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It's a new edition of Splinterlands Community Engagement Challenge and the theme this week is a very special one! It's Card Strategy Guides.

The first thought that came to my mind would be this deadly combo of 14 mana, which consists of Astral Entity, Venari Marksrat and Pelacor Deceiver. I have the Gold Foil version of the two Common cards so that's an extra bonus.

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![image.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/relf87/23uEsXRQwWsgeQjjCprQp4wYkFqwBbADEGzN5d9nC3dEDz6dfqxixiUM5xFabtm1tuuhA.png)


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![image.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/relf87/EogFe6mL3ZrTqmgG7ycNx8HJmkLRa7aTiSYBUmQ2nPJxV5Sp6VpUZcWT45Q83JorT3W.png)


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![image.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/relf87/23u5X5MK3XTqgJN2QLYdu4z7kJ6TwboEaUUcmJXkPxRAzKgmc94xbn4WuNK8yRVKmsHUy.png)
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*So what is the strategy?*

- Astral Entity packs two important abilities for this combination, namely Dodge and Resurrect.
- Venari Marksrat has Martyr ability.
- Pelacor Deceiver has Flying ability, coupled with good Melee attack, high speed and high HP.

So what we want to achieve, is for the opponent to take out Venari Marksrat not once but twice, thanks to Resurrect by Astral Entity, thereby boosting Pelacor Deceiver twice. The final result will be a Pelacor Deceiver having 4 Melee attack, 6 Speed and 10 HP to kickstart his fight. That's a big tank. On top of that, Pelacor Deceiver has Flying, and will have Dodge (thanks to Astral Entity again), and together with 6 speed, Melee and Ranged attackers will find it incredibly to land hits on him. Of course, this strategy is not without weakness, because Magic attackers will not be affected by the high Speed, Flying and Dodge modifiers to their accuracy.

***
So let's use a real battle to show how it's like!

**Pre-battle**: With 14 mana to field, here's the 3 cards which maximised the mana quota. In this battle, we have Rebirth ruleset, which makes it even better for this strategy, because there is a chance that Martyr will be triggered not once, not twice, but thrice!
![image.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/relf87/Eo6CBdBBxGEwCk7TKzLaM3zXJEBfFVjByK2oEqswdfrFy9yPDUe4nnWGKgVG5T2mb4B.png)

**Martyr gets triggered once**: In this case, we can't perform any hits and our opponent effectively took down Venari Marksrat for the first time and it was brought back. Pelacor Deceiver's stats are up.
![image.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/relf87/23tRvMtfyLvGWEqHUYwdypBxbuRVmfvrvnWHHnBLoGUrUaG7YmHvV77t7k71QR6rGo7ZX.png)

**Martyr is triggered the second time**: Venari Marksrat went down once more and Pelacor Deceiver is boosted another time.
![image.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/relf87/23tRvSd9KJoaPHV5Wdh4QxURhCMSPAfQqoTDwQyvnfq9eEdKfdnmW5CLBdFDYjpfWoDgt.png)

**Martyr is triggered the third time**: In most cases, this would stop but because of the Rebirth ruleset, we got 3 Martyr boosts. As you can see Pelacor Deceiver starts his battle now with 5 Melee attack, 7 Speed, and 11 HP.
![image.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/relf87/Eo6Bn853TvpzUcSFMXBKFgwiaMzxXGRhBPg5hMDcVVseE3eGfWhfRrNox4EY1CxuAXy.png)

**And we won**: Easy peasy for Pelacor Deceiver!
![image.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/relf87/23tbGjb7x5NPkXYs7ZdTXUCZV2LRHPnkj2ctdWzH4UfBrNQZnVE4Z2E7hXunxPkNmPtU9.png)
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*Final Thoughts*

For me, Pelacor Deceiver has never been a popular card to use back in the early days because there were just too many strong Melee cards in the Death collection, such as Cursed Windeku and Harklaw. However, ever since Astral Entity came into the picture, the two cards complemented each other very well. And it was after a while I realised Venari Marksrat's Martyr can be combined with these two cards, making these 3 cards an extremely strong combination for a 14 mana battle.

If one wishes to go further, there are many more strong and interesting combinations within the Death deck that can be paired with Astral Entity, e.g. Riftwing (the Resurrect helps with 1 extra Scavenge). And I have personally enjoyed playing the Death cards with Astral Entity all this while.

So that's all I have for this week's Splinterlands Community Engagement Challenge. Let me know if you have any comments too!

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*If you are interested to sign up to play Splinterlands, my referral link is [here](https://splinterlands.com/?ref=relf87).*