I've been playing this game for around three weeks now and I'm going to be honest for the first two weeks of that time I was awful, getting my head around the game mechanics and how best to order troops was tough and even after I got the hang of these concepts I still struggled to get consistent wins and languished in bronze 3 the whole time.
It was about a week ago when I took a look at the summoner rental market and decided to rent two summoners for the splinters I liked the most, those being fire and earth so I went ahead and rented Mylor Crowling for a week and also got Yodin Zaku for a few days although he is expensive. Now armed with my new buffs I went back to battle and quite literally had a blast!
Yodin Zaku is massively OP and I would love to own even one level one card because its hilarious, every one of your creatures has splash damage plus buffs to health and ranged attacks, with a few sneak monsters on your team you can wipe out those savage back lines easily (looking at you water deck) and my win rate went up massively while I had him, if he wasn't around a dollar a day to rent I would use him daily as he is a beast and so much fun.
Mylor Crowling is a lot more affordable at around 11 cents a day at the time of writing and has the thorns ability which means any melee damage on your troops gives 2 damage back to the attacker, this can really make a difference and is strong against all splinters although it can struggle against water sometimes. I am now happily making 1+ DEC per game and looking to build my collection power to try and progress further.
The next step is to find a summoner for each splinter that fits my game plan and that is affordable so I can get some solid practice in with each type and learn their nuances while having a slight advantage. If you find yourself new to the game and struggling to progress I would highly recommend looking at the summoners as they really can change your game for the positive, I am now sat in silver three ready for the end of my second season looking forward to my 12 loot chests with good odds of getting cards.
I hope this of use to someone, thanks for reading.