Welcome to Struggletown, Population - Me: Using Feral Spirit in Bat...

This week's Share Your Battle challenge features Feral Spirit! As you may guess from the title of this post, this challenge was a tough one. Each week whenever I do these I try to find a battle that I won that also showcases the featured card's abilities and/or strengths. This week, finding a battle that fit this criteria was a struggle. In addition to finding it difficult to figure out a good lineup with Feral Spirit, there was also a strange bug with the game client that only let me play back battles at the slowest speed (I guess with the Chaos Legion general sale starting yesterday they were understandably busy with other priorities).

I burned through more of my time, energy capture rate, and rating points than I'd like to admit while attempting to find a good battle. In the end, I had to admit defeat in finding a battle that met all of my criteria, but I do have this (unfortunately, losing) battle with Feral Spirit to share with you all.

Feral Spirit is a melee monster in the life splinter. At level 1, for the reasonable price of 3 mana you get a sky-high 4 speed, to go along with 1 attack, 2HP, and sneak. I'm a big fan on sneak and use it often with my fire deck, so I was looking forward to giving it a try with some life cards.

If you wanted to jump right to the action, the Battle Link is right here. Want to hear some more about the lineup and my strategy? Read on further!

First up: the ruleset. This seemed like a good ruleset for Feral Spirit because it was a relatively low mana cap so my opponent may be bringing low health monsters to be picked off with sneak. I also like that the fire splinter wasn't included, because I was planning on going for a sneak lineup, and a sneak strategy with fire would (in my opinion) be stronger than life, if both were available as options.

Feral Spirit is in the life splinter so we'll be choosing a life summoner. I went with Mother Khala because she was cheaper than General Sloan, I wasn't planning on using ranged damage, and the +1 health from Mother Khala's summoner bonus may help us have an enraged monster that sticks around for a little longer that it would otherwise.

I started my team off with the tank. Xenith Monk was the biggest tank I saw that fit into my mana budget - with 6 hit points (plus an additional 1 from Mother Khala) my plan was for Xenith Monk to stick around for a while and protect the back of my lineup.

Next came all of my damage. Feral Spirit is our guest of the week, and as an extra bonus came in Alpha edition! Stitch Leech complements it well because it also has sneak. My plan was for the two of them to be able to take out my opponent's lineup moving from the back forward.

I filled out my lineup with Gargoya Scrapper. It doesn't do much damage as a melee attacker sitting at the back of my lineup, but I had an extra mana to spend with nothing better to use it on, and placing it at the back could potentially shield my other monsters from opposing sneak damage.

With the lineup set, it's off into battle! When I see the selected teams I am a little worried - my opponent has brought a huge tank in Diemonshark, which was level 2 and shiny to boot. My sneak monsters should be able to take out the Ice Pixie, but I wasn't sure if they would also be able to take down the Diemonshark before it Trampled its was through my lineup.

When the battle begins it goes about the way I expected it to - my Sneak damage quickly knocks out the opposing Ice Pixie. The Diemonshark remains the main threat though, and it remains to be seen whether I will be able to deal with it quickly enough.

round 2.png

A couple of rounds in and we hit a problem: apparently Diemonshark with Enrage is pretty good. As soon as I get through the Diemonshark's armor and knock off a hit point, its speed jumps up to 8(!!!). It also get an additional attack point, but that seems like a bit of overkill.

round 4.png

You can see here what's about to happen - Diemonshark is going to kill my Stitch Leech and then trample through Gargoya Scrapper. And with its monsterous 8 speed, I don't even have a chance to dodge it. Oh well, maybe next time! Again, if you wanted to see the whole battle for yourself, you can see it right here.

round 5.png

My strategy of having my tank hold the front while my Sneak damage takes out the opposing back line may work well in other rulesets, but was a poor choice in a Spreading Fury ruleset battle in which my opponent brought a huge monster. Feral Spirit accounted for itself well in helping to take out the enemy magic damage, but in the end it came up a little short against an enraged Diemonshark.

I can see where Feral Spirit can have its uses - Sneak is a great ability, and the life splinter does have a fair amount of cards to support sneak and melee strategies in general. Unfortunately, I didn't quite have the right set of cards to take advantage of this. I don't think I'll be renting out a Feral Spirit in the near future, but I'll be sure to keep it in mind in case I every decide to build a life splinter melee deck!

Thank you so much for reading all the way to the end. Interested in seeing some more of my writing in the future? Be sure to give me a follow! In the meantime, if you'd like to see some of my recent posts:

Splinterlands Economics: Sunk Cost - An introduction to the concept of sunk cost, and how it relates to Splinterlands.
Chaos Legion General Sale Plans and Goals - Laying out some of my goals for 2022.
And Now For Something Completely Different: Using Wood Nymph in Battle! - My entry into last week's battle challenge, a matchup featuring Wood Nymph.

Thinking about giving Splinterlands a try but haven't signed up yet? Feel free to use my referral link right here: https://splinterlands.com?ref=bteim, and be sure to reach out to me if you have any questions!

Welcome to Struggletown, Population - Me: Using Feral Spirit in Battle!