Exploring High-Speed Fire Aggro Strategies

Looking at my Splinterlands collection, Pyre is my highest ranked fire summoner.

I'm not sure what inspired me to buy the golden version of this guy back when I was first starting to learn Splinterlands. I think it was the first summoner I used -- mono red aggro is usually an easy starting point in these kinds of games -- and the gold was too affordable to resist.

Looking back, IDK if it was the best fire summoner to work with. I'll do some quick calcs on the market price to see what that suggests.

Total market value for each card:

Pyre: $9,452
Talia Firestorm: $9,390
Malric Inferno: $60,065
Yodin Zaku: $70,065
Plado Emberstorm: $26,583

Pyre and Talia are worth WAY less than the others. If there is some correlation between market price and the strength of the cards (probably), then Pyre is really not a great card.

Y I K E S

Nonetheless since I don't have enough HBD at the moment to buy a level 2+ Malric Inferno, I'll roll with the Pyre and see what I can learn.

Using High Speed To My Advantage

After playing eight games in today's session, here's some of my impressions.

I started at rating 899 and ended up at 973. Not too bad. Top 20 for bronze league starts at rating 1,415 so I still have a ways to go before I get there. Currently I am rank 652nd on the bronze leaderboards, not very impressive.

Some things I learned today...

Lesson 1: Speed strats need to kill things, ideally multiple things, before the opponent's first move.

This is the name of the high speed aggro game. If at least one monster is not dead for the opponent before they do anything, I am going to lose. As soon as we're going multiple turns with no dead monsters, I'd be way better off using Malric. Pyre's lower damage output quickly results in substantially less damage.

Killing one, or even multiple, opposing monsters is the key. This drastically reduces the opponent's DPS or stifles one of their combos, which provides value in exchange for Pyre's lower damage.

Which leads me to the next thing.

Lesson 2: Fire Elemental is the strongest card for this strategy

This card is the only hope of consistently killing 1+ of the opponent's monsters on turn one. If it can survive to turn two, it's even crazier.

This is thanks to the ability Blast: Does additional damage to Monsters adjacent to the target Monster.

Of course I apparently only have the level one version. I am starting to see some serious holes in my Pyre strategy/collection. Luckily this card is quite affordable, I'm planning on upgrading it to level 3 for increased speed and health in the next few days.

The other card I am making big use of, and this one I do have at a higher level, is Serpentine Spy:

So far, the Serpentine Spy combo with Fire Elemental is the best way to get Ws using Pyre that I have found. I'll upgrade the Fire Elemental ASAP and see how that helps.

There is a lot more I could say about this playstyle, but I think that's enough for today. I will probably get some more games in later and see if I can crack 1,000+ rating at least. IDK if top 20 is feasible this season, all I know is the best idea is to try my best and see if I can do it.

In the long run I would like to aim for #1 bronze league. I know it will take a lot more work and card collecting to make that feasible. Until then, the goal is to learn.

Do you use Pyre at all? If so what are your strategies?