What he does in the shadows
The lore depicts the Soul Strangler as perhaps the worst landlord ever, a Baron who eats his subjects on an as needs basis.
The soul strangler is a creature of nobility, of good stock and incredible wealth. They live in lavish opulence, wearing the finest attire and moving in the most sophisticated of circles, often engaging with the high born from other cities and enjoying intimate gatherings that last for days.
I guess you can do whatever you want if you're incredibly wealthy.
Strategy
Death was the only available splinter in this high mana battle with the Lost Magic and Divine Shield ruleset. In death, there is the option to play Wendigo so I wanted most of the attack to come from ranged, while maintaining a strong barrier against possible thorns damage. I was happy because it was my focus as well, and I will usually rent some of the cards I don't normally play to bolster my whatever my focus is so this worked out for me.
Watch the battle here!
Lineup
Thaddius has the advantage of removing health from the other team, which makes all the attacks more effective. Typically he would also debuff magic, but I lost that because of the ruleset. My opponent went with Zintar, and all my melee monsters lost an attack, but luckily they were useful for protecting ranged attacks and doing passive damage with thorns.
In the first position I put the Cursed Windeku because he has moderately high health and does thorns damage.
Dark Ha'on in the second position diverts attention away from both Windeku and the back line with his taunt ability, and has a ton of health, moderate speed, and flying which help to encourage misses.
Silent Sha-vi is a very sneaky snake, and with three damage for five mana has a good chance to take out weak monsters in the caboose. However, in the opponent's team Cornelius was waiting to cover me with thorns.
In the fourth position is the party animal himself. He is snuggled nicely between beefier monsters, and does a lot of damage for his mana, he rounded out the lineup and was spared from opportunity damage by Dark Ha'on and sneak damage by both Lira and the Dhampir Stalker.
Dhampir Stalker is another ranged attacker with big damage.
I think I'm starting to realize that if you're a vampire you definitely know how to use a bow! Lira does opportunity damage, which I like to include to remove any support monsters that may be lurking in the middle of the pack.
Analysis
The first round was primarily divine shield removal. The opponent's Goblin Mech hit thorns and removed Windeku's shield, but the Mech became available to taking damage although it all went to removing the ample shield. Dark Ha'on took the rest of the damage, as expected.
Round 2 Lira took out Creeping Ooze and gave me some speed back. Dark Ha'on took on more damage, but survived the round and most of my damage went to the Goblin Mech tank who took himself out by hitting Windeku. That left the opposing Sand Worm with an attack in the first position who took out poor Windeku, but took some thorns damage as well.
At the top of round 3 octopider missed Dark Ha'on, despite the speed advantage. The rest of my team worked on taking out the Sand Worm and the Carion Shade.
In round 4 Cornelius' thorns took out my Silent Sha-vi, and damaged Dark Ha'on who lived to fight another round because Octopider could not hit from the first position.
Dark Ha'on was finally slain in round 5 by hitting thorns. But Cornelius could no longer deliver any ranged attacks in the first position. When Soul Strangler moved into the top spot he couldn't hit, so was not susceptible to thorns, and the Stalker and Lira were able to do sufficient damage to kill the self-healing monster in rounds 6 through 8.
This strategy was successful even against a higher level summoner. When I plugged it into Splintertools the win rate was floating around 70%. For the cards that I have available it was the best gambit, however moving Lira or Stalker up in the lineup increased the win rate slightly.
I really like the Soul Strangler when you can direct hits away from him. I currently play him at only level two, but for three mana he’s a very useful addition to the death splinter. And he becomes stronger and faster as you level him up, eventually getting poison at level eight, but never quite loses the squishiness. This works with no sneak, no snipe (and maybe no water available for a lot of opportunity damage) and because he does a lot of damage for a little bit of mana he is easy to fit in at any mana.