You start the game, go through the tutorial, first success, you defeat the evil guy with the death summoner (sorry for the spoiler for those who haven't started yet) and there you are, with the starter pack of cards. You see numbers and colors and okay, you choose one, you think you start to understand the game mechanism.

You are so confident you buy your spellbook, and now you're officially a full-value member of the Splinterlands community.

To be honest, you have no idea what are good and bad cards in the game, but you feel the urge of truly owning some assets so you search the secondary market and buy some cards that are - maybe? probably? hopefully? - not a waste of money, but at least they look stunning, thanks to the designer team behind the game.

Of course, you don’t buy anything that is part of the base set, because why da hell would ya do that, eh?

Now That You’re All Set, You Jump Into the Battlegrounds!

You think it’s not a big deal, put the tough guy first, then put in some others to fill the so-called mana cap. It’s not atomic physics!

Maybe the first few times it works, - holy crap, you almost crawled up to the Bronze league, a few weeks and you hella’ being a Champion, right?! This “Lava guy” will surely beat down everyone!

And suddenly, out of nowhere

…you lose. And again. And again.

What the f&ck?! I did everything right, just like in the tutorial! I had a strong one in the first position, a guy with the green hand sign for second, and some “ninja” and archer guys.

This is a stupid game, it has no logic, it all depends on luck! - At least that’s what I thought…

I quit! Few weeks later you start again, because you want to open those reward chests. But this time, you are wiser. You start reading some guides.

1. Tank Is Not Always The Toughest of Your Cards

When the mana cap is above 30, I usually (but not always) use a tough guy, yes. But many times - and by now I can say most of the times - you have to put more attention to your strategy rather than just trying to put in as many strong monsters as possible.

Sometimes, you have like 1 or 2 jolly jokers, who win you the rest of the games if they have time to use their abilities well. And it means that the rest of the team is just support.

If you take a look at an Alric team, you can see that many times there’s no tank at all, or a tank is a card with no attack at all, but the ability of flying or dodge, and even high speed.
That is because you need two or at maximum three rounds to destroy the enemy with your low-health high-magic Pixies.

If you put a strong card first, like the Sea Monster who can also heal, the rest of the team will be the support. Maybe it will work, but for how long your tank can hold back the enemies? And after your tank is gone, your high-magic attackers are one-hit kills.

Also, sometimes you want to put in two weaker tanks rather than one strong.
When I play fire, many times I choose a medium-strength tank for the first place, and for the second place, I put Cerberus

2. Magic Can Attack From Anywhere, But Rangers Can’t

I know, I know…Probably this was explained in the tutorial. But when you start the game, there’s everything new, and you don’t really know where to pay the most of your attention, what is important and what’s not.

I had to spend weeks in the game to really understand the differences between magic and ranged attack, and the potential a magic monster has.

Sometimes (many times) the magic monster of your team will decide whether you win or lose, or your defense against the opponent’s magic.

No matter how strong your tank is along with the rest of your team, if all your monsters can be killed in two rounds because you’re not prepared for a magic attack.

A few things to consider:

• Magic attack will never miss
• Magic attack can be used from anywhere, even in first position, different from ranged attack
• Magic attack is not reduced against monsters with “shield” ability (like Living Lava)
• Magic attack hits life points directly

3. Neutrals. There are Neutrals.

Neutral monsters are real jolly jokers in the game! You can use them with ANY summoner, so they can help you out in any battle. If you want to stay low-budget but still plan to upgrade some monsters, try to upgrade neutrals first, so you don’t actually spend on one kind of deck only.

There are some basic neutrals I advise you to buy until they are relatively cheap like Sand Worm or Goblin Mech. They are very useful, and won me many fights, even in Silver III.

4. Summoner Levels

Maybe it’s not new to you, that summoners can be levelled up. For me, it wasn’t really clear why it is so important. First time I realized something was wrong was when I first got my gold foil epic card, and all the time I tried to use it there was an error message that my summoner’s level was too low.

If I could start this game again, the first thing I’d do would be level up as many summoners as possible, since in higher leagues you can’t really win with level one summoners and low-level monsters that are worthless to upgrade until your summoners can’t actually summon them. (Simple, huh?)

5. The Importance of Speed

First I thought attack is the most important, then maybe health and special ability forms out the strategy of your game.

But! Speed is one of your most important things to watch out, since if your enemies are too fast (or you’re too slow) no matter how tough your monsters are, you won’t actually have time to use them. They will be destroyed before they could attack.

Let me show you an example:

• You have 10 attack - 10 health - 1 speed tank. Let’s say you have a 2 speed - 3 attack -4 health ranged or magic monster, and one with 1 attack - 2 health - 3 speed; let’s say it’s a reach ability monster.
• Your enemy has a 4 attack - 4 health - 3 speed tank, a 2 attack - 3 speed - 2 health ranged monster, 3 attack - 3 speed - 1 health ranged and 1 attack - 3 speed - 1 health monster.

You’ve built your strategy around your tough tank, but in the first round he gets killed, since he is too slow, and before he could attack, he gets killed.

I’m not proving speed is more important than other stats of a monster, I’d rather say it’s just as important as everything else. It defines the dynamics and rhythm of the game, the slower player will go for a defensive strategy, and the faster will be the more aggressive one.

Also, the faster your monster is, the more likely he can dodge the attack. The more difference in speed is between two monsters, the higher probability will the slower monster miss the attack against the faster one.

I hope you found this article helpful, let me know what you missed from the tutorial when you started the game!