Hey everyone,
Splinterlands continues to grow and there are more and more new players who may have problems with the game in the beginning. Of course, not all of them are active on Hive / Splintertalk etc., but maybe some newbies will find & read this post and can implement some of the tips.
Try to understand the dynamics of the game
At first, Splinterlands is not that easy to understand. Sure, the idea behind it is pretty simple: choose a few cards and let them fight each other. Whoever has no monsters left in the end loses. So far so good.
But how do I choose the perfect line up? Which team will give me the greatest advantage? You should try a lot of cards & strategies first and see which you like the most. There isn't one right strategy, so I can't give a clear recommendation on how to put together the best team. But by simply trying out different strategies as well as checking out a lot of awesome posts on Hive / Splintertalk and studying the strategies of other players, you can quickly become a good tactician.
Find the ideal team
There are so many different teams: Fire, Water, Earth, Life & Death. So the question is which one of those you should play with. Well, there's no easy answer here because it is up to you which team you like the most. Since you can use the main Summoners you'll get from the start without the need to buy any, let me explain their abilities and when to use them:
Malric Inferno is a Summoner from the Fire team. He will cost you 3 mana (remember that the available mana can vary from round to round, so keep an eye on that). His ability is that all of your monsters have +1 Melee attack. What's Melee attack? Well, it's the "normal" attack of your monsters. You can see if your monsters has Melee attack by the symbol on the card which should look like the one at the bottom of Malric Inferno. Make sure to select many cards with Melee attack because otherwise Malric Inferno won't be able to help you out as much as he could.
Then there's Pyre, another Fire Summoner. This card will also cost you 3 mana (just like most of the basic ones) and will increase the speed of all your cards. Speed is another important thing to consider when selecting your cards because monsters with a higher speed will attack before the other cards do. So it can be a great advantage if your cards have a high speed value, although I personally use this summoner not that often because I like speed but prefer other Summoners. This card can be helpful though, especially if you have monsters with a lot of attack but not much speed.
Here's my favorite Summoner: Alric Stormbringer, a Water team Summoner. I really love his ability to increase the magic attack of all your monsters by 1. Magic attack is a bit different than Melee attack because it'll damage the health of the attacked monster before it's armor. You see, some cards will have armor which will protect the health of the monster. So magic attack is a great way to decrease their health directly anyway. And with Alric Stormbringer those magic attack will be even higher! So select a lot of magic attack monsters to increase the strength of your line-up. You can identify magic monsters by their symbol (just like the one at the bottom of the Alric Stormbringer card).
Bortus is a Water Summoner who will do exactly the opposite and decrease the magic attack of your opponent. So if you think your opponent will use the Water team (and probably Alric Stormbringer), this card can be really powerful. You can see the teams your adversary used in the last fights on the window appearing once you found an enemy to fight against.
If you want to play with the Earth team Lyanna Natura is one of the possible Summoners. She will increase the health of all your monsters by 1 which is quite nice but I think this ability is not that powerful. If you have monsters with a small amount of health this Summoner can help you out but there are still better options to protect your monsters (like selecting a monster with the Protect ability which will add 2 armor to all other monsters).
The Wizard of Eastwood will deduct 2 armor from all of your enemies monsters. I've never used this Summoner, so I don't know when you should play with him. He should probably only be played when your opponent is using monsters with a lot of armor. You can check that on the "Enemy found" window if you hold your cursor over one of the recently played teams. Of course there's no way to tell what cards your opponent will choose but if you see that he/she has used a lot of monsters with a lot of amor in the past games the Wizard of Eastwood can be a good choice.
Tyrus Paladium is a Summoner of the Life team who will add 1 armor to all of your cards. This is a nice way to protect your monsters because even if an opponent monster attacks with more than 1 damage only your armor will be reduced at the fist hit. So if you want to play with your Life cards and give them a little extra protection Tyrus Paladium is your man.
Well, I actually can't say much about Mother Khala because you already know the +1 Health ability from Lyanna Natura. But if you choose Mother Khala you can increase the health by 1 and also play with the Life team at the same time. So if you want to increase the health instead of the armor of all your cards you should play with this Summoner.
Now we can focus on the Death team. One Summoner you can select here is Zintar Mortalis. He will decrease the Melee attack of all opponent monsters which will only help (obviously) if your adversary selected some monsters with Melee attack. That's why you should take a look at the "Enemy found" window to see what kind of monsters you should be expecting. Play with this Summoner if you think your opponent will use a lot of Melee attack monsters. Or if you want to play with the Death cards and don't want / can choose another Summoner...
The other Death Summoner is Contessa L'Ament. She will decrease the ranged attack of all enemy monsters by 1. What's ranged attack? Some monsters are ranged fighters, so they should be placed at the end of your line-up and they can attack from behind. If you expect your enemy to use a lot of ranged monsters Contessa can help you out a lot. Once again: If you want to get an idea of the cards your opponent likes to play look at the "Enemy found" window.
Last but not least there's the Drake of Arnak. He will add one armor to all of your monsters and since he's a Dragon Summoner you can play him with every team. Yes, every team! But you have to choose one (Fire/Earth/Water/Life/Death) each round, so you can't mix cards from different elements. When you're playing with any team and you want to add armor to your cards (and play with dragon monsters) this is your Summoner.
Of course there are so many other Summoners out there which can be bought. But since Summoners are quite expensive and some of the "free" ones (which can be played without a need to buy them) are powerful as well, I think there's no need to buy Summoner cards as a beginner.
I would recommend trying some of the different teams and Summoners. If you do so you might find the right team for you. Of course you can switch between teams but most players have 1 or 2 favorite teams and it is not unwise to specialize on a few teams.
Improve your line-up
Now that we have dealt a lot with Summoners, we should focus on making your own team even stronger. Of course, tactics play a very important role, but strong cards can make it even easier to win and advance to higher leagues. What are the best cards to buy? That depends on your favorite team, but also on what kind of cards you like. The best thing to do is to just have a look at the market to see what cards are available. And very important: Good cards are not always more expensive! Some cards have a very high price because they are very rare but not necessarily much better. Of course, the very strong cards tend to cost more, but there are also some inexpensive cards that can significantly improve your team. You can buy the cards directly on the Splinterlands site, but I recommend buying on Peakmonster because you can filter them very well and find the right card more easily.
Not enough money to buy new cards? No problem! Cards can also be rented easily and will cost a lot less. I wouldn't just rent my entire team (for a long time) but it can be a good idea to rent some cards to strengthen your team, especially in the short term.
Additional tips
Here are some other tips that might help you out:
- Analyse your opponent's team. That's a good way to understand different kinds of tactics and get inspirations for your line-up.
- If you want to practice a bit you can always change your fights to "Practice" mode which won't affect your ranking.
- Use Splintertalk.io - You can earn SPT here for posting/commenting/upvoting and SPT can be exchanged for the Splinterland ingame currency DEC. Pretty sweet way to increase your power, right? There are also different kind of contests held by the @splinterlands team which can help you out a lot.
I hope I could help you with my tips. Feel free to write a comment if you have any questions.
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Cheers ✌
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Good write up here. I think it’s got a lot of good points! One thing I say to my new guild mates that I think they appreciate and thank me later is to try and focus on one element for a bit and get that summoner up to level 3 at least. It’s a little hard with the prices being as high as they are but they will come down with the advent of the new set soon. Level 1 cards can only get you so far!
One of my favorite summoners is certainly the wizard of Eastwood. The armor reduction is powerful in a lot of battles!
Agreed, leveling up your summoner is essential to reach higher leagues but in my experience you can reach the silver leagues easily with a lvl 1 summoner (if you have the right cards). So I don't think that beginners will need highere lvl summoners but it's good long-term strategy to lvl up at least one summoner.
Thanks for sharing! - @alokkumar121
