Welcome back to my Hive account for a look at the Most Valuable Players from Conclave Arcana in this week's 
Conclave Arcana Unit Overview
Where I play the unit, mostly in Champion Ranked, Leonin Sifu gets four abilities in addition to its 4 melee attack, 3 speed, 7 armor, and 10 health. The swiftness is a nice support ability that it gets at Intermediate level and execute is a deadly addition at Expert level. Relentless strike is a nice bonus against sturdy units with forcefield, shield, or void from Adept level.
But the ability that elevates Leonin Sifu to MVP status is the ability it gets from Level 1 -- true strike, a guarantee to hit with every attack. In a world where the evasion + backfire abilities from Commander Slade, paired with the archon Crypti,c dominate as one of the pillars of the Modern metagame, having a powerful unit with True Strike is a necessary weapon to overcome the threat of Slade.
Truth be told, Leonin Sifu also has some key weaknesses. First, it is very squishy -- meaning it has very little defense against opposing attacks. While it does have 7 armor and 10 health, there's no sturdiness with defensive abilities like shield or void. Second, despite the added swiftness for 3+1 speed at Level 6, it is a bit slow for the Modern metagame when speed is the name of the game.
To overcome these two key drawbacks, Leonin Sifu is often paired with a Flanking unit, allowing it to attack from the 2nd position. By pairing it behind a flanking unit, Leonin Sifu is usually guaranteed a few safe attacks before the opponent can chew through the tank protecting it. However, the card that takes Leonin Sifu to the elite level is dual-element archon, Elias Max Pruitt.
The legendary water and life archon, known for short as EMP, allows summoners the ability to choose the armor strike and piercing tactic. By giving Leonin Sifu armor strike and piercing, it goes from a single 4-power melee attack to a dual-attacking behemoth with double-digit damage output. As long as it lives long enough to make that first attack without taking any damage, it can almost single handedly take down Commander Slade. Let's take a look at a couple of battles that show Leonin Sifu doing the business.
Battle 1 Replay vs. 
Watari brings a very familiar setup in Champions League Modern ranked, where they play Commander Slade backed up by Jicarella to give it phase for magic evasion and speed buffs in the back. With dodge and blind from Cryptic, Slade gets an additional 40% chance for opponent units to miss the attack, on top of whatever speed advantage differential it has after bonuses are applied.
Watari brought two speed bonuses as two units had swiftness, plus the repair ability to replenish Slade's shield defense. After all the initial battle bonuses were applied, Slade had 7 speed combined with 7 armor and 10 health. But all those buffs and evasion were no match for Leonin Sifu, who was ready to bring the pain.
Knowing that I was going to leverage EMP for the armor strike on Leonin Sifu, I decided to maximize the armor and melee buffs to allow it to kill Slade in one round of attacks. My lineup had double protect from Silverblade Fighter and Bludgeon Hucker plus inspired from Commander Goff. Adding those buffs to the +1 melee and shield from EMS meant that Leonin Sifu had 12 armor and 6 melee attack going into Round 1. Combined in one round of attacks, that translates to 18 piercing damage, which is one more than Slade's 17 combined hit points from 10 health and 7 armor could handle.
Silverblade Fighter is a must for this strategy to work, as Leonin Sifu needs to be paired with a flanker to be able to attack from the 2nd position. Fighter is also able to soak up a ton of damage with its plentiful void armor and resurrect insurance from Goff. In fact, with the ability to resurrect Silverblade Fighter, this lineup represents the potential to absorb over 30 damage from the tank spot.
Ultimately, our plan worked like a charm. Silverblade Fighter held down the fort with defenses to spare, and Leonin Sifu was able to take out Enemy #1 Commander Slade with ease. It really is a thing of beauty to see one of Modern's boogeymen foiled so easily and efficiently. Leonin Sifu gets my MVP rating for the ability to counter Slade so efficiently from the Conclave Arcana set by using its True Strike to neutralize all the evasive tactics used on the backfiring menace.
Battle #2 Replay vs. 
This is an interesting application of Leonin Sifu vs. Commander Slade because my talented opponent Garnulf brought the aggressive archon Akane to give two of his units Ambush. This is a big departure from the slow and blind abilities granted by Cryptic, Slade's familiar archon companion.
Luckily, I threw out the new taunt legendary Zargrul to split the opponent's attack damage between my Silverblade Fighter tank and my Zagrul taunt in the 5th spot for the High Five battle. This allowed my defenses to absorb the extra ambush damage without blinking. In fact, Fighter held out through Round 3, allowing Leonin Sifu THREE unscathed 10+ power dual-attacks.
Once again, Sifu ATE Slade in Round 1, with exactly 17 combined attack power from 12 armor + 5 melee. To get Sifu to the promised land, I doubled down with a pair of protect units and added repair insurance from Archer Koi. Strategically, I added two painforge units in the Collateral Damage battle, where all units gain reckless, but I don't think it made much difference. Leonin Sifu showed why she is a Conclave Arcana MVP, able to take down the format-defining Commander Slade with ease!
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