Welcome back to the Deck Building Challenge - make a $50 Bronze Deck and then improve on it with just $100 more to get a top level Silver deck! In our [last post]
Water Splinter, and today we're going to be taking on Life! This is actually my most used Splinter personally, so I'm looking forward to this one. So without further ado - The Summoner!
The General's Orders
Pretty unsurprisingly, the Summoner of choice is General Sloan! The cheapest Summoner in the entire game - criminally underrated in my opinion! There are so many strong Ranged monsters in the Life and Neutral card pools, and any Summoner that is under $2.50 per BCX offers a huge amount of value in my mind! For ease of math and due to how much the price is fluctuating at the moment, I'm going to call them $2.50 each, meaning our budget for the rest of our cards is $37.50 for Bronze and $87.50 for Silver. Now as before - let's sort our Tanks first!
Guardian Angels
We're going big for our first card - both in Mana and Dollar cost! We're kicking off with a Legendary: Uriel The Purifier!
This 11 Mana beast of a card is going to be our main Tank for the class. In Bronze he's a solid meat shield with 16 effective HP, and while he only attacks every other turn, that 6 Damage is terrifying! In Silver he gets even better, keeping himself topped up with his Self-Heal ability! He's a very difficult guy to take out and is going to be our center-piece in our high mana games. The 1 copy we need in Bronze will set us back $8.39, and our Silver level 2 will be $25.17.
Now we've gone that big, we need something a bit more chill, and for our Low-Mana tank we've got one of the cheapest cards in the game: Pelacor Conjurer!
What. A. Card! For just 2 Mana, 5 HP at Bronze and 6 HP at Silver is extremely efficient, and picking up Magic Reflect is an added bonus n Silver! With High Speed and Flying, any non-magic attacks will have a hard time hitting, so that big HP pool goes even further! Even better, for Bronze he only costs us $0.42 for Level 3 and Silver only 1.80 for Level 5! A great Little League and low mana battle Tank.
Next up is a complete Staple: Soul Fiend
Same as yesterday, extremely important to block an extra attack for 0 mana cost, and I will likely be recommending the Fiend in every Splinter. This one will be setting us back just $6.00 for both Silver and Bronze.
So with these 3 Tanks for our Splinter, let's take a look at our remaining budget!
For Bronze we still have $22.69, and for Silver we have $54.53!
Next up we're going to be picking up some Ranged Damage Dealers to pair with our General Sloan's Summoner Buffs!
Let's Give These Guys a Shot
First up is our big expensive Mana Cost Monster, the Prismologist!
This girl is a Blast to play with! 4 Damage with Sloan and Blast to boot - in the right situation that's up to 8 Damage a turn! Even in the common situation of her hitting the front line, she'll be dealing 6 a turn. She's great for dealing with Armor and Divine shields, and for just $1.35 she's a bargain. As much as I'd like to level her to Level 3 in Silver, it's a little out of our budget sadly, so we'll just stick with 1 BCX in both leagues.
Next up is possibly the MVP of the entire deck, Supply Runner
I do not have words for how powerful Swiftness is! Once the Modern format hits, Supply Runner will be the only source of Swiftness in Silver - no matter what Splinter you play I would recommend picking this guy up! In Bronze this card could be skipped over for this Deck, but I would recommend starting to get your copies while he's cheap - and he's still a solid damage to mana ratio without the Swiftness. For Bronze he'll be costing us $1.64 and in Silver he goes up to $7.02 - but I feel certain he won't be this cheap forever!
Finally, we have another card I feel certain will increase in price when she's out of print - The Venari Crytalsmith!
Another Tank heal for Uriel - or a first for Pelacor Bandit that sneaks into Little League! Alongside a solid damage output and a respectable HP pool for if the opponent tries to Sneak their way to victory - this is a great card. Alongside this - she's one of the best ways to increase your collection power for the dollar cost! An incredible card to be picking up - and you might already even own a few from your daily rewards! If you don't, maxing her at Bronze will cost you $0.55 and in Silver just $2.75.
And that's all the Ranged monsters we'll be buying! While it feels odd to only own a few of the cards that Sloan will be buffing, these are the real standouts and form a big core of your team. This leaves us with $19.15 to spend in Bronze and $43.41 for Silver - so where are we spending it?
Simply Magical
As it turns out, the Life Splinter has an extremely solid Magic core too! These mages tend to have some very solid abilities to support our team or hinder the opponent - so are great options to own in our collection!
Once again, we're starting this section big with the other Chaos legion Legendary for Life - Adelade Brightwing!
I love to have a repair card available - especially when my Tank has Heal for himself! Adelade paired with Uriel is an extremely hard to beat combination - your opponent has to get through so much sustain before they kill Uriel, and in Silver they'll have to do it again! These two work so well together that between the two they're going to take a large amount of our budget - but it's worth it! Our 1 BCX in Bronze will cost us $9.15 and in Silver we'll be spending $27.45.
For our last couple of cards we're going a lot cheaper - we'll start with one of my favourites from Chaos Legion - Time Mage:
Remember how much I loved Supply Runner for speed control? Well Time Mage offers a similar ability - and is playable in lower mana games too! While I love to play the two together, just playing one or the other depending on ruleset is great too, and owning both gives great versatility. At Bronze we're spending $1.00 on her and in Silver she'll cost us $5.00.
Our final card is one of the cheapest Epics in the game - Djinn Renova!
Good Damage, HP and Strengthen is a great support ability! And with her being so cheap it's a complete no brainer to own her in my eyes. Magic Damage is also very strong in Bronze with less Void in the format, so she's great at both levels! In Bronze we're using $2.12 to get her to level 2, and in Silver for level 3 she'll set us back $5.30.
Final Costs and Thoughts
Here we've been able to make 2 Solid Decks - and even had a bit to spare! Interestingly, the cards used are exactly the same in both Tiers - just Levelled up! This is actually really great news as you can build the Bronze deck and over time pick up the extra copies you need slowly if you don't want to drop the $150 at once.
Thanks for reading this far! If you enjoyed please consider leaving an upvote and a comment - it really encourages me to keep making this sort of content! Also feel free to leave your thoughts! I'd love to have a discussion if you think I missed something or overrate something!
Next in this series is going to be the Earth Splinter - the Bronze and Silver Magic Menace! I'll be looking to post that one tomorrow - so I hope to see you there!