Hi Splinterlanders, I hope this post finds you well!
I am contemplating upgrading some of my summoners to be more competitive in the game and play more regularly in Diamond League. Summoners cost money and the choices are hard to make. I need to consider my favourites, my strategies, my success recipes, my strongest monsters, and so on. It is not an easy decision to make, so I decided to write a series of posts about my summoners to help me make that decision and share my thoughts with you while I am at it.
I feel it is the right time to make a move, while prices are down and the bears still have full control of the market. Many players around me have been upset about the many changes in the game lately and some are leaving or have already left the scene one by one. I am sad to see some players from my guild, the Legendary Dragon Babies, throw the towel and leave the game. I have not been happy about certain things either, like bots and SPS gates, but I am a Splinterlander through and through. So for me, there is only one way and that way is up.
I am not going to mention all summoners, only the ones I have. I am looking to upgrade two splinters and already have a rough idea of what I want to do but I still want to go through the splinters one by one. Today, I want to talk about the Fire splinter. To view my post about my Death summoners, please click -> HERE <-.
I have 4 Fire summoners and will list and discuss them in order of preference. So first comes CONQUEROR JACEK. He is a truly masterful legendary Summoner. For my battling style, I consider him to have the best combination of abilities and buffs among the CL legendary summoners. Of course, that is open to debate, but for my purposes, he is champion of all CL edition monsters. Scattershot is an amazing and exciting ability, which basically leaves many things to chance in your quest for victory. When given to all monsters, it creates havoc and the outcome will be entirely unclear most of the time. Add Piercing and +2 speed, and the offensive cocktail is perfect. On the other hand, if you pick a team that is too tailheavy and your enemy concentrates his offensive power on your tank, you can come undone real quick.
So a balanced team is the order of the day with JACEK and my strategy usually looks like this: tank, backup tank with reach, a dormant smaller tank in the center followed by 3 heavy hitting archers. Another strategy is an all-archer lineup with several Close Range actors. LAVA LAUNCHER is a regular guest in the arena, when JACEK leads the pack. TINDERLOCK is another candidate for a JACEK scheme. Although he has the Last Stand ability, I don’t like putting him in last spot, but rather use his ability to strike from the first position long before he can become last man standing. Then comes Blast, lethal in itself but nuclear with Scattershot. PYROMANCER is my favourite there and I often like bringing in 2 or 3 Blast monster, when I am confident that the frontline is solid and the backline is covered. FIRE ELEMENTAL features quite often and so do EXPLODING RATS and EXPLODING DWARF with certain rulesets. DJINN APPRENTICE also comes in quite a bit. When conditions for archer are grim or a midfield monster is needed to protect archers, he comes in very handy.
My main Fire summoner for low and mid mana games ist TARSA. I had a love/hate relationship with her for a long time. On the one hand, +1 meelee for a deck that already had powerful meelee monsters was enormous. On the other hand, having tons of meelee power coming up against Shield and Repair foiled many a massacre attempt. TARSA also looked pretty girly when facing Thorns and Earthquake rulesets (there are no meelee monsters with Flying but please correct me if I’m wrong).
But when it comes to battle condition, where meelee attack is favourable, TARSA excels. A hard and fast meelee offensive with TARSA at the helm can ruin anybody’s day. The usual suspects are the FORGOTTEN ONE at the front, followed by RADIATED BRUTE. There are a few different options at the frontline in the Fire deck so I often vary them. Tank battles with the Fire deck are still one of my fighting weaknesses, I must admit. But I’m working on it. TARSA is good with stealth monsters. SERPENTINE SPY and TENYII STRIKER are good and fast attackers, who can inflict devastating damage to the enemy midfield and backline.
SKARGORE is a good summoner for specific purposes. Giving all monsters the Enrage ability can do wonders in certain circumstances. Apart from being great to get enraged to give you a stats kick all round, SKARGORE is also good in rulesets, like Poison and Earthquake, where the final solution is always who survives the longest. Getting enraged in these circumstance is great.
When you want to get enraged, you want to do so as early as possible. I like putting fat slow tanks at the front with no shield, like CHARLOK MINOTAUR and TUSK THE WIDE. They are slow as my day at work yesterday, but once enraged, they can hold the fort for ages and deliver devastating blows. I also like putting IFRIT RISING in the midfield to invite a snipe attack to enrage him. If he can get 2 shots during the battle after that, it breaks through any defenses standing. FINEAS RAGE also has no shield and sits in second position with Reach. The only way to get enraged there is throughBlast, Poison and Earthquake (have I missed some?).
ETERNAN BRUNE doesn’t get much action at all, but like all other soulbound summoners, he is in the team. I don’t know what level I have him at in my main account, so I left him at level 1 in the image. I still don’t have the Fire legendary gladiator and my fire gladiators are generally not well advanced. There is one gladiator I really like for his weird characteristics: KRASH WANDERFORD. Bringing him into ranked battles can be really interesting, when the conditions are right. At 8 speed, he can sit at the front and count up to 3 or 4 misses before he is eaten, while giving the team + 1 speed and leave Thorns on enemy meelee attack (enraging him with SKARGORE in a Poison ruleset is fun).
CHIMNEY WALLSTOP can also be brought into ranked battle, but I haven’t had a good record with him. He can do lots of damage, but getting a Bloodlust with his slow speed can be a gamble. In low mana games, things get more interesting. Bringing ORELLA ABADON or/and SARIUS into the arena can be very entertaining. They are not the fastest, but once bloodlusted, they are fast and nasty in the third round. Battles with mana caps between 20 and 25 are the best settings.
So when it comes to choosing splinters to level up to diamond, the Fire deck leads the scoreboard at the moment, not just because the Fire deck is my most leveled deck and that I use the Fire deck a lot. It is mainly about JACEK THE CONQUEROR. He is my champ summoner and I want to battle with him at max level. I also like TARSA as a backup alternative, although she is not my favourite CL rare summoner. So when thinking spontaneously, I would go for Fire first, closely followed by Death, as discussed int he first article of this series.
See you round like a hotdog!
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