I was looking for an opportunity to highlight my favorite life splinter lineup. This isn't exactly it, but this lineup does demonstrate some strengths of the life splinter.
The ruleset was Equalizer and Close Range with a mana cap of 20. Here's how the match played out.
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_43ac4d987287617e994464d333dddcfb&ref=jingo-submo
These 3 make up the core of what I generally run in the life splinter.
Time Mage slows down the opposing team which is especially important to the life squad where most of your creatures have a speed of 2 with level 1 cards. You saw me rip through 2 of my opponent's creatures before they took their first shot and that swung the match in my favor.
Venari Crystalsmith has tank heal and synergizes beautifully with General Sloan. This is all for 4 mana, just 1 more than Divine Healer which was a staple of life decks before rotating into Chaos Legion. In this match the tank heal ended up not being especially important with life of 4 for all the monsters but under the Equalizer ruleset I didn't know what their life would be and it's not unusual for a creature with high life to be thrown in. The tank heal is worth more when your tank has a high life total like Shieldbearer which is the most common tank used in the life deck.
Pelacor Arbalest is the epitome of what you want in the Equalizer rule set. You want a high damage to life ratio and in connection with General Sloan the Arbalest dishes 6 damage per turn with just 2 life. It also speaks to the strength of Pelacor Arbalest when my opponent unsurprisingly uses the same card. You may have noticed that we both placed the Arbalest in the 4th position which is far enough back to be protected in front and far enough from the last position that sneak creatures won't get it too early.
It looks like my opponent played a strong lineup with the Equalizer ruleset in mind. It's especially important to fill as many of your 6 positions as possible because the player with the highest number of monsters will have the highest life total at their disposal. If I hadn't had both of the 0 mana creatures at my disposal then my lineup would have only given me 16 life instead of the 24 that we both had.
Another strong move that my opponent made was including 13 points worth of damage per turn in their lineup where I only had 12 available. This is one place where my Time Mage made a world of difference.
Great match Mihajlomiso.
Another splinter that frequently gets used in Equalizer matches is the death splinter.
The first auto include card for matches with the death splinter is Cursed Windeku in the tank position.
Cursed Windeku dishes 2 damage on offense, 2 damage to other melee monsters on defense and has a whopping 9 life for just 6 mana. It's no wonder this card shows up in nearly every match using the death splinter. Because of Windeku's high life total the Equalizer ruleset is one place where it may not be automatically included.
Some death splinter cards that you're likely to see in Equalizer rulesets include: Undead Badger and Soul Strangler for their low cost and high damage to life ratios. You may also see: Riftwing, Life Sapper and Venari Bonesmith for their Scavenge and Life Leech abilities.
Until next time, I'll see you around the game. Feel free to like, follow, repost and check out my other content.