Splinterlands is a play to earn trading card game with mechanics like Magic the Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh! Thanks to blockchain technology, players can truly own in-game assets and earn while playing games now. In this guide, you will learn about the best combo to win as a beginner player.
Using the free starter cards, the best splinter to start off is the Water Splinter. In this guide, we will dive deep down to the combo and guide you through why this is the best splinter to net some wins and move up the rank to Bronze league by just using the free starter cards.
Water Splinter
In Splinterlands, there are 3 types of damage:
- Melee damage
- Range damage
- Magic damage
Water Splinter is known for its magic damage monsters. The advantage of using magic damage monsters is that magic damage will bypass armor and deal damage straight to the monster’s health.
The Summoner
Alric Stormbringer is the best summoner for a starter deck with +1 Magic Attack for all creatures which is extremely powerful, considering that Water Splinter is full of low mana cost, 1 damage magic monsters.
By using several of those magic monsters in a match, Alric Stormbringer will double the magic damage for each of them, increasing their magic attack from 1 to 2 which is a huge buff. The strategy is to kill off your opponent’s monsters quickly with low mana cost magic monsters.
First Position, The Tanker
Serpent of Eld & Frozen Soldier are the most capable tank you’ll have within the Water Splinter Starter Cards. Both the Dodge ability of Serpent of Eld and Shield ability of Frozen Soldier has a chance to evade or reduce damage from Melee and Range attacks.
The Shield ability is a little better which halves the incoming damage, rounded up. Also, an incoming damage of just 1 will be ignored totally, making this ability very strong in the lower leagues as most of the monsters deals just 1 damage per turn.
Both of these tankers’ weakness is against Magic damage monsters as magic damage will bypass the monster’s armor and deal damage directly to to monster’s health. If you see your opponent’s match history is mostly Water Splinter with Magic damage monsters, the best alternative is to use Spineback Turtle on first position as tanker. Another possible tanker against magic damage is the neutral card, Peaceful Giant which does not have any attack of its own but have a huge health of 8.
If you want to spend a little, Sea Monster is a great tanker for Water Splinter which costs 8 mana and comes with 8 health and the Heal ability. The huge health combined with health regeneration will make sure it’ll stay alive long enough for your damage dealers to take down your opponent’s monsters most of the time.
Sea Monster is selling for around $6 at the time of publication.
Position 2 to 5, The Damage Dealers
These four Magic damage monsters are the most common for Water Splinter: Elven Mystic, Enchanted Pixie, Ice Pixie, and Medusa. For 20 mana battles, you may use all four of these monsters.
They are all 1 Magic damage monsters, combined with Alric Stormbringer, they’ll become 2 Magic damage monsters that will take out opponent’s monsters fast.
Last Position, Back Defense
One of the weakness of Water Splinter is against sneak attack monsters which attacks your last position monster. Water Elemental will come into play here to help your Magic damage monsters to stay alive longer and continue dishing out damage. The Heal ability will help Water Elemental stay alive longer and most of the time is enough to neutralize the damage dealt by monsters with Sneak ability.
Bonus
One of the rare reward card, Venari Wavesmith will be a great addition to this deck. The Protect ability which gives 2 additional armor to all your monsters is really powerful as Melee and Range attack will deal damage to armor first. This monster just costs 1 extra mana compared to Medusa and Elven Mystic and gives such a big buff to your team.
This card costs $2.77 at the time of publication.