Introduction
When it comes to small mana battles in Modern Diamond / Champion League the first thing that comes to mind is to use a small mana summoner like one of the three mana summoners that have no abilities and also use as many tiny mana monsters as you can fit in.
And there is definitely some merit to that strategy, however today I am going to share a Modern Champion battle that showcases a completely different strategy for the small mana battles.
The Strategy
The strategy for this battle is actually quite simple and is all about Venka the Vile.
Venka the Vile is a seven mana monster that has six health and seven melee damage, but her main value is in her ability to attack from any position thanks to her Charge ability, it works perfectly with the piercing ability where she deals damage right through the shield and Trample ability where she performs another melee attack if she kills the monster she is attacking.
She also has a useful Oppress ability where she deals double damage to monsters without attack, perfect for those hard to kill monsters. Because she is a neutral monster she can be played in any splinter and this is why I use her quite often. This legendary unit that comes from the Rebellion card set is one of my go to cards in the modern league.
Another key monster here is Eternal Tofu summoner. This legendary summoner can summon earth and life splinter cards and this is also a high mana card to play in the small mana ruleset, but it is really key to this strategy. Tofu adds two health to all friendly monsters and give them thorns ability. But most importantly for this play is the fact that you can equip three of your monsters with Divine Shield.
The final piece of my strategy is to throw small mana meat shields in front of Venka the Vile to give her the opportunity to make some kills.
The Battle
The battle above is a recent example of this Venka the Vile and Eternal Tofu summoner strategy for the small mana battles. As you can see Mondroid is using the more traditional strategy with a three mana summoner and fitting five monsters on the battlefield as opposed to my three monsters.
In this case we have a very small mana battle with only sixteen mana available. Ranged attackers cannot be used and only fire, water and life splinters are available. There is also an equalizer ruleset in effect.
As you can see 
The first round didn't go too well for me as my Halfling Refugee got stunned and then subsequently taken out. We did some damage to our opponent's Halfling Refugee, but not enough to take it out in the first round.
So we start one monster down in the second round.
In the second round our Venka the Vile did manage to take out two of Mondroids front monsters, but we are definitely not out of the woods yet and we are starting third round in a position that looks quite precarious.
In the third round we lost our last meat shield monster and our Venka sustained some damage herself. But as you can see from the start of the Fourth round Venka is doing what she does best:
Here you see the first hit that takes out the weapons training monster and the next shot takes down Mondroids last remaining monster down to zero with a Trample and Oppress!
Scoring a great victory over the opponent that is 1,000 points higher ranked than I am!
And speaking about ranking, I am currently ranked number one on the Modern Diamond leaderboard:
Obviously there is more than five days left in the season and competition is very close to my ranking, so it is unclear if I can maintain this position with so much time left in the season, but it is fun to see myself at the top of the Modern Diamond Leaderboard!