Chaos Legion Starters: A BEGINNER's guide to Level 1 FIRE

All right Ladies and Gentlemen, I've decided to help out BEGINNERS understand the cards of each of the Splinters, to help with managing the new information from all this newly released cards from the Chaos Legion edition for Splinterlands. For those who are new to the game, it is important to know that you are given FREE access to cards of COMMON and RARE rarities of the latest TWO editions of major releases. In this cases, it is CHAOS LEGION and UNTAMED. That means that if you started a few months ago, the BETA edition cards you h ad access to are no longer playable for free. Due to this rather recent change, and to the fact that players continue to join this wonderful game, I've decided to outline each Splinter (faction), all the cards available, beginning with Chaos Legion. I hope this will help all who intend to play with only the available cards (for now!!) until they're excited enough to begin buying and renting more!

In these posts, I will not assign a numerical rating to cards. There are enough Tier lists out there, and it is difficult to rate a card, because there are so many different situations, rulesets, and mana costs in matches, and their value is relative to each of these. I will explain the card, its stats at base level 1, give information on its uses, as well as its value, and give an overall recommendation level at the end of each explanation. This is intended mainly for BEGINNERS, so I will not detail information on higher levels of any of these cards.

This week we will focus on... the FIRE Splinter. Let's begin by discussion the new Chaos Legion summoner: Tarsa!

Tarsa is a 4 mana summoner. Summoners in Splinterlands range in Mana cost between two and seven at the maximum. During the Beta period, there were releases of 2 Mana Summoners, that have no ability, but since they cost only 2 Mana, they had specific uses in low mana matches, as well as being perfect for the Silenced Summoners Ruleset (no summoner abilities). After that, the majority of Summoners had a Mana Cost of between three and five, with the special Legendary Summoners having a cost of seven, and the exceptional Common rarity summoner, Delwyn Dragonscale, having a cost of 5.

Tarsa gives us a bonus of one melee attack to all melee cards, and 1 health to ALL cards. This is a significant boost. I consider Tarsa to be the single best new summoner that has been released so far. Getting one health is useful for every single ruleset other than Health Equalizer. The Fire Splinter has some of the best melee cards in the game, so the one extra melee is also very strong. I believe that using Tarsa when you choose to play Fire Splinter is the best choice, and you will have many opportunities at success in doing so. Now, let's move on to the specific cards that are available to you now in Bronze from the Chaos Legion edition:

Chaos Legion, Fire Splinter, COMMON cards

Radiated Scorcher: This cards costs 1 Mana to use, has 1 melee attack, has 2 speed, and has 2 health. It does not have special abilities. Radiated Scorcher is a card that is generally only used as a filler, when you need to pad out your front or backlines in order to take a hit for other cards to remain safe. That isn't to say that it is entirely useless. Its simple one melee is misleading, since by using Tarsa, this immediately becomes two melee attack. Having two melee attack for just one mana cost is a good deal. The problem, however, is that the card is most likely to die before it can attack. This is because, at two speed, there are too many fire cards that are likely to attack and kill it if you put it in the front line as a tank. This also means that you will not be able to use a better tank, which Fire Splinter actually has a lot of. If you decided to put it in front of your better tank, it could mean that your better tank will not have the opportunity to attack.
I recommend to use this card to put in the front or backlines only if you intend to have padding. That is, you put it so that it can take a hit for other cards that you consider more important. It is worth pointing out that the fire splinter has many strong cards with Stealth ability, so putting this card in the back can protect your better cards from one attack. For the cost of 1 mana this is not a bad choice. I recommend this card in low mana situations, and if you do not have a Furious Chicken or Scorching Fiend.

Rulesets:

• This card has special utility in any of the rulesets that allow Melee cards to attack from any position. This way, you are getting 2 melee attack to contribute to your offense at the cost of only 1 mana. This will be a strong usage. The relevant game modes are when melee can attack from any position, when all melee cards have sneak, and when all cards have opportunity.

Scavo Chemist: This cards costs 2 Mana to use, has no attack, has 2 speed, and has 3 health. It has the Cleanse special ability. Scavo Chemist, first of all, can be used as a filler card for a backline tank or frontline tank, but it is MUCH less efficient at this job than a 1 mana card. I would NOT recommend this usage for the card. However, the key to the utility of this card comes from its special ability: Cleanse. Cleanse does the following: Removes all negative effects on the Monster in the first position on the friendly team. This may not sound like something you would use a lot... and you would be right! There are few cases that this would apply when it comes to effects that the opposing monsters would have on you: Slow, Poisoned, Afflicted, Demoralized, Silenced. Poisoned is indeed quite a dangerous status effect, but there are too few cards that are commonly used in Bronze that will infect your frontline tank with poison. Even when it does happen, it's questionable whether it is worth using 2 mana of your total amount just for the chance that this happens.
Does that mean I do not recommend this card? Not quite! There is one specific scenario in which this card is actually quite useful and it has to do with a ruleset specifically!

Rulesets:

• This card is VERY useful in the ruleset Noxious Fumes: All Monsters start the battle Poisoned. That's right, if you have Scavo Chemist in your team, this card will CLEANSE the poison effect off of your tank! That can be a massive advantage in this game mode! The ruleset states that Poison is applied at the START of the battle. That means, once your tank card is cleansed, it does not even matter if Scavo dies, the poison will not come back! Therefore I recommend this card for that ruleset specifically, and otherwise I do not recommend using this card in Bronze.

Lava Spider: This cards costs 3 Mana to use, has 1 ranged attack, has 2 speed, and has 4 health. It has the special ability Snipe: Targets enemy Monsters with Ranged, Magic, or no attack that are not in the first position. At first look, it would seem that this is not a particularly impressive card. Is this true? Perhaps. You see, this card is very reminiscent of a card from the beta edition called Fire Beetle. The stats are similar, and the fact that it has snipe, just like that one, gave it one specific very strong use: Yodin Zaku teams. Since we are playing in Bronze, we have to keep in mind that it is EXTREMELY unlikely that we would either face or have Yodin Zaku (a card that currently trades for nearly one thousand dollars!) available. This card is specifically for that team. We will be using teams that focus mainly on the abilities of Melee cards, because they are boosted by the summoner of choice: Tarsa. For that reason this card is not specifically recommendable. As it levels up, it becomes quite powerful, but we are looking at its utility at level one!

Rulesets: I do not recommend using this card with Tarsa for any ruleset. You might use it if your daily Quest is to use a Snipe card, but for that Daily Quest I would recommend utilizing a different Splinter than Fire! Not recommended for Bronze.

Antoid Platoon: This cards costs 4 Mana to use, has 1 melee attack, has 1 speed, has 2 armor, and has 3 health. It has the special abilty Shield: Reduced damage from Melee and Ranged attacks. OK, here we have our first tank to consider. Antoid Platoon is a formidable tank for its mana cost. The way that the Shield abiliy works, is that, attack damage from physical sources of damage (melee and ranged) gets halved (rounded up), except attack 1 which deals 0 damage. This also applies to the effect of Thorns and Earthquake. It does NOT affect magic attacks. If we consider that this card has 3 health and 2 shield, against physical damage sources we can consider a total of 5... and if we take into account the shield ability, this can be anywhere between 10 or more damage taken before being knocked out. Wow! On top of that, it also has one melee attack, which we know will become two thanks to Tarsa, and remember he will also gain 1 more health from Tarsa as well. This is a very useful tank, but there is one major downfall: Magic. As soon as this card is put up against an opposing team that is using Magic, it is in for a world of hurt. With the release of Chaos Legion, as well as the overall trend seen in previous editions, Magic has a strong presence in the average of all matches, in all leagues, including Bronze. Its armor will be ignore by magic damage, and its shield ability has no effect. That means it only has 3 health against magic teams. Ouch!
It would be nice to consider only facing physical damage types, in which case this is a highly recommended card. We know, for example, that Fire and Life both are mainly oriented around physical damage, so against those two splinters it would be a good choice in most cases. However, because of the fact that magic is so present in the average matches, the recommendation for this card has to be dropped significantly because of how easily it would fall to magic, and not do a great amount of damage to the frontline compared to other tanks! Nevertheless, let's look at usage scenarios:

Rulesets:

• First of all, the viability of this card increases dramatically with the Weak Magic Ruleset: Magic attacks hit Armor before reducing Health. Even though Shield ability will still not be useful, it is now much safer to use this card. Recommended!
• Next, we find that it is also useful for Earthquake: Non-flying Monsters take 2 Melee damage at the end of each round. Due to its Shield ability, it will only receive 1 damage from the earthquake effect.
• It is currently the strongest tank you can use for Little League ruleset: Only Monsters & Summoners that cost 4 Mana or less may be used in battles.
• Health equalizer: The initial Health of all Monsters is equal to that of the Monster on either team with the highest base Health. This means that its only weakness, the low health pool, is nullified and makes it perfect for this ruleset.
• Finally, the PERFECT game mode for this tank: Lost Magic: Monsters with Magic attack may not be used in battles. It is HIGHLY recommended for that ruleset. This card has many uses and you will be wise to keep an eye on it.

Radiated Brute: This cards costs 5 Mana to use, has 2 melee attack, has 1 speed, and has 5 health. It has the special ability Reach: Melee attack Monsters with the Reach ability may attack from the second position on the team. Now we've arrived at one of the best new cards available with the new Chaos Legion edition. First of all, I have to emphasize how important to special ability Reach is. The Fire Splinter is melee oriented, at Bronze, and therefore being able to have a melee attacked in the second position is INCREDIBLY strong. That is not to say this is the only Reach card in the Fire Splinter, but for now let us focus on it. Two attack is VERY strong, since it is increased to 3 attack thanks to Tarsa. And the fact that it will have 6 health in total means that if the frontline tank disappear, it can still hold the position with a decent health pool of its own. This card is one that I HIGHLY recommend for at least half of any matches you play, unless you also have Fineas Rage, in which case you will need to choose between the two, depending on your mana cost. Having this combination of stats for just 5 mana and being able to attack from second position makes this one of the best cards available to use from the Chaos Legion, and is definitely the best common card you can use right now. HIGHLY recommended.

Rulesets: As stated already, this is a very strong card, and it becomes even stronger in several rulesets!

• Explosive Weaponry: All Monsters have the Blast ability. (In case you don't know, Blast does the following: Does additional damage to Monsters adjacent to the target Monster. Additional damage is equivalent to main damage divided by 2, rounded up.) The reason it is so useful for this ruleset is actually two-fold: First, the fact that it will be doing a total of three damage means that the Blast effect, since it is rounded up, will actually do TWO damage to the next card in line. Great! Second, its formidable health means it is a nice second tank to absorb the Blast damage done by the opponent. Next.
• Fog of War: Monsters lose the Sneak and Snipe abilities. Since we have less choices for melee due to this restriction, it becomes even more beneficial to have a melee card that can attack from the backline.
• The same applies to the ruleset Up Close & Personal: Only Monsters with Melee attack may be used in battles.
• Finally, it is great for Reverse Speed: Monsters with the lowest Speed attack first and have the highest chance of evading attacks. This card has a speed of only one, which means it will now be the fastest card. Excellent card!

Chaos Legion, Fire Splinter, RARE cards

Scavo Chemist: This card costs 4 Mana to use, has 2 ranged attack, has 2 speed, and has 4 health. It does not have special abilities. There isn't much to say about this card, since, once again, it is much more useful in higher leagues for a high-budget player that uses Yodin Zaku. Even so, it has quite a good stat density for its cost. To be able to get 4 health and 2 attack for 4 mana is a good deal no matter which way you paint it. The only thing to keep in mind here is that, since you are using Tarsa, which gives +1 to melee attacks only, you are not benefiting from that bonus. Either way, at two ranged, it is not a bad choice. I would say to use this card for certain scenarios which I will outline now:

Rulesets:

• Back to Basics: Monsters lose all abilities. For this ruleset it is important to utilize both magic and ranged units. Why? There are no abilties for melee units to be able to attack from any other position, so having them in the backline means they are not contributing to the damage. This card has no ability to begin with, and it is a ranged card, in which case it is HIGHLY recommended for this game mode. However, be sure not to have too many ranged cards in case your tank dies early.
• Close Range: Ranged attacks may be used in the first position in battles. This makes the card safer to use and can be part of your team, especially if combined with Little League.
• Fog of War: Monsters lose the Sneak and Snipe abilities. This means the card is much safer in the backline, and it also means you need more ranged cards in general since your Sneak cards are not useful anymore. Decent choice.
• Keep your Distance: Monsters with Melee attack may not be used in battles. Honestly, I would recommend almost any other splinter for this game mode, but if you need to use Fire, then this is a very important card for this ruleset.
• Silenced Summoners: Summoners do not give any stat buffs or debuffs or grant/use any abilities. Here it becomes a very formidable card, since none of the melee cards will benefit from Tarsa's bonus either. Strong choice here!! Highly recommended.

Djinn Apprentice: This card costs 5 Mana to use, has 2 magic attack, has 2 speed, and has 4 health. It does not have special abilities. The first magic card we talk about here! As stated many times, Fire Splinter is very strong for melee, quite strong for Yodin Zaku ranged teams, but has overall no synergy for magic. Is there any purpose to even using this card? Well... the answer is yes! First of all, let us remember that magic attacks ignore Armor, and also are not affected by the Shield ability. Furthermore, unlike ranged, Magic attack can also be used from the frontline. That makes it the most flexible damage type in the game! Now, since most of Fire Splinter revolves around physical damage, there is no real synergy here, and this card's purpose is much more revolving around specific uses. Some of these are rulesets, as will be outlined next, but it is also useful to combat specific cards in the fire splinter itself: Antoid Platoon and Living Lava, since both of those have Shield, which reduces physical damage, and will therefore not affect the damage by Djinn. Now let's look at rulesets:
Rulesets:

• Armored Up: All Monsters have 2 Armor in addition to their normal Armor stat. Magic is king in this ruleset, since it ignores armor completely! Therefore it is best to use as many magic attacking cards as possible here. Overall, I would suggest a more magic-centric splinter if possible, but in either case this card is great here. HIGHLY recommended.
• Back to Basics: Monsters lose all abilities. As we know, all the melee cards' abilities to strike from different positions are not viable here, so having cards that can attack from backline regardless is a huge plus. Magic is even better here, since it can also be used from first position, so place this in front of your ranged cards so that it can have multiple purposes!
• Explosive Weaponry: All Monsters have the Blast ability. We've talked about the power of Blast before, but we did not specify the fact that Blast is especially strong with magic, since it will ignore the armor even on the next card that takes the blast damage. Great use here!
• Keep Your Distance: Monsters with Melee attack may not be used in battles. HIGHLY recommended. You will be using magic cards as basically your tanks as well as 2nd row cards, so this card is ESSENTIAL for this game mode. Remember, ranged cards can't attack from first position! Use the magic cards as your tanks!
• Target Practice: All Ranged and Magic attack Monsters have the Snipe ability. This can be a nice niche use if you expect to come up against armor, and I would say it may be worth considering for this ruleset but not necessarily recommended either. Medium choice.

Tenyii Striker: This cards costs 5 Mana to use, has 2 melee attack, has 2 speed, and has 6 health. It has the special ability Sneak: Targets the last Monster on the enemy Team instead of the first Monster. Welcome to one of the best cards to use with Tarsa in the fire splinter. This card is EXCELLENT for almost every match you intend to play, because it has such a fantastic amount of value for its relatively medium-low mana cost. First, let's point out the fact that it has SIX health points, which means it will be resilient both to being a backline multi-purpose tank, as well as resisting damage taken from attacking cards that have the Thorns ability. At 5 Mana, this card should be used in almost all of your engagements to attack the opponent's backline furiously. These two attack become three, thanks to Tarsa, and the fact that Tenyii will have SEVEN health points with Tarsa means he can attack even four times against cards that have Thorns! It synergizes fantastically with Sand Worm and Uraeus, as well as any other card with Sneak from previous editions. It is useful for almost every scenario if there are no rulesets, and if there are rulesets there are some specific ones that stand out, but beware that it will not be useful in those that cancel abilities and that cancel Sneak.
Rulesets:

• Earthquake: Non-flying Monsters take 2 Melee damage at the end of each round. You do not always have flying cards available, so this is a strong choice for various reasons. First of all, thanks to Tarsa HP bonus, this card will have seven health, which means it can survive three instances of Earthquake! Second of all, in Earthquake matches, people tend to put their flying and tanky cards in the backrow for protection, and Tenyii can strike them down!
• Noxious Fumes: All Monsters start the battle Poisoned. The same principles apply as mentioned above for Earthquake. Great choice here!
• Up Close & Personal: Only Monsters with Melee attack may be used in battles. Special mention here, since you will only have Melee available, you will need cards that can attack from the backline.

Molten Ash Golem: This cards costs 6 Mana to use, has 1 ranged attack, has 1 speed, and has 9 health. It has the special ability Close Range: Can perform ranged attacks from the first position. Here is a card that mainly I would only recommend to use in specific rulesets that I will outline next. For now, let's just remember the basic principle of synergy, and since Tarsa boosts melee and not ranged, this card gets no benefit. It only provides you with one damage to the opponent's frontline, which is very low for a mana cost of 6. Its main use will be the position of tanking from the second row if you don't have a reach unit, since Close Range allows it to also assume the position of a tank. Another specific use is that if you expect your opponent to use a tank card with Thorns, or to use Mylor Crowling, this card will be able to tank without taking damage from Thorns.
Rulesets:

• Earthquake: Non-flying Monsters take 2 Melee damage at the end of each round. It can be useful here due to its high HP.
• Poison: All Monsters start the battle Poisoned. Same as above, useful due to high HP.
• Keep Your Distance: Monsters with Melee attack may not be used in battles. Easily the best card you can use here for Fire Splinter. This will act as your tank, with so much health, it is your best choice here. Perfect reason to use this card!

Let's check out an example of a battle and see it all in action! Click here for the BATTLE!

Setting: Ranked match in Silver 2, January of 2022.
Opponent: VALIAM80, with a very melee-centric team as well.
Ruleset was the following....

• Total Mana Cost Allowed: 38
• Splinters Allowed: Fire ONLY
• Special Conditions: Aim True, Melee Mayhem.

Battle Plan

Since Melee can attack from any position and only Fire Splinter is allowed, I geared up for a full-on Melee brawl! I predicted that my opponent will also use a melee-centric team, so the set up was geared with that in mind only. Let's see what my opponent thought:

View of the Battlefield

Battle Lineup

Summoner: Tarsa. Of course, this is a melee fight, and Tarsa is the best choice. Let's go!

Position 1: Living Lava: Here is basically an upgraded version of the Antoid Platoon. This card is ideal for this situation since it has the ability we discussed before, Shield, which reduces damage from physical sources, which includes Melee.

Position 2: Molten Ogre: A BETA card with the Demoralize ability, that lowers the opponent's Melee attack. In addition to that, it is a very tanky and high damage card.

Position 3: Fineas Rage: This is the alternative to Radiated Brute, with more Speed and Health, but for more mana cost.
Position 4: Exploding Rats: A card that I ONLY use in this game mode, due to its very low Health.

Position 5: Scorch Fiend: One of the best cards for the Fire Splinter. It costs nothing. Always use!
Position 6: Disintegrator: This card ALSO has Demoralize and it actually does stack, since one take away Tarsa's bonus, and the other inflicts the -1 Melee.

Did it Work?

This was a close one! I won't spoil the result for you, but if you watch the match you're sure to learn something about the way that melee cards work!

Conclusions

The Fire Splinter is one of the best ones with the new editions having been released. I strongly encourage you to spend time with this Splinter, focus on your melee abilities, mix in the magic and ranged choices when needed, and once you can afford it, rent out some of the Epic and Legendary choices that this wonderful Splinter offers!

Art by @clove71

I hope that you could learn something from this article. I will be doing the other Splinters in the following weeks. If you have any feedback, questions, or would like to know anything else about playing in Bronze, please comment and I will do my best to reply as soon as possible!

Be sure to join Splinterlands if you enjoy a TCG that allows for a myriad of battle tactics. If you're interested, I invite you to utilize my referral link:
https://splinterlands.com?ref=letsjam