Hi, I am a new splinterlands player and i decided to start to create some guide/strats i wish i knew right away. I don't usually like people looking online for the best/broken strats just so they can copy them but i have found myself taking 15 battles sometimes trying to finish some of the daily quests and it got me frustrated. So here i am trying to pass on to you, a nice configuration when using life splinter. I am going to try and explain to you how it works so you can understand what you are doing and not just copy it. Being a new player myself, i am making this guide for low leagues mainly without using any expensive cards.
Let's begin:
Base idea:
I have found that playing life splinter is about sustainability. You are not rushing to kill the opponent. You can outlast them, or lead them in a situation where it is impossible to win.
Life splinter has a 'shield' card in it's ghost cards that everyone can use called "Shilvershield Knight",
just as fire splinter has the famous "Living Lava". Shield ability is very strong especial in small leagues. It's main weakness is magic, but in my experience you can do better against magic as a life splinter compared to fire.
Whats more in life splinter for 3 mana you also get to have "Divine Healer"
that gives 'Tank heal' another top tier ability for small leagues. So if you wanted to do a quick comparison, fire splinter 7 mana "Lining Lava" gets negated to life splinter 8 mana combination of "Silvershield Paladin" and "Divine Healer" since "Living Lava" only does 2 dmg but it gets healed up. I am not trying to say life is better than fire, just to show you they are both powerful.
Another similar way to control the battle by mitigating dmg and keeping your front-liner alive is "Armorsmith". It's not from the free to use ghost cards but its not that expensive and only costing 2 mana to place it can come in handy in many situations.
Summoners:
So far we are at 14 mana considering 3 for the summoner so it is almost always playable.
Both ghost summoners for life splinter are similarly good and i choose between them depending on available mana. For example, if only 16 mana is available, i am going to use "Mother Khala" since it is going to be more useful in making sure i can mitigate all the dmg my "Shilvershied Paladin" is going to receive. Instead, if i am going to use 8 cards, "Tyrus Paladium" is a better choice, because it is as if giving the 'Divine shield' ability to all my armorless cards so it is buying me time to kill enough enemy cards to reach the complete mitigation stage i described earlier.
Building up:
As is, the deck i described so far is a deck that can mitigate a lot of dmg but can not deal enough dmg to win either. The way to improve that depends on the available mana of course. If the mana allows it, my favorite way to find enough dmg to win is by using "Shilvershield Knight".
The way i make it work is i want to use "Silvershield Knight" just for his buff for as long as possible and only use him in fight as a last resort. So I place him somewhere in the back.
Now that we have 'Inspire' buff, it's time to load the deck with every melee card that can attack from any position. Best options for as low mana as possible would be "Feral Spirit", "Elven Cutthroat" and "Horny Toad"
and in that preference order, cause of the their speed.
That was 26 mana in 6 cards (24 in pic below, including summoner) and this is the main idea of the deck.
If available you can make this stronger by adding more mana expensive cards like :
"Luminous Eagle" is a very nice second position card since it can hit, it can protect "Divine Healer" longer to get more value, its flying so it can avoid some dmg and get healed after and it belongs to the standard ghost cards available to everyone. "Cave Slug" is also a very nice addition, since it already has 2 attack dmg and the 'opportunist' ability that make it take out threats first. It is also one of the free to use ghost cards so there is no reason not to use it. Unlike "Luminous Eagle" and "Cave Slug", both "Sand Worm" and "Shilvershield Assasin" does not come in the available ghost cards but they are a cheap very useful investment for this deck. "Sand Worm" is neutral splinter so it is great for many decks plus it is very strong for reverse speed mode! You should grab one whenever you've got enough dec anyways. As for "Silvershield Assasin" it is probably the best synergy with "Shilvershield Knight" so it can reward you for its price.
Alternate front-liners:
"Shilvershield Paladin" is a great front liner, although sometimes the opponent might have enough dmg to overtake him. Some alternate front-liners more mana heave though would be:
"Shieldbearer" is awesome since its free to use and has the 'taunt' ability. It will most likely withstand all the dmg and if you use both "Divine Healer" and "Armorsmith" you will manage to keep it alive long enough. "Goblin Mech" is a very strong card on its own and its neutral, so you might as well grab one if you have the chance. Although it is more about crashing the opponents fast rather than controlling the battle. As for the other two, i just put them here cause they are also amazing alternatives but they are legendaries and quite expensive ones as well. "Sacred unicorn" has the 'heal' ability so it can sustain itself while having 3 attack dmg while "Chain Golem" is a god having lots of hp plus lots of shield plus the 'shield' ability plus 3 attack..
Lower mana:
Although using all the above makes a very strong deck, it costs more than 26 mana usually to be good. However, the main idea of mitigating dmg long enough to crash the enemy can be applied without using "Silvershield Knight" and an all melee strat. Using "Shilvershield Paladian" in the front line folloed by "Divine Healer" and maybe a "Furious Chicken" if available (only 11 mana), we can make sure that no one is touching anything after that from the front side for at least 4 turns. And thanks to the summoners buffs, any back-line attack isn't going to be fatal instantly. So we have a nice spot to place our fragile ranged cards. The problem here is that life splinter doesn't have many at least 2 attack dmg ranged ghost cards so anyone can use. That might result in loosing cause of not being able to dmg the opponents at all if they have the 'shield' ability for example. A nice way to overcome this is by using some magic attack cards or higher ranged attack ones:
By using magic attacks you can overcome the 'shield' ability although, you can't overcome if the oponent has any 'heal' as well. So in my opinion you need cards to be able to deal at least 3 dmg combined. All of the examples above are not in the free ghost cards but are mostly inexpensive options to solve this problem.
Summing up:
The main idea of the deck is to outlast your opponent by mitigating any dmg he does to your front-liner. It is a 26+ mana deck able to sustain itself to victory. Its biggest drawback is its lack of dmg, when you trying to do it with less mana 20-26 but still it perform quite well in those ranges as well cause it gives you enough time to take out your opponents until they can no longer win.
Here is an example of this deck in action:
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=c76efa8f1bdcb2d32472a127be83fec669c9e03a&ref=zaahor
What is important is to be able to mitigate enough dmg to control the battle.