Introduction
Hey fellow summoners,
This week, I continue the long forgotten noob's guide to Splinterlands. In this article, I will be talking about the novice UNTAMED tournament and which cards are and not required. Hopefully this article will help noobs learn the tips and tricks I use during the tournaments to get top positions in the tournament.
What are Novice Tournaments?
So novice tournaments are the tournaments that look like this:
Novice tournaments are the Kobold Tournaments like the one shown above. In these tournaments, Legendaries often cannot be used and nowadays, you can only use UNTAMED cards in them. This leads to a small selection of monsters one can use so it is pretty easy to find counters to thee meta setups. Epic cards are the ones that you have to look for when joining UNTAMED Kobold Tournaments since they are very beneficial to your team if you use them properly. Therefore, I will be listing the Epic Card's usefulness down below.
Required Cards Ranked By Usefulness
Disclaimer: This is all personal opinion and experience. Don't shout at me if you think I am wrong, but suggestions are accepted.
1. Mitica Headhunter
This is by FAR the most important card. Even though it is expensive in cost, it makes up for it in SUPER high attack and speed. This works super well with Eastwood since it removes most armored monsters allowing mitica headhunter to fully pierce the monsters soft health. If this doesn't kill the monster, it leaves it heavily damaged.
2. War Chaang
War Chaang is a neutral card meaning that it can be used by any Splinter making it very versatile. It also has tanky health, making it perfect to absorb snipe attacks and its two attacks allows its to be a complete beast in super sneak, melee mayhem, and close ranged.
Sporcer
I personally love this little guy and do my best to try to fit him into my Earth team, often going Mustang, Sporcer, then Mitica Headhunter. It is relatively cheap on the market and its magic attack and mediocre health makes it good at destroying the ever annyoing Living Lava. Rust allows you to go with Drake of Anark while also letting you get Wizard of Eastwood's effect of -2 Armor, again very useful in destroying Living Lava. Only drawback is its slow speed but that can be useful in Reverse Speed ruleset.
Soulstorm
This is pretty much your only hope of winning if you are forced to play a death team. I often avoid going death since it is the weakest splinter of UNTAMED at novice leagues. Soulstorm is like the cheaper but weaker Mitica Headhunter of the death team. Keep it well protected though and it will pay huge dividends in battle.
Azmare Harpoonist
Again, this is the Mitica Headhunter of the Water team. Water has more heavy hitters than Death so I placed it lower since it isn't as necessary to get. Even so, it can be very useful in outputting a lot of damage at your enemies, similar to Mitica.
Pyromaniac
I was debating whether to put Felexia General here are Pyromaniac. Personally, I've found Pyromaniac more useful because nobody is expecting it and it has the very useful sneak ability. It is also very cheap making it accessible to nealrly everyone.
Ferexia General
Great Fire Sniper monster, useful in taking out low health ranged monsters in the back. It also does a good amount of damage and can take out fire elementals or spark pixies easily.
Tortisian Cheif
Not especially useful at level 1 because of low attack and it is super costly, but it can be useful as a tank in Keep Your Distance. It becomes a lot more valuable once it is leveled up but in novice tournament, it shouldn't be considered as a need to get.
Light Elemental
The main magic attacker for life. Low health prevents it from being higher on the list but in high mana matches where life splinters are good in, Light Elemental is a must in taking out any Living Lava that your opponent may put. Otherwise, not too useful.
Coral Wraith
I was going to put Coral Wraith in front of Tortisian Cheif but I use Tortisian Cheif more than Coral Wraith. The only good thing about Coral Wraith is that it is cheap to buy, has Sneak, and has an OK magic attack for its mana cost. Its slow speed and low health though makes it not too useful in battles.
Darkest Mage
Darkest mage takes the place at 2nd last in my opinion. It is cheap in both mana and to buy, and is useful in low mana matches or keep your distance matches that require death. It gets much much better as you level it up but it should be one of the last things you should be looking for to buy for NOVICE UNTAMED tournaments.
Thunderbird
Many people (especially 
Conclusion
Remember guys, this is my own opinion of which monsters should be bought first and which should be put off for later. All monsters have their uses so all of these epics should be bought but if you strapped for cash, I hope this guide provided a baseline for new people so they can figure out for them selves which cards to buy. Ultimely, it is your decision but after months of getting top position in novice tournaments, I believe this list is fairly accurate.
