Hello Splinterfriends!

A Contest to help a kitty 🐱? That's @opuntia! And here I am to tell you what I would like to know when I started on Splinterlands. Not that I'm a very skilled player, at all! But there is something that helped me to win more battles, and this is:

Cheap cards to sacrifice. ☠💀👻

Yeah, they help A LOT! And I won some battles using them in the right position (Not that I knew that I was putting them in the right position, I must say). My tip here is about five cheap cards 🤑 (of mana and value to rent if you don't have it) that you can use, and they will make the difference in some battles IF you use them in the proper position. So, let me introduce you to some cards.

FLAME MONKEY 🐵

This card helped me a lot when I was beginning. It costs only 1 mana and, like a friend of mine uses to say, it's a piece of meat for someone hit 🏹. And that's the truth. One of the problems when you're a newbie it's to understand how abilities work, Sneak, Ranger, Opportunity there are so many of them! I've lost A LOT of battles because of cards with these three skills, for example, this one here:

SERPENTINE SPY.

This guy has 3 of speed, which means he is fast and may attack first, and 2 of a melee attack, when he is combined with a summoner like

MALRIC INFERNO,

who gives one more on melee attack, Serpentine spy may be a huge problem because he can kill one of your cards in the first round. So that's where cards like the Flame Monkey will enter. The opportunity ability 👁 makes Serpentine Spy attacks the card with the lowest health ❤, so, if the flame monkey is with you and it is him who has the lowest life, it will be attacked instead of another card, like

FIRE BEETLE for example,

which is a card with snipe ability.
When you're choosing your cards and you have low mana, this can be used and, perhaps free some of your attacking monsters from opportunity skills. The Snipe ability 🏹 may be a problem too, this skill makes monsters attack ranged, magic, or no attack card that it's not in the first position. If you're investing in a strategy of distance attack, you must protect your damage cards, then put the monkey after your tank. He can receive one hit and give you time to attack your opponent, this strategy is good against blast ability too like we see on

FIRE ELEMENTAL.

So, you may put your

LIVING LAVA

in the first position, your flame monkey next, since he will receive one of damage from the blast, and, after him, your damage cards.

The good thing about the flame monkey is: it's a cheap card for rent 🥳, on peackmonsters we can see that you will spend only 0.1dec to have this card with you for 24h, it's a low price for good help. 🐒

Other cards can be used similarly in all splinters and some of them give abilities to your other cards. On earth splinter, we have

BROWNIE

(I always think about cake when I use this card 🎂). It costs only 1 mana to have it in your game,

and he has the Swiftness skill, which gives all your monsters one more speed. This is very good because, sometimes, what will define who wins the battle is who will attack first, besides the doge possibility that increases with speed 😈! It's not too expensive to rent, but if you're starting like today, 1 DEC sometimes means TO MUCH!

On the water splinter, we have

KELP INITIATE .

I love this one 🥰 and I use always because it costs only two of mana and has 5 of health. This is great! Mainly if your strategy involves mages 🧙🧙‍♀️. They must be protected, so you put this guy on the front, he'll not attack, but gives you an advantage since you won time for your mages to do their job. A magic set can be annoying believe me, so use it 😉!

The other two cards make a huge difference in a game, the

CREEPING OOZE

is one of my favorites, it costs only one mana, and reduces the speed of your opponent 😈. It's a neutral card so you can use it with whatever splinter you want, and it's cheap to rent 😉.

The last card is my FAVORITE!

THE FURIOUS CHICKEEEEENNNN!!!!! 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣

Honestly, I laughed A LOT when my friend told me to rent a chicken! I mean, WHAAAT? (@bulldog1205 has a video where he put this card on the top list of better cards to have - check It here - and another video explaining how to position them - on this link). And she wasn't joking, the chicken is the best 🐔! For the very first reason, it's a free card and it's neutral, so you may combine it with whatever splinter you want 😊, and don't cost you mana to have it with you in battle time. I have won a battle because of the chicken and the creeping ooze, here is the link:

https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_b5c8e93508ccccc87685ce3e13a41423

In this battle, I used Mylor, an Earth summoner that gives thorns to all monsters summoned 🌵. Thorns it's an annoying skill too because when you use a melee attack on a monster that has thorns, you will receive two of damage. So, as you can see, both me and my opponent, are using Mylor, both have thorns, but I have the creeping ooze and chicken! His card CHILD OF THE FOREST has the snipe ability, so it could attack my FLESH GOLEN along with UNICORN MUSTANG. But Creeping Ooze take that damage, which gave time for the flesh golem. My GOBLIN THIEF killed his child of the forest but took damage from thorns, but still have the strength to attack his unicorn, however, he died for the Mylor ability. And after all, the chicken was the last one 🐔! So, I win! If I haven't put the chicken, then it will be a draw.

The only problem with the chicken is: not so cheap to rent 💸. In the middle of the season, its value is about 4.79 DEC,

and in the season's end, where the rents get crazy, this value can be much higher! But, if you have some DECs to spend, you may get this back winning battles with your rented chicken! (I can't say this without laughing) It’s possible that among the new cards of chaos legion, another card of zero mana can show up, but nothing is confirmed.

So, these are my tips for you who are beginning on splinterlands. All these cards helped me a lot and you don't spend too much DEC to have them with you for a time. Follow the #NoSleepGang guys on twitch for more types and, sometimes you can win DEC or even cards on raffles.

Here are some streamers that you can follow and win some prizes:

@bulldog1205, @cryptoLlamaTV, @splinterlandscolosseum, @splinterlandsHQ, @UntamedSarge, @splinterlandsclove71

See you in the next post!

🙃🙂🙃