This guide is the third in a series I am writing to give beginners an easy way to reach 1000+ MMR and beyond. You can use these tips to either reach Silver I very quickly, or to compete for top 20 bronze to earn seasonal DEC rewards.
I will explain all of the cards that you should get to be fully equipped for 95+% of rulesets using the water splinter. Every time you play water, if you have level 2 or 3 of all these cards, you'll be able to build an S tier meta build in Bronze.
The idea is simple: Rent level 3 copies of all the common cards, level 2 of the rares/epics, and level 1 for the legendary cards. These are the highest levels for Bronze.
Summoners
Summoners are the most important. You need a high level summoner to be able to use higher level copies of other cards. If you have level one summoners, you are doomed. This is the very first thing to rent as soon as you are able to earn any DEC.
For the water splinter, I only use one summoner.
Alric Stormbringer
In my opinion, the entire purpose of the water splinter is to spam aggro magic attacks. In high mana situations, you can lead the Kraken for defense and then literally run all the rest of your cards as your strongest magic attackers. You just spam the fuck out of magic and try to win, simple as that.
That's why I use Alric -- +1 magic is strong.
Monsters
Captain's Ghost
Affliction is a very strong effect against one of the other strongest cards in bronze league: Level 3 Flesh Golem, which heals itself. Affliction stops monsters from healing, shutting down Flesh Golem as well as Death Splinter's Haunted Spirit (to be covered in a future guide).
With Alric Stormbringer's +1 magic buff, this card does 3 magic damage per turn on top of potentially shutting down heals. It's a very strong card for rulesets with 30+ mana.
Coral Wraith
When you have the +1 magic bonus and get to do three damage per turn to the opponent's backline creature via sneak, it is insane. Very few builds will have sufficient defense to survive Wraith on the back as well as your other magic attackers on the front.
Be careful not to split your damage too many ways -- don't use sneak and snipe on the same team, generally speaking -- and you'll find Wraith to be a useful addition to many mid-mana builds.
Crustacean King
This card can be a great sneaky healer to drop on the bench behind a high-health lead tank like Lobstradamus or The Kraken.
Honestly I'm so aggro with water that I often don't even bother using heals. Try some builds with this card and some without it, see how you feel.
Ice Pixie
Very cheap monster with flying and magic damage. Alric boosts this card's magic power to 2 per turn, absolutely insane for just two mana.
Use this on any water builds for low-mana rulesets, it's far too powerful to pass up. However for high mana rulesets (30+) you probably do not want to use this card since you will have even more powerful options.
Lobstradamus
When I don't have enough mana for The Kraken, I use Lobstradamus. Shield power means excellent survivability against many builds, especially when combined with heals from the Crustacean King.
In higher mana builds, I put Lobstradamus on the bench since it's able to push 2 damage per turn (including the Alric boost) and will be good value for an endgame scenario versus the opponent's last 1-2 monsters.
Medusa
Are you noticing a pattern here? Magic, magic, and more magic!
Medusa gets more interesting in Silver league thanks to the addition of stun, but for now in Bronze it's just a good value monster that can push two magic damage per turn when boosted by Alric.
Ruler of the Seas
This card is like Fire Splinter's Fire Elemental or Pyromaniac, but even better.
Three magic damage (including Alric) PLUS BLAST?! so you do damage to adjacent monsters? This is insane!! Ruler of the seas is just a ridiculously strong card and is well worth the cost of buying or renting.
Sea Genie
Sea Genie is a good value magic attacker that becomes very strong when boosted by Alric. Not as great value as some of the other options, this card is usually used for me to fill out very high mana (40+) matches where I'm absolutely stacking the bench with magic damage.
Serpent of Elo
Serpent has OK stats combined with the dodge effect, allowing it to tank some damage and protect your magic attackers.
With dodge effect Serpent avoids more attacks than usual, turning your battle into an RNG FIESTA!! Hooray! Hope you enjoy RNG. This card is not essential but it can be useful, three attack is pretty good. You're just hoping to dodge 1-2 attacks so you can get value out of this card.
Spineback Turtle
Cheaper than Serpent of Elo, higher health/defense. This card doesn't rely on RNG and offers good tankiness for the mana cost. The only downside is the weak melee attack stat of 1.
The Kraken
An absurdly tanky and powerful card, you should use the Kraken as your lead tank for all matches with mana 30+. Nothing can really hard counter this thing, it always gets value.
Conclusions
When I started playing Splinterlands I found water splinter very confusing. The magic-based monsters looked weak at first since I was not calculating them with Alric's +1 magic boost in mind. I tried strategies with melee and ranged monsters, but had little success.
Eventually I realized the true power of water splinter. You just stack as much magic damage as you can. More. Damage. Always. It's really hard to counter strong magic damage in Splinterlands since it ignores armor and never misses.
Opponents will sometimes block you with magic-reducing cards like Unicorn Mustang. Bronze-level magic attackers aren't quite strong enough to brute force through the Mustang, so be sure to watch your opponents' recent matches. If they used Mustang in at least 1-2 of their last five matches, I avoid the magic strategy. Not worth it.
I recommend taking the time to learn Water Splinter as soon as possible. You need to learn the power of magic if you want to really understand the meta of Splinterlands.
Thanks for sharing! - @ashikstd
Talked about a lot of goodies, didn't you?
Well write-up.