This week's battle challenge theme is the humble Elven Cutthroat. As a low-cost card available in the starter set, Elven Cutthroat is a great card for new and experienced players alike. A staple in beginner decks, the Cutthroat still deserves to be considered for low-mana battles even in the higher leagues.

The Card

Elven Cutthroat is a 3 mana neutral common monster that is relatively easy to fit in any deck. At level 1, it has 1 melee attack, 3 speed, 1 health, and most importantly, the Sneak ability. While the damage could be higher, having a sneaky 3 speed monster can be very useful to take out an early threat in low-mana matches. And since the elf is a neutral monster, we have a wide variety of summoners to choose from to boost whichever stats are most needed for any particular battle.

Unlike many other monsters we've covered, Elven Cutthroat does not gain any more abilities upon leveling up, but its stats do improve significantly. The Cutthroat gets a damage boost at levels 4 and 8, but also sees a steady increase in speed and health along the way. By level 10, Elven Cutthroat has 3 damage, 6 speed, and 5 health, allowing it to hit harder, more reliably, and longer.

However, for today's battles, I am going to use the level 1 starter version that everyone has available. Let's look at a low mana battle where the Elven Cutthroat was able to hold its own.

The Battle

For this battle, we had only 16 mana available. With the Broken Arrows rule set, I knew that there would be no ranged monsters, so I took the gamble that my opponent would focus more on melee than magic and brought Zintar as my summoner. Haunted Spirit was my healing tank, backed up by the Cutthtroat, Darkest Mage, and Death Elemental. The hope was that Cutthroat and the Elemental would be able to take out any threats on the back line and leave us with just a tank to clean up.

My opponent also used Zintar, but the highlight of their team was the Gorlodon, a massive tank with high attack to chew through my team. They also debuffed my team with a Creeping Ooze and Undead Priest, and then had a Slimeball and Chicken to round out their team. (And upon seeing them, I realized that I had left out my own Chicken. Hopefully it wouldn't come back to bite me.)

My plan to kill off the back line worked just in time. My Haunted Spirit was taken all the way down to 1 health. Had the Undead Priest still been alive, that would have been zero health instead (and even if not, the Priest's magic attack would have finished it off anyway). As perilous as things looked at this point, we were nearly home free. By killing off the Ooze, our Haunted Spirit became faster than the Gorlodon, meaning it would get a second heal before the Gorlodon could attack again. With our entire team now focused on the Gorlodon, we were able to take it out quickly enough to secure the win.

Final Thoughts

Elven Cutthroat may not look like much, but it can be very effective in low-mana matches. Since your opponents will also likely be forced to use monsters with low defensive stats, the Cutthroat can often severely cripple them from behind. I recommend trying the Elven Cutthroat whenever resources are limited, especially for newer players whose opponents will have fewer options to counter it.

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