Best Starter Cards in Splinterlands Every Beginner Should Get 2023

More recently, we have made a complete guide on a pretty popular card game Splinterlands. For a good start in the game, it is necessary to build powerful decks. Moreover, there is no universal recipe for a great start in our guide — everyone starts the game with different investments and strategies on the battlefield.

Our goal is to give you an initial overview of Splinterlands classes and show you which cards to purchase at the very beginning of your journey. Here, you will find tips on choosing the best starter cards and building the most powerful deck. 

Let us recall that the game has six main classes: Fire, Water, Earth, Life, Death, Dragon. In our guide, we will consider cards of all classes, except for the dragon class cards (to play them, you need to spend a lot of money). Let’s get started!

Fire

It is necessary to note that Fire class standard summoners do a good job. Here’s a low-cost alternative summoner that works well against the Life class and other shield tanks.

 

Qid Yuff. The summoner grants all creatures the Piercing ability, which allows the attack to continue when the shield is removed. So, creatures with high damage will be able to immediately decrease lives, thereby devaluing the shields of monsters and the ability of standard summoners of Dragon and Life classes.

Pay attention that this summoner will be useful with a large initial set of mana for a battle. With a low amount of mana, it is better to stop at the summoner, which increases the melee attack. 

 

• • The price of QID YUFF on the market is about $3.5 or 600 DEC. 

• • The rental price is minimal — 0.1 DEC per day.

Let’s pay attention to the most powerful cards from the standard deck:

 

Serpentine Spy. Just pay attention to this very useful card on a set of low-cost mana. Spy has a very valuable ability ‘Opportunity’, and thus becomes irreplaceable. It will attack from any position, targeting the monster with the lowest health. This card is especially useful when attacking magic creatures of the Water deck.

Living Lava is the best standard tank of the Fire deck. We get high health, excellent damage, an additional shield, and the ability that reduces card damage for the high purchase cost. Other tanks of the Fire deck in the low price category cannot be compared with Lava in terms of the effectiveness of use.

The standard fire deck has several drawbacks — the lack of a separate healer and the lack of a good support unit (a unit with ‘Reach’ ability — the ability to attack from the second line, despite the ability to melee). Therefore, we recommend that you pay attention to this card.

 

Fineas Rage has excellent starting stats. We receive a high speed along with a good shot power — accordingly, a great chance to dodge and hit first.

 

• • The market price is $3.5 or about 650 DEC. 

• • The rental price is 1 DEC per day.

 

Efreet Elder is an underestimated and not quite typical fire deck card that can save you from defeat. With relatively low mana, this card has high health and speed stats. Initially, the card should be in the last place in the deck (high health stats help save the card until the final battle). The card increases its characteristics only when left alone on the battlefield.

 

• • The price on the market is $1.35 or 250 DEC.

• • The rental price is 0.10 DEC.

 

Pyromancer is a great replacement for a standard Fire Elemental. It beats not only the target but also the card following it. Please note that this card is perfect in the early stages and at high levels, so we recommend purchasing it and increasing the level.

 

• • The price on the market is 6.75 or about 1100 DEC.

• • The rental price is 1 DEC per day.

Water

Water is one of the most unusual and most effective classes when choosing a smart strategy. It is the only class where most creatures have a magic attack, and their ability to deal damage does not depend on their position.

 

There are two standard summoners for this class — Bortus and Alric Stormbringer. One increases magic damage, the other decreases the opponent’s one.

Bortus is an ad hoc summoner since, more often, it is more profitable to increase your own attack than to decrease the opponent’s magic attack (not all characters of the Water class can boast of having a magic attack). Alric is an optimal choice for a hard game of all the variety of summoners of this class. The magic attack is the most powerful in the game. 

The standard set of this class for battle includes magic aquatic creatures and neutral creatures with a magic attack. In general, the most popular and playable cards look like this:

 

Medusa and Elven Mystic are standard cards with magic damage and relatively good stats. Together with good support, they are worthwhile damage units of the starter magic deck.

 

Sea Genie. Unlike standard cards, it has an increased magic attack and ‘Flight’ ability, which reduces the chance of a successful hit. Since these cards have a low level of health, this ability is very useful to save Genie in battle.

 

• • Genie’s price is $2.85 or about 500 DEC.

• • The rental price is 0.7 DEC per day.

 

Venari Wavesmith (Rat) is one of the best recently released cards. Rat has the ability ‘Protection’, which gives +2 to armor. In addition, it has a magic attack and a high amount of health. Perfect for playing against Fire class cards, as it fully protects against the first melee attacks.

 

• • Rat costs $2.4 or about 430 DEC.

• • The rent price is 3.9 DEC per day.

Magic cards are more expensive than ordinary ones, but their use is justified by the highest efficiency.

 

The Water deck has a pretty good standard tank (Serpent of Eld), which is perfect for everything except low health. An inexpensive alternative with better performance is the following tanks:

 

Sea Monster is good enough. It has the ability to heal itself, but due to its low speed), it quite often receives all the damage and does not have time to recover. It makes sense to use it in conjunction with creatures that reduce the speed of your opponent’s creatures.

 

• • The price on the market is relatively low — $4 or 700 DEC.

• • The rental price is 0.35 DEC per day.

Torhilo the Frozen. The fairly high cost of mana points is due to the high characteristics of both health and attack. Its shields along with the ability to resist magic attacks, make the creature a versatile tank — against both direct and magic damage.

 

• • The price on the market is $10 or 1750 DEC.

• • The rental price is 7 DEC per day.

Prismatic Energy is a great tank option for both magic and anti-magic decks. We attribute the neutral card to the Water class since, in this class, its use is most appropriate. If the previous tank reduced the magic effect, this one returns part of the hit back. This tank is a powerful weapon if we take into account the low health of magic creatures of the Water class.

 

• • The price on the market is about $20 or 3700 DEC.

• • The rental price is 4 DEC per day.

Earth

 

Mylor Crowling is the best summoner of this class at the starter level, which will also remain useful in the future game. It has a unique ability ‘Thorns’ — whenever your character is attacked in a hand-to-hand battle, the attackers receive 2 points of damage in return.

At lower upgrade levels, melee cards rarely deal much damage, and thanks to this summoner, the attacker almost always receives even more damage than it did itself in response. This summoner works well with starter cards and low-cost cards that you will not have to purchase at the very beginning of the game.

 

• • The summoner itself costs about $60.

• • Renting this card will cost you 35 DEC (about 20 cents) per day.

Let’s move on to the formation of the deck of this class. Here are some pretty useful cards from the starter set that you should pay attention to:

 

Stone Golem is an excellent starter-level tank. It has a low mana cost and an excellent ability ‘Shield’. This ability reduces damage from melee and ranged attacks (Golem simply ignores the hit of cards with a strength of 1).

Unicorn Mustang is a cure for a Water opponent. Its main ability is to reduce damage from magic attacks. If your opponent prefers to play on the Water class, Mustang as a tank is a must have.

Goblin Thief is a card with a low cost and relatively high damage. ‘Sneak’ ability allows Goblin to stand anywhere on the battlefield. This card will hit not the first but the last card of the opponent.

Cards that we recommend to buy or rent to your deck:

 

Wood Nymph is the only card-healer at the starter level. Earth creatures often have a huge amount of health but quickly lose it. The healer card helps to save cards for as long as possible. Low health is a disadvantage, so we do not recommend putting Nymph at the end of the battlefield.

 

• • The price of the card is a little less than $5 or 850 DEC. 

• • Renting Nymph costs less than 1 DEC per day, which will pay off even if you are inactive in the lowest league.

 

Nectar Queen is a great card in a high mana deck. It has high damage, a fairly high level of health, and a good chance of knocking out miss from an opponent due to its ‘Flight’ ability. It is played situationally, we recommend using Queen only when paired with a healer.

 

• • The card costs about $1 or 186 DEC.

• • The rental price is 0.1 DEC per day.

Life

Life is one of the hardest decks to play, with great potential. It is practically not played at a low mana level, but it becomes as strong as possible at high mana.

There are two standard effective summoners in this class, which increase the level of HP and endows each creature with a shield (which saves from any first hit, except magic one). However, there is a more effective starter-level Summoner that will protect your deck from magic damage as well.

 

Lorna Shine is a summoner, giving creatures the ability to ignore the first hit. Creatures protected by Lorna can survive the first wave of attack painlessly. At a starter level, ignoring damage will give you a significant advantage over standard deck players.

 

• • Lorna’s price is not too high as for summoners — just over $8 or 1,450 DEC. 

• • The rental price is 0.5 DEC per day.

The standard deck of the class cannot boast of having strong damage cards, but we recommend that you pay attention to these cards — they have good potential for development:

 

Feral Spirit is a card with low cost and huge development potential. High speed gives an advantage in hits and an increased chance of dodging. Its ability allows you to remove distant creatures with low damage from the battlefield. In conjunction with a knight that increases damage, we get a creature of good characteristics (with increased health and shield).

Shieldbearer is one of the best tanks due to its ‘Taunt’ ability). It is played with a lot of mana. With the support of a healer and additional defense, it holds the hit well for several turns in a row.

 

Silvershield Paladin + Silvershield Knight. We have combined them into one category since the stats of the two creatures are pretty similar. With relatively little protection and health, they perform well overall. The use of a knight is justified due to its powerful attack boost (without this creature, the attack of the entire deck will be negligible). 

 

Silvershield Assassin’s ability to double attack per turn makes it almost indispensable in the battle for this deck.

Assassin can occupy any place on the battlefield. High speed and high health, along with increased damage, increase the deck’s competitiveness.

 

• • The market price is $8.7 or 1,500 DEC.

• • The rental price is a little less than 3 DEC per day.

Let’s single out healers in a separate category. A healer’s presence in the starter deck makes the Life class more competitive. 

 

The recently released Venari Crystalsmith is an alternative to the decent standard healer Divine Healer. Equal in health, they differ in speed and ranged damage ability.

 

• • The price on the market is about $4 or 700 DEC.

• • The rental price is 13 DEC per day.

Death

Death is the most balanced deck in terms of strength and health. This class does not have worthwhile low-cost summoners, so we use the standard ones, depending on the opponent. In most cases, this is a summoner, which reduces melee damage.

 

Haunted Spirit is one of the best low-cost tanks in the game. Self-healing, high health, and powerful attack make it the best card of the standard set of this class. A big advantage is that it does not lose its relevance with the growth of levels but remains the same universal soldier of your deck.

Twisted Jester and Death Elemental are the best (and only) ranged attack cards with sniper ability in the standard set.

If you are fighting on low mana at the starter levels, the opposing team will almost certainly have a Haunted Spirit + Twisted Jester set as the most winning set of cards of all low mana decks.

Let us draw your attention to a worthwhile support card and low-cost, long-range attack:

 

Soulstorm is a low-cost but high attack card. Low health is compensated by high speed and the ability to fly. The card compensates for the main drawback of the deck — the low speed of creatures.

 

• • The price on the market is $16 or 2900 DEC.

• • The rental price is about 40 DEC.

The Gorlodon is a sound support card. A powerful attack is combined with high health. In combination with a card that increases speed, it performs at the highest level.

 

• • The price on the market is $17 or 3000 DEC.

• • The rental price is about 40 DEC.

Conclusion

As was mentioned at the beginning of our guide, there are no neutral cards (which are must have in every deck) and cards of the strongest and most versatile class — Dragons. These cards require as much investment as possible and thus are not appropriate for beginners. We will consider the Dragon class in a separate article! 

If you are interested in playing other NFT games like Axie Infinity, Gods Unchained, or Alien Worlds, make sure you have gone through our ultimate guides on them.

What are your favorite Splinterlands cards? Feel free to share them in the comments!