Hello! New week, new battle challenge - this time it's focusing on an Earth card that is one of my favourites - even if it is not too often that I get to use it, due to the fairly one-dimensional nature of Obsidian - Earth's primary summoner in Chaos Legion. That said, when I can use it, I love it, as it often leads to victories, because of its significant strength in particular rulesets. I will talk about that more in the section devoted to Venari Knifer later on though! I have the monster at level 3 and in gold - the 3 attack can really make a difference!

The battle that I did manage to get in was largely because my Focus for the day is Earth, meaning that I get all sorts of opportunities to use different monsters - even level 1 Iza came in very handy in some games! Let's dive in!

The Battle

The battle had likely one of the best rulesets that Venari Knifer can imagine - Opportunity. It was a simple ranked battle at the higher threshold of Silver; around 1.9k rating. As I had the Earth focus, I was quite enticed to use that splinter - though likely I would have done so anyway.

Winrate is really important with how the new reward system works, so I obviously took my time to decide on the placement and choice of monsters - Venari Knifer made it through as first choice!

You can find the battle HERE.

Here's a screenshot for whoever doesn't feel like watching the whole thing!

My Team

The choice for this battle was fairly broad, but as always, there were 3 main limitations that were as follows:

• Ruleset: The Opportunity Ruleset favours three kinds of units - those with Blast, those with high speed, as well as Taunt or low health units that can redirect some of the damage to themselves.
• Splinters: All Splinters but Life were available. With my card collection, it was unlikely for me to choose it anyways, so that limitation was practically irrelevant in this battle.
• Mana: The mana cap was 18. While low, this still allows for quite some flexibility and sometimes even filling all 6 spots for the battle.

Damage Sponges

Because the ruleset was Equal Opportunity, there was no real frontline. Instead, I call this group of monsters damage sponges, because their job is to soak as much damage as possible, while my damage dealers destroy the opposing team. It is almost a no-brainer to include Fungus Fiend in this with such a low mana cap, so I did just that. On top of that, Mycelic Morphoid in the last position can be an annoyance to players who choose to use Sneak to override Opportunity, while also fighting back through Thorns.

Failed Summoner was my other choice not only because of Magic Reflect - it is simply a 4-health unit that could buy more time; even if there was no magic attackers on the opposing team. In the end, I got lucky and it got to do some damage with its ability, making the game even smoother than it would be otherwise.

Damage Dealers

For dealing damage, I made the choice pretty quickly. I needed to choose between high speed or Blast and I went for the former. First of all, it was low mana, so it was more likely to have low-health units as opponents - meaning that I could prevent some damage instantly by killing some of them with high speed!

Regal Peryton and Venari Knifer both have 6 and 5 speed respectively - meaning they'll rarely miss and will usually attack faster than most other monsters. This was exactly what happened here, making short work of some opposing units before they did anything at all! Venari Knifer really was crucial to victory here, even though its Thorns were completely unused.

Venari Knifer

I find Venari Knifer to be a card that is simply waiting and hoping for the Earth legendary summoner to synergize with it. Wizard of Eastwood is probably the closer it gets to synergistic summoners currently and that is very sad, as with the right synergy, Knifer could be a real menace.

Its high speed is my favourite part of its stats - I love when cards are fast, as it makes me feel like they are more impactful during battles, often preventing opponents from attacking. The Thorns ability also makes it a great frontliner in combination with something like a Mycelic Slipspawn in the backline - it would often mean it'll be safe from Magic and Ranged damage, while 1v1-ing the opponent's frontliner.

The stats of Venari Knifer grow fairly slowly across levels, but getting Backfire is huge. Overall, it is a fun card to use that suffers from not having the right summoner in its Splinter. I hope the legendary summoner will let Venari Knifer shine even brighter!

Closing Words

Venari Knifer is one of the most exciting monsters I included in the battle challenge to date - probably my favourite behind only Time Mage! It is one of the best commons in CL in a vacuum - sadly, nothing in Splinterlands happens in a vacuum, so the Knifer is damned to be in the shadows until favourable conditions arise.

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