Splinterlands Chaos Legion - Meta Shift: What you need to buy today! Pt.1

Yes folks, Chaos Legion is coming in only 5 days time (Dec 8th), and as a Monster Maverick, I've been fortunate enough to be allowed to test the new cards on the QA server. So after looking through all of the new cards, I have some tips of what you can buy TODAY, to benefit from what will likely be the new meta in Chaos Legion.

Disclaimer: The cards and stats on the QA server are subject to change before the release on Dec 8th. Also, this is not financial advice.

New Summoners

First things first, each splinter has a 4 mana, rare summoner (except for dragon whose summoner is legendary, ofc):

My first thoughts are that Fire, Life, and Earth summoners are super strong, and Water is relatively weak compared to these.

In the first post, I will talk about Fire and Life, and possible counters to their new meta.

Fire

Fire has always been a strong speed and melee splinter, and Tarsa augments that personality (+1 melee, +1 speed). She basically makes three existing summoners (Pyre, Malric, and Plado) obsolete by combining all their best attributes. So expect those summoners to sell cheap, at least temporarily; you might be able to snatch them at a bargain. And fast, melee monsters will benefit, especially those from Untamed, Dice and Modern Rewards (anything with the Untamed or Chaos Legion border): Serpentine Spy, Exploding Rats, Fineas Rage, Serpentine Soldier, Aganju, Magnor.

Counters

Monsters with Demoralize and Slow, and of course, our faithful Mylor Crowling, who will be even more broken in CL due to Amplify, which is available via Queen Mycelia and the neutral Venari Spellsmith.

Life

Life has picked up possibly the biggest upgrade in General Sloan (+1 range). Now, it's only one attribute vs Tarsa's two, but it gives Life a totally new strategy and there are some crazy synergies here. Low mana, ranged monsters will benefit the most (especially since you can use Sloan in Little League ruleset): Lensmaster, Herbalist, Thunderbird, Venari Crystalsmith. I also think higher mana ranged monsters will be even better: Lone Boatsman, Evangelist, Silvershield Sheriff, Hero of Beyond. And I'm even picking up a couple of older ranged monsters in Peacebringer (4 mana, 5 attack with Sloan), and Silvershield Archers, which I think might be the most broken card in the whole game with Sloan due to Double Strike (2 mana for... FOUR attack!!). There will also be a new Double Strike ranged monster Pelacor Arbalest in CL, with a whopping 8 attack for 6 mana with Sloan.

Counters

Monsters with Taunt (to counter the many Snipe monsters Life has), Shield (which counters Double Strike nicely), or Return Fire. Or get all three with Shieldbearer! Also I can see a come back of Lir Deepswimmer alongside Venari Spellsmith to boost the Return Fire.

Summary

I'll post additional strategy tips and analysis once I've looked through the other splinters. Good luck to all you Splinterfolks out there, and I hope you get some great new cards on Dec 8th!