Hi there Splinter friends! I had an Earth Focus today on my alt account so what better time to throw together a little guide then now? If you have a Life Focus you can find that guide here.

Eventually I plan to make a guide for each Splinter Focus, though it sounds like changes may be coming to the one splinter Focus down the road. For now, I'll keep doing them like this and if it changes dramatically then I'll make new guides when that time comes.

I earned 16 chests today and if you've been following along, you know my strategy has been to wait till my ECR hits 99.5% and play till it hits 75%.

If I'm close to another chest I'll play more and if not then I sometimes stop early which is what I did today since as you can see I hit 16 chests pretty much perfectly and didn't want to spend extra ECR pushing to 17. With my ECR at 77.5%, I'll be able to start playing a little earlier tomorrow to compensate.

I'm not sure if bots are firing back up or if a lot of players are going after Gold Foils now but there actually weren't any gold foil Wood Nymphs, Flesh Golems, Failed Summoners, or Mushroom Seers available when I decided to play and a gold Unicorn Mustang was 105 DEC!!! WOW. I decided it wasn't worth paying those prices and settled on regular foils.

I did manage to pick up the most important card in GF though and that's Mylor Crowling, the summoner I play most often. I like to keep my costs down as much as possible so I didn't get a Llama as even a level 1 was going for 138 DEC and Kron was up to 89 DEC.

If you can find either of those on the cheap, possibly through bidding, or you don't mind paying that price, feel free to pick them up as they'll definitely help you win.

I just know I can do pretty well without them so for me it's a skip at those prices. Maybe I would have got the 17th chest today had I gone for it but odds are that 1 chest wouldn't have been worth it.

Plus, I don't feel like you need a guide to spam Llama / Kron, I'll show you how I win without them.

These cards I delegated over from my main account. The important ones you'll want to rent if you don't have them are the Goblin Psychic, Slipspawn, Peryton, Grund, and Corpse Fiend. Some of the others are nice but not totally necessary.

Earth is a pretty balanced and effective Splinter so a lot of the time you can just make different variations of the same team mixing it up slightly which is nice when your opponent sees you're just spamming Earth for the focus.

This is because Mylor almost guarantee's you won't lose to Melee heavy teams while the Unicorn Mustang and Mushroom Sheer makes it unlikely you'll lose to Magic. Even a Flesh Golem with it's self heal and backup healing from Wood Nymph or Goblin Psychic can be hard to bring down.

The best way to attack a Mylor team is with ranged units but most of them do very little damage at the Bronze level and aren't most peoples first choice. I can't remember why but I didn't get Beatrix Ironhand who is really strong in Bronze. For 6 mana she does 3 damage at level 2 so while I forgot about her, you probably shouldn't!

Earth also has solid tanks and healers so you really just mix and match based on how much mana is available.

Link To The Battle Here

With 24 mana and no ranged units allowed I went for the Unicorn Mustang as it's the best anti Magic tank with it's Void ability. Queen Mycelia for the +2 armor (protect), Wood Nymph to Tank Heal, Mushroom Seer for the Silence. (-1 magic)

I put the Fiend and the Chicken in the back just in case there are any Sneak attackers. We're more likely to lose from Sneaks than the enemy getting through the front, though both are pretty unlikely to beat us, it's still good to be prepared.

Link To The Battle Here

This is the beauty of playing Mylor, my opponent was spamming their Fire Focus and I guess they didn't have a Yodin so they ended up playing Tarsa. As you can see, this is what I meant by Earth teams tend to look the same.

This lineup has the same Wood Nymph, Mushroom Seer, and Queen Mycelia but this time we can squeeze in a Venari Seedsmith if we use the Flesh Golem and it's always nice to have a ranged damage dealer in case they have the Unicorn Mustang and Mylor themselves.

Link To The Battle Here

It's rare but every now and then you do get a high mana battle and in this case we got a REALLY high one with the 99 mana rule set.

Grund becomes the tank / frontline of choice as his damage output is just too strong to ignore. Normally at 10 mana it's to hard to get him in but that's no issue here. In order to protect him, we put the Mycelic Slipspawn in the back who will draw most of the fire with it's Taunt ability.

Oaken Behemoth is the other big baddie we have and with both magic and melee attack he can hit from the 2nd spot with his reach.

We still bring Mushroom Seer to nerf magic damage but this time we can afford Goblin Psychic who has better stats than the Wood Nymph for our healer. Mitica Headhunter is our big damage archery unit who has the speed to go first and clear any armor off the enemy before Grund takes his double strike turn.

Link To The Battle Here

There's a few situations where I'll still go for Obsidian and the Back to Basics rule is one of them.

With no Void or any abilities in general for this ruleset raw damage output takes priority and Obsidians +1 magic buff tends to outperform Mylor since Melee will be minimal and spamming Magic is the better play.

With 22 mana we're looking for the most cost effective tanks and magic damage dealers. Hill Giant doesn't have any abilities at this level anyway so for 3 mana he gives you a solid meat shield. Failed Summoner is in a similar boat as it's main deal is having high HP as far as the 2 mana cost goes.

Then I'm just filling the lineup out with the cheaper magic guys I have available as we want that +1 magic bonus applied as many times as we can.

Link To The Battle Here

With Earthquake I decided to go Obsidian again and this is mainly because the Regal Peryton is our only flying monster and may need to face off against the opposing teams flying monster(s). Another reason is the magic damage could help us get some quick kills if they go for a heavily armored front liner to try and survive the Earthquake damage.

Wood Nymph will die to the Earthquake pretty quickly but I still like it to make sure Flesh Golem stays alive in the front for as long as possible and as enemies perish, he'll be able to keep himself alive hopefully.

Link To The Battle Here

It must have been my lucky day cause this is the second 99 mana battle and this time, all ranged monsters are banned. Because so much of the team is magic, I opted for Obsidian and I swear I don't usually play her this much but the rules are setting up well for her.

Note - Any time you can have the Spirit Hoarder Triage the Slipspawn Taunt in the back it's usually worth doing, it's a stretch here since he's only 3 mana but still powerful in this low damage environment. Slipspawn even survives the whole battle!

Link To The Battle Here

Melee Only is pretty much the best ruleset you can get with an Earth Focus since it's very hard to lose with Mylor unless your opponent also has Mylor. This battle is pretty low mana so I decided to go for the Flesh Golem as my main spend since it has good HP and can heal itself, allowing it to take more punishment and thus reflect more thorns damage.

If you get a higher mana Melee Only Battle, the Mycelic Infantry and Chain Golem are great plays due to their Shield ability which reduces Melee attacks by half.

Oaken Behemoth is also a great choice since it has a secondary Magic attack to go along with it's Melee attack. Keep it in the middle of your lineup so it can't be killed by Sneaks but isn't near the front where it will melee and take Thorns damage. You actually don't want it to use it's melee attack in case the other team has Thorns.

With 8 Days left in the season I am up to 68 Season Chests and as you already saw in the introduction I earned 16 Focus chests today playing Earth.

Despite just spamming my focus every day so far this season and not going all out for the leaderboard I'm up to 21st on said Leaderboard. Perhaps at the end of the season I'll try to land in the money but we'll see how it goes.

Right now I just want as many chests as I can get and I hope this mini Earth guide helps you earn more chests too!

Earth is a good focus to get IMO, it's easy to protect yourself from sneak / melee with Mylor's thorns and the Unicorn + Mushroom Seer are so potent against Magic that you probably won't lose to Alric or Obsidian.

Earth is also really versatile because it has so many good tanks and healers at various Mana levels, as well as Summoners. Mylor, Obsidian, and Llama (if you go that route) are all solid options and lineup construction doesn't change too much between them so you can follow a similar blue print.

If you have any questions about tactics, strategies, lineups, or anything else, feel free to ask in the comments!

Hope you enjoyed my post and thanks for reading... Good Luck out there!