Hello Splinterlands Summoners and welcome to my blog! In Frontier, the Water splinter clearly dominates the meta. It feels reminiscent of the time before the Chaos Legion era, when Alric Stormbringer was one of the strongest archons. Water is beginner friendly thanks to its strong units, easy to form teams with magic and strong support of neutral units. However, it's by no means invincible. They can be countered with a combination of teams and rulesets.

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Low Mana Battles

In low mana battles, I prefer using the Death splinter. First, the tank has a natural defense against magic with his Void ability. Second, he's got good defense against physical attacks even if his melee attack is not high. His role is to hold the line and allow the damage dealers in the back to do their job.

My damage dealer in low mana battles using Death splinter is Sorrow Harvester. She deals two magic damage and decreases the health of the enemy team by one with her Weaken ability. Together with the archon, they already decreased the enemy's health by two even before the battle starts!

Here's a sample battle with maxed mana of twenty eight. I used the Nim Guard Captain and Sorrow Harvester combo against a strong Water magic team led by Mystic Scaleweaver.

Mystic Scaleweaver and Saltwater Mage starts the battle with minus two health. While both are strong offensive units, they are vulnerable to attacks and need a tank to help sustain them in battle.

Link to Battle

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Arcane Dampening and Earthquake

The ruleset decreases magic attacks and the Water team has no flying units. Even with Water magic's strong offense, this ruleset is just built against them and you can win by using flying units (Death or Life units) or high health cards like the Earth splinter.

There are only two flying units in the Frontier. Life's Celestial Guardian and Death's Little Sister.

Celestial Guardian	Little Sister

Celestial Guardian already has Flying ability at level one. He deals two magic damage and has a health of three. Little Sister has to be level two to get the Flying ability. In addition, she also has the Life Leech ability to increase her health as she damages her targets. She also deals two magic damage and has a starting health of three.

In this battle, my two units have to shield the Celestial Guardian because it has low health. The strategy is to allow the Earthquake to damage the enemy and survive for as long as possible and ensure that the Celestial Guardian doesn't get attacked.

Link to Battle

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Winning With Better Strategy/Team Combo

We have the same units in the Frontier. We can win by upgrading our units to make them stronger or play with better strategies. In this battle, the enemy and I used the same Water magic team. His team has the higher level archon but I formed my team to better meet the ruleset as well as the enemy team. The ruleset was Global Warming so survivability has to be taken into account. I decided to use a five man team with Asel Alagosdil taking the tank position while the enemy opted for a four man team led by the Great Bear Druid.

A team with more units made sense to me since more units deal more damage. Even if the enemy units are stronger in offense, the extra card that they will need to eliminate can spell the difference in battle.

Link to Battle

Here's another Water vs Water battle where my enemy has the higher level archon and units.

The enemy opted for Mystic Scaleweaver and Saltwater Mage combo while I chose the Lunaki Howler. It deals one less damage compared to the Saltwater Mage but needs lower mana. It allowed me to field the Colossus Raider who deals two melee damage. We also have to rely on our other units, not just purely on magic damage dealers when using the Water splinter.

Link to Battle

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Final Thoughts

The Water magic team is the strongest and easiest to use in the Frontier. However, it's not unbeatable and can be lose against better strategies and team combination especially taking into account the rulesets. This is what makes Splinterlands a fun game to play. We have to find the right strategies in every battle in order to prevail even against stronger enemies.