You check the rental markets and you are getting a heart attack on how much it cost?
This post then might be for you then it will suggest strategies to build competitive decks, on a budget.
I immediately applied a strategy of playing efficiently from the very first season and I have been sitting in Gold ever since, always playing at a disadvantage with a Silver level deck and massively gaining every season.
This means your cards will at maximum be level 5 common, lvl 4 epic, lvl 3 rare, lvl 2 legendary.
This applies to all monsters and summoners as a maximum for the league.
The rule of thumb is that if your summoner is 5-4-3-2 level in Silver you will have the ability to play monsters that are at a maximum of 5-4-3-2 and that is what you should strive to acquire/rent to play as efficiently as possible
If your summoner is a higher level than 5-4-3-2 it will be treated as a 5-4-3-2
If your summoner is a lower level than 5-4-3-2 then it will create a new lower cap for all your cards... you might not want that.
Lets again imagine you are in silver so the level limits are 5-4-3-2
You want to play a rare summoner: Vera
Vera is a rare card so her limit, in Silver, is level 4 and you see it will allow monsters that are 5-4-3-2 exactly the limit cap.
If you have a Vera that is level 4 you will have in Silver the ability to play monsters that are 5-4-3-2
If your Vera is level 5, in Silver your monsters will still be at a maximum 5-4-3-2 because your Vera will be treated as a level 4
If your Vera is a level 2, in Silver your monsters will be at a maximum 3-2-2-1 which will give you a significant disadvantage as other players, in the same league, will field higher level monsters
The first thing you want to determine is what level you want your cards to be.
This example will be for a Silver level deck (5-4-3-2) that will be extremely competitive in Silver even if off-meta and will do okay also in Gold even though will be significantly underpowered (in Gold you can play 8-6-5-3)
We will use peakmonster.com and usually try this filter
We will work on obtaining a set of mostly melee cards, focusing on speed and raw attack, to kill opponents fast.
In Fire, Yodin decks are by far stronger but are also more expensive so we will try something different
Including also cheap dragon options we have, at today price, 6 possible summoners
Obviously different rules will mean different setups but in general, you can imagine a setup like this for most games
Lets now look at great cheap troops for the different roles
In Fire, we have lots of good options.
Great usually cheap picks are:
You can of course also use neutrals like Goblin Mech or Chain Golem
As mentioned we have plenty of options i would make sure you have at least the Cerberus and the Living Lava.
https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sm_iJAk54KtisVHXDVEtbmT
This is an all-attack game where my play is focusing on my speed and attack to immediately kill my opponent DPS.
My opponent decided to use a balanced approach with the great mustang, a healing option, and two dps.
Lots of blows back and forth but my superior damage is wrecking the opponent team
In Round 3 the game is already over
https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sm_aym2gb69ELuMDu9gHygP
Mylor is Malric's worst nightmare but despite that, the offensive power of this deck can overcome even thorns
After the first round lots of damages on both sides, most of it self-inflicted over thorns. It is essential to kill the Golem fast or thorns will lose the match on its own. However, in this game, i was lucky enough to have 1 Non-Melee Option that can dish damage too with the help of the Close Range condition.
At beginning of round 3, there are very few survivors left. It was a carnage
And the game is now over
I do have a growing collection of cards but until recently the vast majority of my cards are rental.
All my fire cards rented cost me 80 dec/day and I compete in gold 2/3 using a silver level deck.
Cards price and rental price have increased significantly so is a good practice to find cheap cards to continue playing and winning
If you were to start from absolute nothing I reckon with just renting 10 cards you can have a competitive fire deck, in silver, costing you less than 50 DEC/Day with rewards of 10 DEC/day+ for each win that can become 30 DEC/day if you reach gold3
