Let's speculate a bit on the upcoming Chaos Legion legendary summoners

Hello mates!

In my previous post about CL airdrop, I tried to guess how many CL packs would need to be bought to qualify for guaranteed legendary summoners airdrops:

https://peakd.com/hive-13323/@sepone/some-speculations-about-incoming-chaos-legion-airdrops

Now, it is time to speculate, what would the new legendary summoners be. This is not based on any official information, as airdrop cards and their stats are not revealed until an official announcement. Treat it as a guess and pure speculation.

Prediction on mana requirement
So far, we have available summoners in the mana range from 2 to 7, but not every mana level is covered yet. We have summoners costing us 2,3,4,5 and 7 mana, so there is an obvious gap for the 6 mana slot and my prediction is that new legendary summoners from Chaos Legion edition will fill this gap. It is rather not probable that new summoners will cost only 1 mana, I think it would be a too big revolution for the game. Also implementing summoners with an 8 mana cap would make them useful purely in high mana-cap battles, and we already have Untamed legendary summoners for that purpose. As an alternative mana requirement I bet on 5 because summoners requiring 5 mana (Valnamor, Peakrider, Crypt Mancer, Prince Rennyn, and Plado) are coming only from Beta edition, they are very expensive, there are not many cards in circulation and new players are struggling to get or rent them and use effectively in battle.

Speculation on abilities
While prediction on mana requirements could be rather easy based on the existing cards, trying to figure out the potential abilities for new summoners is difficult.

Let's first think about the number of abilities. Right now, we have only one legendary summoner from the CL edition released. It is Quix the Devious which gives 2 abilities: decrease range attack and decrease speed. I think that new summoners, if they will go into my predicted mana requirements, most probably would grant also 2 abilities, so they will be given more benefits than the existing 4 mana CL summoners but ultimately less than Untamed legendary summoners. In my opinion, it could be one general ability like health/speed/attack increase and one specific ability which we know from Untamed summoners.

Fire element
It is really hard to predict specific abilities but let's give it a try starting from the Fire element. Fire element summoners so far followed the strictly offensive line. Existing summoners grant increased speed, attack as well as offensive abilities like blast or piercing. I think that there are 2 possibilities for a new summoner: provide some defensive abilities or continue with the offensive line. For the offensive line, we would probably see further attack/distance increase together with offensive abilities. I reckon true strike known from Byzantine Kitty or snare as a potential candidate here. I think armor reduction could be also an option here. In the defensive line, I bet that increased armor or life would be a must together with tank heal abilities, as the Fire element is lacking healing abilities right now. I would not expect any abilities leveraging magic attack here, as Fire does not have optimized magic monsters in my opinion. Some not obvious abilities like flying, magic armor, or stone skin could be used as well.

Water element
With the recent Chaos Legion release, Water moves more towards melee builds and the new rare summoner Kelya offers an optimal line of armor increase combined with the speed increase, which is very universal, but rather defensive. Also, there are no healing gaps in this deck anymore, as there is a new common monster with tank heal ability, so combined with Crustacean King water element now offers 2 tank heals in each round. In my opinion, the new legendary summoner could fill the gap for melee attack increase as well as add some offensive abilities like blast or affliction. Interesting would be also to grant dodge to every card in the lineup, this would be something really interesting to see in combination with magic attack.

Earth element
Earth comes very interesting with Chaos Legion edition, as Obsidian + magic build can compete with water magic deck. Scarred Llama Mage has very generic abilities, making it useful for both melee and magic cards, there is also legendary Prince Rennyn available boosting ranged attack. My prediction for the Earth element is that the new legendary summoner will combine generic abilities like speed/armor/life increase together with some offensive abilities. I think that having magic armor granted to all monsters by the new Earth summoner could bring some positive chaos to the gameplay and I bet that this ability may be used here.

**Life element **
Life deck has awesome magic cards, but it still does not have any summoner boosting the magic attack. I bet, that the new legendary summoner would increase the magic attack, so it will make another competition to the new Obsidian builds and old water builds. I would not expect anything related to distance, as General Sloan and Peakrider already provide that. Alternatively, because Life summoners have mainly defensive abilities, I would expect something to strengthen the offensiveness of the life deck, e.g. blast or true strike combined with speed reduction or armor reduction.

Death element
I am not very skilled with playing death deck, but I know that it has many options to act as a magic counter. I think, that a new legendary summoner could extend this magic-counter line adding to every monster in lineup ability such as magic armor or even phase maybe, which would make magic builds very hard to beat such lineups.

Dragon element
Dragons are most difficult for me, as dragons summoners are covering almost everything. We have pure defense summoners (like Drake of Arnak), universal ones (like Byzantine Kitty), and attack-specific (like Selenia Sky or Daria/Delwyn Dragonscale). What is missing here is something bringing a good magic counter and new legendary summoner could be a good fill for this gap. So I would bet that the new summoner will receive some magic counter abilities like magic attack decrease or void or magic reflect or maybe even phase combined with some generic abilities like health increase.

Of course, I can be completely wrong here, as this is pure speculation based on my thoughts. I am just trying to find potential gaps in each element, but maybe the Splinterlands team will be much more creative here and new summoners will change gameplay drastically. However, looking into existing CL cards, I would say it's rather an evolution than a revolution, so I have a feeling that new legendary summoners would follow the same principle here. What do you think, maybe you have some other ideas about how new summoners would be designed? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

Until next time!