As a casual Splinterlands player who wants to grind Bronze League to earn some rewards in the long run, I know it's not that easy to win against level 1 bots when we're not using overpowered monsters. Sometimes, we can't break even if we get more expensive rentals, such as Legendary monsters not being distributed anymore, and most specially, overpowered Legendary summoners.
That's the reason I'm compiling a list of teams I've recently won with and cards I've rented. There's a lot of room in ranked play to beat other players when we don't care about the leaderboard. Since we want to do it efficiently, we should maximize both our energy bar and minimize the time we spend playing.
When we already know what cheaper monsters we can use with cheaper summoners, playing becomes easy and earning becomes fun.
Some cards I don't think I needed to rent at all: Jared Scar, Vulguine, Portal Spinner, Peacebringer.
Blast match. 1 mana monsters were really important so I could protect my damage dealers from all sorts of incoming attacks. A Shield tank was really handy. battle link
+2 armor match. Pelacor Conjurer + Djinn Renova + heals made for really good sustain. battle link
Poison match. Uriel the Purifier + cleanse and heals outlasted my opponent's team. battle link
99 mana, no armor match. Renting many 7+ mana monsters was really useful. Specially Hero of Beyond. battle link
Blast match. With only a little bit of luck, this stalling strategy managed to beat Djinn Oshannus. Specially good if your opponent isn't running sneak attack teams on their recent matches history. battle link
Image sources: https://splinterlands.com/ and @nane-qts/free-splinterlands-graphic-resources-20
