With Chaos Legion out for a few weeks now I am starting to build my future decks. I decided to cover a few splinters and Life is one of them. At the moment I am crafting m decks in theory and then renting the most important cards to see how they work in the current meta.
With Life splinter, the most obvious path is Ranged Damage with the use of the new summoner, General Sloan. While testing the new Life strategy I noticed one big disadvantage, speed. Another direction I noticed is Anti-magic with the use of Amplify ability. We also can use Thorns but the only monster in Life splinter with that ability is Crystal Jaguar and that is not enough for my taste. If we add Dragons to the mix then it gets more interesting with Djinn Chwala and summoners like Drake of Arnak, Brighton Bloom and Quix the Devious.
I am planning to build a Silver deck and my goal is to be competitive in the Silver league. So I will be looking at maxed-out cards for the Silver league. Those cards may not be good for the Bronze league or leagues above Silver.
Ranged Life Deck
The most interesting card in Life splinter that everyone was talking about was Pelacor Arbalest. At first, this is a very interesting card with 2 range damage and Double Strike ability.
When used with General Sloan he has 3 ranged attack which means that he will deal 6 damage per turn. Not bad right. I noticed that he will miss a lot. And I mean a lot. There is a lot of monsters with high speed, especially in Water and Dragon splinters which Pelacor Arbalest just cant hit. That means that on average he will do 3 damage per turn. If we compare him with Axemaster, for one mana we get a much better card with the same damage output.
Prismologist is one of the cards that should carry a Life splinter. The card is simply amazing with 4 damage and Blast ability. The armor is really nice as it means that Prismologist is well protected even if you play this card in the last spot.
With General Sloan as a summoner, we are talking about 5 ranged damage in the Silver league. The only downside is speed. It could happen that your Prismologist miss and all that damage will go to waste. But despite the low speed, Prismologist is an amazing card.
If you want to play Ranged Life then you need some more cards that are not optional in my opinion. One card is too good to skip and that is Lone Boatman. I know, just another common card but this card does have Repair ability. For only 5 mana this guy is a great choice. You can even stick him in the last spot because of that 2 armor.
Repair ability is amazing in combination with Hero of Beyond, Crystal Jaguar or Shieldbearer. Prices are the only problem as Lone Boatman is going up for 2 USD per BCX so you will need 120 USD if you want your level 5 card with Repair ability. Hero of Beyond is good addition even without Lone Boatman because of his Close Range ability.
One of the most important cards for Life splinter is certainly Venari Crystalsmith. Amazing reward card that you can buy for only 0.60 USD per BCX at the moment. If you are planning to compete in the Silver league I recommend that you level up this card to level 4. That way you will get an additional attack, health, and speed which is very important.
I can't imagine any of my Life splinter teams without Venari Crystalsmith as Tank heal ability is one of the best in the game.
There are a few more cards that you will want to use with the Ranged Life team. Pelacor Conjurer is one of those cards. You will use this guy as a meat shield that will often dodge an enemy attack due to his Flying ability and high speed.
Silvershield Sheriff is an amazing card to use in high mana matches. It is expensive to level up but with General Sloan on your side, it could be worth it if you have some spare cash. But better have deep pockets as this guy goes for 4.4 USD per BCX, and you need 25 of these bad boys(I remember when it was 0.20 USD per BCX).
Of course, you can always use Evangelist but there is already enough high mana cost cards for your team.
To be honest you will probably use Herbalist and Xenith Archer most often as those are cheap options when we are talking about price and mana.
Ranged Utility cards
Because of its very low-speed Ranged Life splinter does need some help from utility cards. Either you need to protect your backline with Shieldbearer's Taunt ability or you need to give your monsters some additional armor. If you plan to use Shieldbearer then Scavo Hireling will be of great help. Most of the players can't afford Lone Boatman for 120 USD so we need to use the next best thing. Repairing armor on Shieldbearer will be important as this will give some time to your backline to do some damage. Venari Crystalsmith is also a very good card to keep your Shieldbearer alive.
If you go for a team without Shieldbearer and decide for some meatshield like Pelacor Conjurer and Hero of Beyond as an off-tank then some additional armor can come in handy. Truthspeaker with his Protect ability can give your ranged monsters much-needed survivability.
Ranged Summary
Ranged Life is an interesting set of cards in my opinion. Damage is really strong with General Sloan buff but you never know are you going to hit your target. These cards are just too slow in comparison with Water or Earth splinters. When used with some utility cards that provide buffs/debuffs you can win quite a lot. You can be sure that stacking low mana ranged cards will not work. This is not another Bronze league magic spam. In Chaos Legion, we need to think about our positioning, abilities, strengths, and weaknesses more than ever before.
Tactics
I will show you a few teams about what I just said and I hope that this will help you in your upcoming battles.
Feel free to add some other cards as well. Lensmaster could be a great option if you are not on a budget. Another great card that you could use is Halfling Alchemist. If you can't buy these two cards try to rent them. Level one can be found for a few DEC per day. Pelacor Conjurer seems like a good "meat shield" with 6 health and decent speed that could allow him to dodge some attacks. When buffed, your backline will deal 7 damage per turn. Not bad for only 14 mana. Venari Crystalsmith is great because of Heal ability that could Pelacor Conjurer last even longer.
there is a lot of possibilities when playing high mana battles with Ranged Life splinter. Due to low speed, I am often trying to rely on Shieldbearer that protects my fragile backline. I like Venari Crystalsmith because of the Heal ability that will help my Shieldbearer to survive a bit longer. Lone Boatman is a card that I am missing due to the high price for a maxed-out copy for the Silver league. As speed is the biggest weakness of Life splinter I added Time Mage that could help with that problem. When thinking more about the speed problem, it seems to me more and more that Lone Boatman or Truthspeaker are a way better solution for survivability.
Summary
Cards from Life splinter are not that expensive and they should drop in price even more. Maybe Life is mine(and maybe yours) cheap ticket into the high Silver league or even Gold league. There are also other options for Life splinter that are not ranged oriented and I will cover those options in my next article. If you like this kind of article please like and share. If you have some better ideas about the Ranged Life splinter let me know down in the comments.
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