Hey Splinterlands Fam! The last town hall dropped a ton of great info on the upcoming Riftwatchers mini edition! If you didn't catch the town hall, I highly recommend heading over to YouTube and giving it a go, it'll be worth your time! Link below:
If you stayed until the end you were blessed with a sneak peak at all of the upcoming Epic summoners for the edition! Let me know what are your thoughts on these in the comments!
I'm going to break down each new splinters summoner and the Chaos Legion card or cards that I think will benefit the most! We're already seeing some of their prices drive up!
Now, please keep in mind that this focuses on the Chaos Legion cards only as I'm building my deck to be playing at max gold/diamond in modern when Rebellion releases.
This is my favorite new summoner by far! I love speed/dodge meta builds. My go to lineup is Nightmare for tank and Lira, Supply Runner, and Naga Assassin. Now I can have more options for a tank and this opens my options to any splinter! I'm loving the Void dragon as a lower mana cost option in bronze and silver and with the added flying for even more evasion I think this card is going to be a great tank in bronze and silver every account will need one! Also, I think this summoner will dominate the enrage ruleset. Speed kills! Here is an example of a great lineup for lower mana battles!
The Fire Splinter is my least favorite in the CL edition and I don't see many cards that benefit from this as many of their melee cards already have enrage or are so slow that they don't gain much benefit from the skill itself but I do think the Forgotten One receives the most love here. Playing at the highest level this card has only 2 speed but when you combine it with Countess Sinash and Supply Runner, this card will have 6 speed, 9 dmg, pierce, AND retaliate. I feel bad for any melee that takes a swing at this guy!
Water got lucky again with another great summoner option. This deck is really well rounded, offering great options for any situation! The Backfire addition makes the fast water deck even more versatile. Djinn Oshannus is the easy pick for benefiting on this one. With Phase also you're going to be taking out their casters in no time! I think bronze will dominate with this setup again. I'll be watching the 12 mana bronze meta to see if it shifts to this as I think it'll be tough to beat! The backfire can be so deadly at lower levels with health pools so low. A close second will be the Pelacor Bandit. This guy is a beast at sneak blocking and adding backfire just makes him that much better. It's nice to see the CL rewards cards will continue to be relevant in the coming years!
They decided to show the Earth splinter some ranged love this time which it needs. This is my 2nd least favorite splinter in CL. Not because it's not useful with the great tank heals the earth splinter is known for but the magic spam meta is just too cheesy. This new edition to the lineup will give some utility to Hunter Jarx and Iza the Fanged. We've already seen Iza's price double with the announcement. I think I've only ever seen this card played a couple of times at any league, but with scavenger this will become a great off tank option for low mana battles. Sit this one somewhere in the middle of your lineup and let it gather up some HP then when it gets to the front it will hold up nicely in the lower tiers. I still don't think this will be viable in the higher tiers though.
This may be my least favorite of the new summoners. It really only counters General Sloan which is probably the least used splinter in CL, not that it isn't good. Life was the first splinter that I worked on building up to gold and in low to mid mana battles they are great in silver.
Also, return fire only procs if your opponent actually lands a hit on you, which I don't like, and adding speed to the summoner means it will proc that much less. The ability would be much more useful if it triggered any time a ranged attacker made an attack on you.
But this could benefit any of the many tanks the life splinter has to offer. From the Blinding Reflector to Chaos Knight and Pelacor Conjurer, all these will see benefits but more from the +1 speed than the return fire in my opinion.
Cripple is a very under used skill for 2 reasons in my opinion.
- The ability to cleanse the cripple
- The target needs to have armor or be healed for this to have any effect.
The good news is the team has said they plan to change the ability to not let it be cleansed which will greatly improve this utility. Now when you're going up against the annoying cube or Baakjira you'll see their HP slowly work their way down. Just gotta hope you can beat the fatigue timer!
I think it will be interesting to see this ability on magic casters and ranged. Having cripple on all your units could prove to be very useful! We could see utility that we've never even thought of before, for example, can backfire trigger cripple? For now, with the backline taunt and triage meta, you'll be able to work them down much faster! For this reason, I think this benefits all of the death cards and I can't wait to see what kind of meta shift this will bring to the game!
Well, that's my take on all of the new Riftwatchers summoners! Please let me know what you think in the comments! If you've made a post about these summoners please share it! I can't wait to see what kinds of lineups we will see from these new summoners!