Greetings,
Welcome to my guide on how to start building your Splinterlands collection with a limited budget and still make it as competitive as possible. Yeah, after a long crypto winter, we might be short of some assets and people are carefully planning their next moves. I hope this guide, or a collection of tips, might give you some good ideas on how to approach the game and make the most of it.
At this point, I assume you have played a couple of games and bought the Spellbook which allows you to earn from battles. After that, it's time to take a look at your options on how to start the building process.
Although buying packs, ripping them open, and hoping for Gold Foil or Legendary cards is a fun way to start, I would still start the building by buying cards directly from the market. This is for a couple of reasons:
- The card prices have come down a lot within a year. I mean a lot! In my opinion, there really isn't a better time to begin a Splinterlands journey than it is now. |
- Although you might get lucky and pull an expensive legendary card and flip that on the market for other cards, buying from the market is the safe and focused option. For example, you could spend quite a lot of time opening packs just to get enough copies to get a certain summoner upgraded.
So what to buy then? I'm sure the best ideas come from watching your opponent's strategies and studying rulesets and abilities but offer you a "fast lane" success(hopefully!), I've gathered a couple of good ideas here.
Let's take a look:
LOW MANA CARDS
You should never underestimate cards that might appear weak at first look. In especially lower mana battles these low-mana cards become very useful as you can use them to fill the empty slots on your roster.
Even cards like a level 1 CHAOS AGENT here can have a function as your opponent will have to waste one attack on it. If placed well, the enemy might use one of their more powerful attacks on Chaos Agent or in a best-case scenario, the Agent might even dodge the strike.
- Chaos Agent is currently trading at $0.04 on the market.
- Dodge on level 2 (5 cards needed)
- It is a Neutral monster meaning it can be used with every Splinter.
CREEPING OOZE has similar stats to Chaos but even on the first level, it has the Slow ability meaning it will reduce the speed of all enemy units by 1.
This can be very useful if you have scouted the enemy team and noticed their speed levels are pretty much the same as yours. With Creeping Ooze, you can take advantage and take out their key monsters before they take you out!
However, this monster belongs to earlier editions and cannot be used in modern format battles.
Being an older card means Creeping Ooze is a bit more expensive than Chaos Agent for example costing $0.29 on the market.
What's even better than cards that cost only one mana point are cards that don't cost mana at all. FURIOUS CHICKEN is one of those and even though it's not a legendary card by rarity, I think it's safe to say it is quite legendary.
There's no better feeling to have than when you have spent all your mana but notice you have still one slot left...enter the chicken. Just like the Ooze, Chicken is a neutral unit and can be thrown into any battle with any summoner.
The bad news is that Furious Chicken can also be used only wild format battles. Besides that, it is rather expensive costing $1.75 at the moment.
There aren't many zero mana cards in the game but in addition to the Chicken, there is a fiend for every Splinter - except for Dragon.
These legendary guys are bound to their Splinter but being Chaos Legion Edition cards they can be used with both formats, Modern and Wild. Fiends also pack a punch as they have a melee attack of one point. This can become very handy with some rulesets that allow them to attack from the middle for example.
Even though they don't cost mana at all, they do cost DEC. Here you can see their current market prices and stats.
Beautiful, aren't they? 🙂
SUMMONERS
I was the one who was neglecting summoners for quite a while and learned their importance when I advanced to higher leagues and hit the wall. You see, the level of the summoner determines the level of monsters you can use in certain leagues.
In other words, I had a lot of upgraded monsters but couldn't benefit from their improved stats or new abilities since my summoners were still on lower levels. Therefore it's essential that you upgrade summoners first, or hand in hand with monster cards.
The good news is that now is the absolutely best time to acquire and upgrade summoners - especially Chaos League ones.
For example, if you wanted to upgrade GENERAL SLOAN here to the second level you would need a total of 5 cards which would cost only $1.1 at the moment. When I started to upgrade that particular card the price was about $2 for a single card!
Pro tip:
Keep checking out the card market daily to find some bargains. Just the other day there were a few copies of General Sloan selling for $0.14 and they went fast. It's also a good idea to plan ahead and make a buy now and then if the price is right, who knows, they might shoot up again any day now.
SPECIALISTS
If I were to start building my deck from scratch with a limited budget, I would first look out for cheap cards with some special ability.
Tank units are the ones you put in the front line to absorb the damage and that way protect the rest of the team. You usually want them to have plenty of heath and some armour too. Also, a tank with a certain ability can be a real game-changer when played against the right Splinter.
My favourite tank abilities are:
Shield - reduces damage from melee and ranged attacks by 50%
Void - reduces magic damage by 50%
Void Armor - magic attacks hit armour before reducing health
A solid and inexpensive tank example is MYCELIC INFANTRY which costs only $0.05.
Tanks might take quite a many hits during a single round so a tank healer could be a good addition to your deck.
VENARI CRYSTALSMITH is a healer card for the Life Splinter but there are some others too with low budget-friendly price tags:
Venari Crystalsmith - $0.03
Goblin Psychic (Earth) - $0.05
Merdaali Guardian (Water) - $0.21
Units with Heal ability could be good choices to be used as a tank unit. Another healing ability, Triage, is a bit rarer but if you are willing to spend some extra, I would recommend taking a look at SPIRIT HOARDER who will heal monsters that are not in the first spot.
Last but not least, I would perhaps find monsters with Protect ability. It will give all of your units +2 armour which is very useful against melee/ranged lineups as well as with rulesets like Earthquake.
Water Splinter has a cheap Protect monster, Venari Wavesmith, but another great choice would be ARKEMIS THE BEAR.
Perhaps best suited for higher mana battles, Arkemis cost a massive 12 mana points but for that price, you'll get not only protection but also plenty of health and attack strength. Besides, Arkemis is a neutral unit so it will be usable whenever you get those 99-mana battles.
- Venari Wavesmith - $0.03
- Arkemis The Bear - $0.10
There we have it! Besides these, I would also study other abilities such as Sneak, Snipe, and Opportunity. Even today, I'm still coming up with new ideas on how to utilizes them in fresh ways.
Conclusion
Once you think you have the core of your deck set, it's time to take them out for a test drive. Learn from your enemies and watch closely how the choices they made correlate with different rulesets. Also, If you have a certain budget reserved for Splinterlands cards, I would spend it gradually, playing some games after each buy to learn your weak spots and learn what kind of abilities you would need to fix them.
I would also keep my deck somewhat balanced, meaning not to neglect a certain Splinter even though it might not be your favourite one. The daily focus keeps changing and the more competitive your Splinters are, the more rewards you'll receive. Also, you might get a powerful Soulbound card which would be pretty lonely and useless if there wasn't a good team around it.
That being said, I have put some effort into building a quite strong Water deck but a single powerful Splinter won't get you that far as it might be often unavailable or it could take time when it's on focus. Perhaps my advice could be to find your favourite Splinter and focus on that while not forgetting to add to other Splinters too.
Also, you might want to keep an eye out for Dragon and Neutral monsters as you can use them to fill the gaps on your other Splinters.
Disclaimers:
Thumbnail background image made with Canva
Other pictures are screenshots from Splinterlands