Summoner's Week: Tarsa

^{Edited in Canva Pro.}

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^{The tips and possible advises in this article are designed for Bronze League, in which I am in right now.}

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^{Edited in Canva Pro.}

For this week, we'll focus on a summoner I bought recently. I unintentionally ignored her as I focus on magic damage but then realized her strength once I lost to Tarsa consecutively.

Based on my battles, I had the highest lose rate on Tarsa which made me want to try her. After a few battles, I took a liking to her after seeing a huge potential on her.

I will slowly build up my Fire Splinter melee team with Tarsa at its center and hopefully, I could show you her true strength once I reach her gold level.

^{Edited in Canva Pro.}

Tarsa is on the normal side since she's a Rare summoner. Her abilities though are better than the others as both are strong and gives her an edge with battle of numbers.

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+1 melee: [Stat Modifier] Positive Status] All friendly monsters has their Melee Damage increased by 1.

+1 Health: [Stat Modifier] Positive Status] All friendly monsters has their Max Health increased by 1.

Pros

1. Tarsa is good on low mana fights. There are a lot of good melee monsters with low mana. Even the 0 mana monsters have melee damage so putting those free mana monsters at 2 damage is very strong and always give you advantage by numbers and damage.
2. Melee focused team is hard to counter in Modern Ranked Format. There is no summoners in Modern Ranked Format that counters melee monsters hard like Obsidian's counter, Thaddius Brood or Immortalis.
3. Melee monsters have diverse attacking pattern which is hard to counter without Taunt. Among other monsters, the melee monsters have the highest count of Sneak and Opportunity abilities allowing you to be flexible with your attacks. Tarsa ups this a notch by increasing the damage.

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Cons

1. Demoralize destroys Tarsa and her team.
   When you use Tarsa, you are most likely using a melee focused team.
2. Armor can hinder melee-focused team's power a lot.
   All Splinters have their own version of monsters with Protect ability. One monster with Protect ability delays the deaths of your opponent's monsters by a lot which may put you in a disadvantage if your opponents uses higher damage monsters.
3. Low flexibility on damage types.
   While you can still use range and magic damage monsters with Tarsa, using melee monsters gives you a lot more benefits. This kind of forces you to use melee monsters only when using Tarsa.

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^{Edited in Canva Pro.}

Rank	Rules of Combat	Description
	Up Close and Personal	During this battle, only monsters with melee damage type are allowed: This rule of combat does not give you any disadvantage because you would use full melee as usual to abuse Tarsa's abilities. This would be a problem to your opponents though if they aren't prepared.
	Melee Mayhem	All melee monsters on the board can attack from any position targetting the opponent's monster on the 1st position: It allows melee monsters to attack from any position giving you more flexibility on your team choice. This also allows you to use melee monsters that you normally won't use because they don't have target modifying abilities.
	Little League	During this battle, only monsters with 4 or less mana are alowed: Fire Splinter with Tarsa is good when dealing with low mana battles and/or low mana cost units. A good example of this is with Tarsa, she can make Uraeus at 3 damage.

^{Edited in Canva Pro.}

Rank	Rules of Combat	Description
	Briar Patch	All monsters on the board gains the Thorns ability that inflicts 2 melee damage to monster with melee damage attacking this monster: Since Tarsa's team is usually focused on melees, having Thorns ability on opponent's side is bad for melee focused team
	Fog of War	Removes the Snipe, Sneak and Opportuniy abilities for this battle.: Melee monsters need either Opportunity or Sneak to attack from other position. Reach and Flank can only allow melee monsters to attack from 2nd position. There's a new ability called, "Charge" that allows melee monsters to attack from any position but there's not enough monsters to have a Charge team.
	Armored Up	All monsters gain +2 armor for this battle: This rule of combat does not give you any disadvantage because you would use full melee as usual to abuse Tarsa's abilities. This would be a problem to your opponents though if they aren't prepared.

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^{Edited in Canva Pro.}

Rank	Monsters	Description
	Tenyii Striker	Tenyii Striker and Tarsa combo is a classic. Since Tenyii Striker already has the speed and decent damage, Tarsa only improves what is already a strong stat.
	Torch Vizier	Torch Vizier is something I recently discovered in Rebellion Series. She actually is very good for a damage team. Leveling her up from 1 to 2 gives her extra damage and health which is further improved by Tarsa.
	Gobalano Soldier	Gobalano Soldier's Ambush can remove Armor before the game start which is really good. Tarsa is required to make him good because at low to medium levels, he only has 1 damage which is actually bad.

^{Edited in Canva Pro.}

This is my recent Tarsa build. What is good about this is every monster, despite being melee monsters, can attack from every position. It also gives you an option of changing Radiated Brute to Mad Ogre Anarchist giving you an extra monster with Opportunity attacking the back row.

Lineup

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^Tarsa

A really good summoner especially if you are using a melee-centric team. Her increased melee damange and increased health is always good and is hard to counter with other summoners alone.

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^{Tusk the Wide}

I find him a requirement in this build as if you use other tanks, Obsidian builds will always come up on top.

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^{Radiated Brute}

A melee monster with Reach ability giving you extra damage to the front row.

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^{Tenyii Striker}

A standard in any Fire Splinter team. His decent damage and high speed is always welcome to assure a high chance that his attacks will never miss.

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^{Gobalano Soldier}

The Ambush ability with Tarsa's enhanced melee damage is good to either removing the opponent's armor, if any, or damaging the last position monster on opponent's side for a kill during round 1.

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^{Torch Vizier}

A very high damage monster with Opportunity that is very useful in executing monsters with her Opportunity ability.

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^Uraeus

I always place Uraeus as the last position monster even if he doesn't have that much health. The extra armor is very useful for deterring any one hit KO from an opponent's Sneak attack.

^{Edited in Canva Pro.}

One huge weakness of Obsidian's magic damage focused team is that they usually have low speed. This means that other monsters usually have their turns first eliminating a few monsters immediately before they even have the chance to attack.
It's the same thing as what happened here. I was able to quickly eliminate the opponent's 1st and last position monsters with pincer attacks lowering their damage overall.

^{> > Click here to view the full battle < <}

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I find Tarsa really good and strong on low mana and low level fights. I haven't tried her on high league yet but we will get theere in the future especially since I've decided to level her up slowly until Tarsa gets to Gold level.

I realized that there is a huge lacking in melee counters as no one really uses Demoralize ability unless it's Up Close and Personal rule of combat. Unlike Obsidian who has a summoner counter like Immortalis and Thaddius Brood, there's no hard counters against melee builds. Once I can use a monster with Rust ability on my team, the win rate of this team will surely skyrocket giving me a potential second consistent team in the future.

• This post is an entry for Splinterlands Social Media Contest.
• Animated Banners and Dividers are edited in Canva Pro.
• Other sources that I do not own are cited under their respective photos.
• Some of the fonts used are from instafonts.io

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Ⱨ₳VɆ ₳ ₲ØØĐ Đ₳Ɏ!