Hi, Everyone 👋

If you own Lux Vega, how are you enjoying using the card? If you don't, have you tried renting her?

Basics

Lux Vega is a Splinterfest promo neutral summoner, the first neutral summoner ever in Splinterlands! It is 5 mana summoner. It adds +1 heart, +1 speed, +1 armor to friendly monsters. You can select any splinter that is available except dragons. You can use dragon monsters only with dragon summoners.

You can use the card in all the ruleset except little league ruleset.

• You can still use her in taking sides ruleset because the rule says "Neutral Monsters may not be used in battles" (monsters, it doesn't mention neutral summoners)
• The same goes for Lost legendaries ruleset. It says "Legendary monsters may not be used in battles" (monsters, it doesn't mention neutral summoners)

First Impression

When they announced the stats of the summoner, I was a little underwhelmed because it is almost the same stats as Kelya except +1 heart but I was also excited to use it at the same time because Kelya is a good summoner and you can use Lux Vega with other splinters.

The card went on sale on November 15th, 2022. It's been a little less than 2 weeks but since it is a neutral summoner, a lot of people used it in many battles. Today, I would like to share battles in champion/diamond league with fire monsters that I thought it worth sharing. The reason why I decided to share one spliniter at a time is that there are many combinations that are good, way too many for one blog post!

Let's look at Battles!

14 mana, Odd ones out
https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_bc74f15a46cc815038d5fb8625a1ac92

This is only 14 mana battle. Since it is so small mana, you might think that Kelya would makes more sense because 1 mana is big in a small mana ruleset. However, I think that +1 heart is also big in low mana match because monsters' HP and attack damages are all relatively low most of the time. If a monster survives with just 1 hp, that is a huge difference.

In odd ones out ruleset, Pelacor bandit and Ureaus combo is popular and pretty strong. However, the star of this battle is definitely Flame monkey! It is just 1 mana but it adds +1 speed and repair armor. It repairs the armor Lux Vega provides and add another speed on top of the summoner speed buff!

Pelacor bandit and Lux's team's Uraeus survived. Pelacor bandit keeps removing the Uraeus' armor but flame monkey keeps repairing that armor. The blue team can't make any progress.

15 mana, Up close & personal
https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_32e9c37560a371bde159bb3b8bb833ce

In low mana melee only matches, Mylor is the goto summoner. It is very hard to beat Mylor in this scenario. If it was another summoner like Tarsa, fire monsters wouldn't be able to stay alive that long.
However, look at what happens!

The combination of Lux Vega providing armor and Flame monkey repairing the armors is absolutely a killer! You can even defeat Mylor in low mana melee only matches!

25 mana, Counterspell (vs Jacek)
https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_dbf04454a4e32661d88813bed1f80cde

Jacek team's archery monsters will attack a random monster. Jacek gives piercing to all the friendly monsters, so 1 armor just means another hit point, but it is still works as another hit point. Lux Vega provides 2 extra hit points to the backline monsters. That is actually good enough buff to beat Jacek in this case.

25 mana, Weak magic, Melee mayhem
https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_96c68d362c133d88e21f40a1bd4158a3

Lux Vega and the Exploding Dwarf is a great combination because sometimes exploding dwarf misses attack, adding +1 speed to him helps and exploding dwarf only has 1 hp. Adding 1 more hp and 1 armor let him survive even if the target has thorns ability.

You can see that trample attack with 7 damage, 8 speed with 4 damage blast damage is just so powerful!

27 mana, Weak magic, Spreading fury
https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_9e5ef35da100b2b39a3388956b2b4ee1

In weak magic rulest, Lux Vega adding 1 armor is very useful. Also, adding 1 more speed is useful in spreading fury ruleset in order not to miss attacks.

Kitty is popular in spreading fury ruleset because of the true strike. Also, shieldbearer is very powerful in weak magic ruleset. However, that leaves only 12 mana and it doesn't allow them to give so much damage output.

On the contrary, Lux Vega leaves extra 2 mana compared to Kitty and the fire team has a lot more damage output.

36 mana, Spreading fury, Briar patch
https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_1473e9b2d4ea2049f7684505b91b6fd3

Yodin vs Lux Vega - In this match, simply speed differentials made the difference. The bottom team has 4 speed buff/debuff and blind from Spirit Hoarder, and Coeurl Lurker has Dodge.

The top Yodin team has 3 speed buff/debuff but still missed some attacks because even if the speed is the same, blind (15% dodge change) + dodge (+25% dodge chance) gives 40% dodge chance Coeurl Lurker.
Lux Vega + Coeurl Lurker is simply very powerful, especially spreading fury ruleset!

Observations from the battles

You saw that Lux Vega and fire monsters can beat Yodin, Mylor, Jacek, Kitty + Shieldbearer in the right settings. These battles definitely show how versatile Lux Vega is.

I looked at many battles of Lux Vega with other splinters too but I believe that fire splinter got the biggest benefit from Lux Vega because of these reasons below.

• Fire has some low hp but high damage monsters, so +1 hp, +1 armor helps those monsters a lot.

• Flame monkey is just 1 mana but adds +1 speed and repair armors. With Lux Vega, it works like Epona in earth.

• Fire has good melee monsters and Lux's stats has good synergy with melee monsters

• Fire summoners like Yodin, Tarsa, Plado encourages certain attack type because of their buffs. If you're not using that attack type, you're not using the full potential of the summoner. However, Lux Vega provides benefits to all kinds of monsters.

I haven't used Fire very often. I use Yodin sometimes in certain rulesets but Yodin is much easier to counter nowadays. Other fire summoners are a little niche to me. I believe Lux Vega brought new light to Fire.

It showed me how powerful fire monsters can be with a summoner that has good synergies with them. For example, in low mana melee only ruleset, I use Mylor 95% of the time if it is available but I see that Mylor domination era is over.

Let's talk about Flame Monkey.

*Flame Monkey stats

If you play in diamond/champion, you know how powerful Epona is. Her biggest strength is the fact that it is only 1 mana but add +1 hp to all friendly monsters and repair armor.

With Lux Vega, Flame monkey can do a similar thing. It adds +1 speed instead of +1 hp. +1 speed can be better than +1 hp.

At the time of writing, flame monkey level 10 is only $150. If you think about the value it provides with Lux Vega, it is way too cheap because flame monkey does similar to what Epona does and Epona max level cost $2200.

If you play in diamond/champion, own Lux Vega but not have Flame monkey level 10, I recommend at least renting it because of the huge value it provides to the team.

Current Lux Vega Evaluation from the community

Currently, there are 922 copies of Lux Vega. It is less than Untamed legendary summoners like Yodin, Lama, Kitty. It is more than beta legendary summoners like Vulnamor, Prince Rennyn etc.

Thinking about the utility of the Lux Vega, it can be used in many rulesets and can beat legendary monsters that I listed above in the right context.

The purchase price of Lux Vega is $635, the rental cost is around 300 DEC/day at the time of the writing. I think this is bargain considering its utility. It might be that not many people hasn't learned when to use Lux Vega and the value it can provide.

Depends on the market conditions but I believe that Lux Vega has a good potential in the market as people figure out Lux Vega meta. Since you only see my post about Lux Vega with Fire, not with other splinters, so you might not see the value yet.

"If it is good with just fire splinter, why is it that good?"
I would say that's because it is good with other splinters too! I will show that in future posts.

If you haven't joined Splinterlands, the amazing & fun blockchain-based trading card game, please use this link to create an account!
https://splinterlands.com?ref=yukihyakubai
Thank you for reading!!