This week's Battle Challenge is dedicated to the Animated Corpse, a Common Death Splinter card with a 4 mana cost. In my Battle Challenge, I used a level 1 card because I don't have access to a higher Summoner. Starting at level 4, the card gets the "Void" ability, which improves it quite a bit and gives it a better usability in different rule sets. Here you can see the stats of the Animated Corpse:
The Animated Corpse is a pretty solid tank for just 4 mana. With it's 2 Melee DMG it also adds up to the total team DMG quite nicely. 6 life is also very good for a 4 mana card. Generally, though, you'd go with Haunted Spirit, which gives Animated Corpse more of a role in various special rule sets. A good use for the card is in the rule sets Back to Basic, Even Stevens, and especially in Little League. In Back to Basic, the Animated Corpse saves you 1 mana but gives you 1 less Speed and 1 less DMG compared to the Haunted Spirit. At Even Stevens, Death Splinter has very little tank selection, so Animated Corpse is a good choice there. Little League, however, is the perfect use for Animated Corpse. I would have loved to show you a game with the Little League Rule Set, but it only came up 2 times in the 50+ games I played for the Battle Challenge, 1 time without Death Splinter and 1 time THIS xD
Instead, you now get to see a game with Back to Basic, which was also only won by a very narrow margin (Because I already did too many fights today with my main, I did this week's challenge on my secondary account ^^):
Here you can analyse the battle yourself :)
My opponent went for a very similar attempt and used the Death Splinter as well. By paying closer attention to the ruleset, I used my mana more wisely. For example, my opponent's Haunted Spirit can't use its "Heal" ability, which weakens it significantly. Also, Undead Priest is not optimally designed for the Rule Set. He only serves as a Meat Shield, since his ability is suspended. On the other hand, using Twisted Jester made him a better pick compared to my Dark Astronomer, due to the speed advantage. The use of Centaur in direct comparison to my Elven Mystic is debatable. Both can work better with different enemy setups. However, if my opponent hadn't put his Furious Chicken at the end of the team, his setup probably would have won against mine.
My strategy worked relatively well. I was able to show that Animated Corpse is somewhat equal to Haunted Spirit, at least under certain conditions. Because I don't have access to Furious Chicken, I had to save 1 mana to use another Meat Shield anyway. Animated Corpse was optimal for that in said rule set.
Especially in Little League I like Animated Corpse very much. But this is also the only ruleset in which I play it with more confidence. Fortunately, the Water meta with Venari Wavesmith doesn't dominate here either, since he can't be used with 5 mana. This makes Death a good counter to Water again and moves it back into the meta more strongly.
