Hi everyone and welcome to this week's Share Your Battle Challenge. The theme is the Carrion Shade.

You can watch the full battle here, if you like.

The Card

Carrion shade is a death splinter card from the latest Chaos Legion edition. It only has one ability, Flying, which it get's at level 3, making this a breaking point in terms of utility.
Other than that it's stats increase with it's level, but in my opinion there isn't really anything worth to mention and that kind of describes the card.

For one mana you get a cheap card with insignificant stats. It's best use in my opinion is as a meat shield, absorbing a few hits to protect other, more valuable monsters in your line up.

It could work as a frontline tank in Equalizer rulesets, where everyone has the same health and it would be pretty good, if there's also the Earthquake ruleset, because of it's flying ability. But this is a very specific scenario...

In terms of the art work I actually do like the card. It fit's in nicely with the whole Chaos Legion vibe, yet looks clean enough to be a low cost mana monster.

Ruleset

The ruleset was super simple, because I played this battle with my other account down in Bronze 3.
Standard, 21 mana and every splinter allowed.

The Line Up & Strategy

Since the ruleset didn't prohibit anything, I was spoiled for choice. 21 mana didn't allow for too much damage, though. So this is what I came up with:

Drake of Arnak as my summoner, because of the +1 Armor
Cursed Windeku as tank in the first position, because this card is broken in bronze (and generally). No, but really, because of it's high health, paired with Thorns and decent damamage
Life Sapper in the second spot as sort of damage /off tank. I hoped for it to gain enough health through it's Life Leech ability to be tanky enough to take a couple hits, once Cursed Windeku would die
Undead Badger as one of two sneak attack monsters to go for their backline
Silent Sha-vi as the second sneak attacker, I put him closer to the end, because of his higher health
Carrion Shade, finally as the meat shield to absorb enemy sneak attacks

The plan really was to survive enemy attacks with the extra Armor from the Drake while simultaneously killing off their backline with sneaks.
So let's see if the plan worked.

Round 1

We have very similar line ups, but he went for Thaddius and didn't protect his backline as well. So I'm able to instantly take out his Undead Badger, sitting at the very end with no defense, before it can even attack. His Silent Sha-vi on the other hand only hits my Carrion Shade's armor. I also leave his Life Sapper vulnerable enough to be taken care of in the next round and because of the armor I got, my Cursed Windeku survives the round with one more HP than his. Plan's working so far!

Round 2

Second round starts with the Cursed Windekus attacking each other, but because mine was up one Health it barely survives, while his dies. My sneak attackers finish the left over Life Sapper from last round and even damage his Silent Sha-vi, while, yet again, his Silent Sha-vi only kills my Carrion Shade.

Round 3

If you're thinking "this doesn't look good for his opponent", you're right. Two quick attacks from Windeku and Silent Sha-vi and his SIlent Sha-vi is dead and that's about it.

Conclusion

This was a rather quick and easy battle. The strategy worked completely as planned, with the Drake of Arnak being the key decision I believe. Also Carrion Shade did an excellent job of taking punches, lol. But in all seriousness like you saw, it was key that I protected my backline from sneak and that's exactly what you need little mana monsters like the Carrion Shade for! The only caveat I have is that any one or zero mana monster would've done the job and while Flying at level 3 might be handy, I do believe that the Chaos Agent is a better choice for this particular role. That being said, there are scenarios where you want both, the Carrion Shade and the Chaos Agent and probably even the Fiend. The more the merrier. Hands down I don't think you need to level this card up, though.

Referrals

If you're not playing already create an account over at Splinterlands.com and hop right into battle

I hope you enjoyed this read and maybe got some helpful tips or inspiration. Until next week,

Pinkman45