Selenia's buff which is certain to make a difference.

Conclusion

My opponent followed the same strategy but was missing a high HP monster in the front. This probably was the game-deciding difference as his other monsters reached the front too soon and also suffered from poison a lot with their low HP stats.

My Chicken died soon but that was exactly what I had intended it for, so this worked out perfect in every way.

Want to join the fight?

Create an account at the Splinterlands today and fight me in next week's battle challenge!