Under Bronze $50/Silver $150 Deck Building Challenge: Part 1 - Water!

Splinterlands can be an expensive game if you want to climb up to the top levels - but it doesn't have to be! With the launch of Chaos Legion, I believe every Splinter can create an extremely competitive deck at a low budget. This series aims to prove that - by taking $50 to make a Bronze deck, and then building on that with another $100 to make a Silver level deck that will be able to compete right at the caps of the tier! They may not push the leaderboards, but I believe with these cards you will be able to win a higher % of your daily games, climb higher than you previously could, and even hold your own in some tournaments for extra earnings! Every day this week I will be releasing a guide for a different Splinter, and today I'm beginning with Water!

Kelya Frendul

The Summoner of choice for Water is going to be Kelya Frendul:

Up until very recently this was up to debate, as Vera Salacia was almost a whole dollar cheaper per BCX - but at current market prices they are almost identical at roughly $4 per BCX! This makes Kelya the obvious choice in my mind - in my opinion Kelya is the most powerful Summoner from Chaos Legion and at $4 a copy fits right into our budget!

In Bronze we'll be needing 5 of these, leaving us with with $30. In Silver we need 25! This makes our remaining budget for Silver $50 - not a huge amount more than we have for Bronze but we can make this work!

The Big Boys

Next in my priorities for deckbuilding is some solid Tanks. Keeping my damage dealers alive is essential - and some of these cards can do a lot of damage themselves too!

First of all, our main tank, Diemonshark:

Solid speed, HP pool and Armor make this guy difficult to get rid of - and with Trample at base and gaining Enrage in Silver he's going to be swinging hard himself! Diemonshark is going to be our Primary Tank, placed at the first position in almost every game where we have the Mana. Again, in Bronze we need 5 ($2.25) of these and in Silver we need 25 (11.25)!

Our next Tank card is going to stay at Level 1 in both our Bronze and Silver decks, and it's the Wave Brood:

Wave Brood is our distraction - place it at the back and let it soak up the Magic and Ranged shots aimed at Diemonshark with it's Taunt ability, giving our shark even more time to Trample through the team.

While we could take the Wave Brood to Level 3 in our Silver deck, it would only gain 1 HP and 1 Ranged Damage for over $20 extra, which is not good value! We'll pick up just 1 BCX for both decks, at $2.34.

After these two cards we have a couple of "Off-Tanks". They are not our main Tanks, but they fill a similar role: Stall and take hits while our Damage Dealers deal with our Opponents team!

The first one we're grabbing is the Torrent Fiend:

Alongside Kelya, this guy is gonna soak up 2 attacks a lot of the time (Unless you're vs a Magic team) - and not take up any Mana while doing it! Again, levelling this card does nothing meaningful for us (Until at least Diamond!)m so we're just grabbing 1BCX at $6.2.

Our final "Tank" style card is Demented Shark - our first venture out of Chaos Legion and into rewards!

A Modern reward with decent HP and an incredible Ability in Inspire! Inspire is an incredibly strong ability, and we will be taking advantage of it heavily with our Damage Dealers later on. We will be looking to squeeze this card in just behind a main Tank like Diemonshark, letting our team get the +1 Melee benefits for longer as this doesn't get focused. Once again, just the one copy is good enough for us - although this would be an upgrade to consider as in lower mana matches this will often be our main Tank due to limitations on playing the Diemonshark. Our 1 copy for the challenge will set us back $0.54.

At the end of buying our tanks, we have $18.67 left for Bronze and $29.67 left for Silver - so lets put some of that to work by looking at our Damage Dealers!

A Sneaky Strategy

We really want to base our team around the Demented Shark's Inspire ability, so a lot of our damage is going to come from Sneak and Opportunity attacks! To start with, we're dipping back into the reward set and picking up these 3 cards:

Our Sneak core - Pelacor Bandit and Uraeus are cheap with efficient damage, and Sand Worm costs a lot but packs a heavy punch! We'll be maxing out the Pelacor and Uraeus for both leagues, and just picking up one Sand Worm for High Mana Cap games. The costs are below:
Pelacor Bandit: $0.42 for Bronze, $1.80 for Silver
Uraeus: $2.40 for Bronze, $6.00 for Silver
Sand Worm: $1.21

Alongside these guys we're going to be picking up an Opportunity monster in the Deeplurker:

Again, a fast, hard hitting monster that's going to seek out your opponents Support cards and take them out! We're going to be maxing out this card as well for our respective leagues, setting us back $3.22 in Bronze and $13.80 in Silver!

These cards will be our major damage dealers in this deck. At the end of buying these we have $11.42 left for Bronze but only $6.86 for Silver, which actually means Silver is going to be our limiting factor for our final section - the Supports!

Heals & Shields

So we have very little budget left now! Luckily, we do have enough for a couple more powerful cards. First of all we're going to spend most of that remaining Silver Budget on the Angelic Mandarin:

Our first support offers Triage at Level 4, which is great in combination with the Wave Brood at the back as it offers our Taunt a heal to keep it distracting the enemy longer. While we won't be using it every game, it can certainly be useful, and is the best option in our budget. For just Bronze playersm I would opt to skip this card, as it doesn't shine until it gets that Triage. For Silver players, this will cost $6.00.

The final card we're going to be picking up is the Venari Wavesmith:

2 Armor for the whole team is a lot of survivability, although this card is much less essential now that Kelya gives 1 Armor herself and Alric is not here to buff up the damage. Due to budget, we're only picking up 1 BCX in Silver for $0.11, and in Bronze, the level up to 2 doesn't do a lot, so we're also just getting the one copy.

Final Deck Costs + Honourable Mentions

So that's everything! Bronze actually gets to keep a little bit to play around with, with $11.31 left to spend at the end. I would personally be keeping this to one side to work towards building up my Kelya to higher levels and advancing to Silver eventually, but this money could be used on a Void Tank like Baakjira due to the prominence of Magic Damage in Bronze, or with Spirit Hoarder as a Triage monster for your Wave Brood.

In Silver we’ve used up almost all of the allotted budget; leaving ourselves only $0.75. While there are cards I’d have loved to include like Djinn Oshannus for Anti-Magic and River Hellondare for an extra Inspire, they would eat into our budget too heavily. The Summoner cost by itself is much higher for Silver - meaning we have to be more careful with our card choices!

Hope you guys enjoyed this! If you did please consider leaving an upvote and a comment - I really appreciate it!

Tomorrow I will be taking the Life Splinter through this same process, and then the other throughout the week, so if you’re interested in seeing those, follow my page!