Splinterlands | Beginner strategies | Fire strategy with Tarsa

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(Edited)

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When to use Tarsa

Tarsa is good in most situations.

The +1 damage and +1 health buff for a 4 mana summoner is really good. As long as you can use enough melee monsters you can be sure that Tarsa is a great pick in most situations. Really good magic composition might be your biggest challenge in the lower leagues.

The basic idea

As usual, the basic idea is really simple, Tarsa gives our monsters +1 health and +1 melee damage. Well, health affects everybody, but the melee damage buff obviously only affects the melee monsters.

Therefore, we want to use as many melee monsters as possible, to get the maximum value out of our summoner buff. Sure, you have to care about your monsters not being idle, so you want all your monsters to be able to attack from any position (opportunity ability, sneak ability, battle conditions).

The free 2 play strategy

Let's start with discussing the completely free 2 play strategy using only the cards that are free 2 play.

Who will be our go-to monsters?

Living lava

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Living lava is my number one recommendation to use in almost every battle. The only time that he is not strong is against a heavy magic damage lineup, but that's typical for a monster with the shield ability.

So, what makes him so strong?

Simple, a combination of strong basic stats + the shield ability. Also, a strong tank + the damage buff from Tarsa makes this a really strong card. It's also a good card to level up, as the additional health and armor are stronger when combined with the shield ability. That being said, it's not the cheapest of cards, so you will have to figure out whether or not you want to spend your money on the living lava or elsewhere.

There are few games when you don't want to use the living lava.

Serpentine spy

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If living lava is our number one pick serpentine would be our number two for a free 2 play deck.
Costing only 3 mana, having 2 damage (which will be buffed to 3), 3 attack speed and the opportunity ability at level 1, this is an obvious pick.

The main problem? He's extremely squishy. Make sure to position him as good as possible in order to keep him alive. However, if your enemy uses opportunity monsters of their own, there isn't too much you can do as the serpentine spy will probably be the first target.

All that being said, in general, this card will be very strong. At least, in low/mid mana fights. In high mana fights you are better of using higher mana cards (unless sometimes when the equalizer condition is at play)

Antoid platoon

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Antoid platoon is a nice new card. It's basically the living lava for little league.
Might sometimes also be good to absorb some damage from sneak or opportunity attacks.
It's definitely not a card that you should include in every lineup, but it should see some play as he can be pretty useful in certain battles.

Tenyii striker

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Another gift from the chaos legion set. Tenyii striker is a pretty strong in-between card at 5 mana, 2 attack and 6 health.

Seems like a card that you want to use if it still fits in the lineup.

Parasitic growth

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Another melee monster that can attack from any position is the parasitic growth. It's also a neutral card which means that you can use him in any deck.

He actually gets a lot stronger at level 3 because he gains +1 damage (and at level 2 he gains +1 health, which is also nice).

However, if you are a complete beginner with no/few cards even the level 1 might be a good pick from time to time.

Kobold bruiser

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A decent card that you want to include in your lineup in certain conditions. For example, when all melee monsters can attack from any position and the mana cap is rather low.

Radiated scorcher

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Pretty much the same as with kobold bruiser. A good card to include in certain situation like in low mana battles where all melee monsters can attack from any position.

1 mana cards can also be usefull as meatshields and/or sacrefices for the ant miners (a card I will cover later in the article).

Radiated brute

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The radiated brute is decent, but not great. However, in a complete free 2 play deck this is your go-to second position monster.

Once you get yourself Fineas Rage (I will talk about this card later) you will rarely find the need to play this monster.

What cards to buy

Okay, so now that you know how to play this strategy with only the free 2 play cards it's time to look at how you can improve by buying some good cards for this strategy.
There are plenty of really good cards out there, but most of them are really expensive. Since this is a beginner guide, I will stick to the cheaper options out there.

Sand worm

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Sand worm is not specific to this lineup, but he is one of my main recommendations for brand new players because he is very useful in high mana games and you can use this guy with any splinter. Also, the tarsa buff makes him even stronger.

Fineas rage

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Fineas rage is a very good card to put in second position. He is strong at level 1, but becomes a lot stronger at level 3 because he gains +1 health and +1 damage. Leveling Fineas is sadly enough not that budget-friendly.

However, also at level 1 it will be a nice improvement to your lineup, living lava + Fineas rage makes a really solid frontline.

Battering ram

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The battering ram is cool because it's another opportunity melee card for only 2 mana. He is great to combine with parasitic growth and serpentine spy in low mana fights.

Also, it's a neutral card, so you can use this cards in other decks aswell.

Ant miners

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One of the more undervalued cards at the moment in my opinion.

The scavenge ability + the buff from tarsa can make this monster absolutely huge. I have seen this card being buffed to a 2 damage & +8 health many times. The trick is to use good positioning, don't put him in front of the line, but also don't put him too late because you still want to function as a tank for your damage dealers. Usually position 3 is good (but as always this depents on the situation).

Molten ogre

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Molten ogre is decent in games where there is a battle condition that gives melee monsters the ability to attack from any position.

The molten ogre is a big body on the bord and nerfs the enemy's melee monsters.

Not a card that I use very often, but from the time to time proves to be very useful.

Tusk the wide

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I have mentioned that this strategy can struggle a bit with against strong magic lineups?

Well since chaos legion we have a solution to that problem, it's called Tusk the wide.

Including this card when you expect there is a decent chance that you fight a high magic damage team is a game-changer.

Forgotten one

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Use the forgotten one in battle where posionous fumes is a battle condition. It's as simple as that!

The lineup

Now that we know what cards to use, let see how we use them.

The basic lineup always starts with the living lava.

The second position goes to the reach monster, if you have fineas rage this would be the usual pick. Radiated brute or even giant roc can also be used.

After that the lineup can consist of the cards discussed earlier in this article.

Also, cards like furious chicken and creeping ooze are cards that can be included in any lineup.

An example of a basic lineup: (you can click on the image to see the actual battle)

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An example of how a poisoned fumes battle combined with little league could look like:

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Another example, this time of a low mana battle of 15 mana.
I feel like using a non traditional lineup without a real tank works pretty good aswell. However, if you would decide to use a living lava here that would also be good.

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What cards to level

Before you can level monsters you have to level your summoner. This can be pretty expensive and that's why I recommend buying some good level 1 cards before starting to level up your cards.

However, eventually you are going to want to get your monsters levelled up and it's important to think about what monster upgrades will benefit you the most.

Always take a look at what stats are gained at the next level before putting your DEC/Credits into levelling.

I will not go into too much detail here, but you should consider the value/cost ratio. So usually this means, upgrade the cheaper cards first.

That said, if you (like me) use living lava in almost all of your games, it might be worth it to make the bigger investment first. As I mentioned before this decision is not one I can make for you, both approaches have there arguments.

General tips and concepts

Before wrapping up the article let me present some other resources to improve your splinterlands strategies. Note that hese are not splinter/summoner specific.

Complete overview

The absolute splinterlands basics
This post is about the basics of the game, it goes over all the stats on a card, how the league system works etc. However, this does not really cover startegy.

Complete beginner strategy tutorial
This post is the complete beginner strategy tutorial. Should be very useful for beginners.

Strategy concepts

Focus Fire
Focus your damage on a single enemy instead of creating damage spread.

Positioning
Good positioning has offensive and defensive benefits.

Scouting
Get information from your enemy before you actually submit your teams

Battle conditions

Earthquake
How to handle battles with the earthquake condition.

Noxious fumes
How to handle battles with the noxious fumes condition.

Lore

For those of you who like to read the lore behind this powerfull summoner:

The village folk always say that Tarsa was born with fire in her blood, and that is true in many ways. Her burning rage and quick temper are amplified by her powers to summon and control fire. While her parents and teachers tried to instill patience for such dangerous magic, Tarsa had little time for that. She used her abilities to bully and threaten those that got in her way.

Her young and innocent-looking appearance only helped her to further manipulate people around her. “Tarsa always gets what Tarsa wants” is what she says to herself every time something or someone challenges her.

When the Chaos Legion arrived, Tarsa saw this as an opportunity to have free reign of her fire power without interference from anyone else. So long as the Chaos Legion opens the path for her, she can burn everything else to the ground.
Tarsa's laugh echoed into the night. She stood in the middle of the wide-open plains, a blanket of stars above. Her arms moved in circles around her as she controlled a raging torrent of fire. It spun about her, embers drifting up into the night.

She was surrounded by a tribe of barbarians. Barbarians that were angry she was on their land, using their resources, and hunting their animals. They tried to talk to her, but Tarsa cared little for conversation. She was stronger than all of them combined.

She flicked her wrist and bolts of fire shot from her spinning torrent, impacting the warriors around her. They screamed. She laughed.

“Well, come on!” she shouted. “Let's see if any of you are strong enough for Tarsa!”

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10 comments
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I really love how you broke this down in terms of strategy and card. You really set a great example how strategic post should be designed. Perhaps you would be free for a discord conversation sometime? I'd love to learn more about publishox.
!LUV !PIZZA

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Sure if you have any questions, shoot
(here or on discord)

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Can you add me on discord?
InfinityTcg#8041

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Do you like to correct your post? Tarsa has +1 health NOT speed.

The +1 damage and +1 attack speed buff for a 4 mana summoner is really good.

Also therefore in reverse speed Malric doesn’t have any obvious advantages or disadvantages over Tarsa.

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(Edited)

I don't know what happened in my brain there.
Thanks for letting me know.

I corrected it.

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Thanks for sharing! - @yonilkar

I really love the way you explain how to use this new fire summoner.

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