First, lets go trough gameplay!

This is link to one of my Ranked battles that was very intense, tough opponent I must admit :
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_8a0fd14dc862518e3b5685f1706bf65e&ref=frkiana

So lets go from the start :
First you start by picking your summoner - Summoner card determinate which Splinter did you pick. You can choose one of the following : Fire, Water, Earth, Life, Death and Dragon Splinter. After you choose one of them, you will start picking your cards monsters which will fight on the battlefield. Summoner gives there abilities to your whole team or debuff on whole enemy team, like I did in this battle, I have chosen Earth Splinter Wizard of Eastwood which takes away 2 armor from every monster in enemy team.

After we have picked our Summoner we are going to put our monsters on battlefield, depending on available Mana (every time is different). Higher in league, more rules to the play. In novice you dont have rules, it is normal combat. In this ruleset we have :
1.Healed out - all healing abilities are removed from monsters and summoners.
2.Lost legendaries - you cant use legendary cards in this battle.

Ok, so after we established what rules are applied we can think about which strategic we should use. In this case, summoner or monster with healing would not have sense, because of the rule.

On first place and second place I put monsters that can tank damage from enemy team.

So on the first place we have Venari Knifer (6 Mana) with abilities : Thorns - which returns damage to meal attackers and Backfire - if monster is missed by attack, it will return 2 damage to its attacker.

On the second place I have put Failed Summoner (2 Mana) : Magic reflect - reflect reduced magic damage to attacker and Demoralize - which reduces melee attack of all enemy monsters.

On the third place I have put Screeching Vulture (3 Mana) : Opportunity - attack monster with the lowest health and can attack from any position, Flying - has increased chance of evading melee or range monster that has no flying ability and Scavenger - gain 1 max health for each monster that died on the battlefield.

In the forth place we have Goblin Thief (4 Mana) : Sneak attack - can attack from any position and he targets last monster in the enemy team and Shatter - enemy armor is destroyed when hit with this ability.

In fifth place there comes Venari Seedsmith : Scavenger and Poison - attack from this monster have chance to apply poison, which does automatic damage from the beginning at each round after poison is applied.

And finally last, sixth place goes to Acid Shooter : Scattershot - this monster attacks hit random enemy target.

Hope this post was helpful! Enjoy and till the next time!