Since I have made it to Silver league for the first time this past season I figured it would be a good time to give my analysis of the balance of the different splinters when just using the starter cards. This is just my own experience and feedback for it.

I will run list the Splinters in order of how strong I felt they were in making decks with clear and effective strategies to win. A couple things to note, the dragon splinter starts with no cards other than the Drake of Arnak and combines with another splinter type, so it does not count. Even a single card beyond the starter deck can drastically change the balance between the splinters and is part of why my analysis is just sticking to the starters.

Splinter

1) Water

This one was pretty clearly the easiest to setup a strong lineup. It is a simple magic burst strategy using Alaric along with the 4 starting magic users you can have access to. With Meduca, Ice Pixie, enchanted pixie and elven mystic all as starting cards you can put out up to 8 magic damage in one round which is very difficult to handle at the beginning levels unless specifically focused to counter. All that is needed from there is to build some tank defense that can be various different cards depending on the amount of mana. The fact that there is another full setup using Bortus and focusing on using ranged attacks is what I feel makes the water splinter the strongest to use at starting levels. With Bortus you can use cards such as water elemental, sniping narwal and mantoid quite effectively and it can potentially be an effective counter to the burst magic build.

2) Death

I have found that the death splinter is exceptionally effective at low to mid mana battles. The combination of Zintar with the melee damage debuff and using strong yet cheap snipers like the Twisted Jester with the Haunted Spirit as a relatively cheap and effective tank is hard to compete with. This build will still scale since it can add in other snipers like Mantoid as well as use the Undead Priest or death elemental. Overall I feel that using the starting cards death is the strongest at low mana but trails off as the mana goes higher. It is very close in balance with the next splinter and it was difficult to decide which one is truly stronger.

3) Fire

The fire splinter definitely has the most options with both starting summoners of Pyre and Malric Inferno each having many good ways to build effective setups. Using Pyre you can setup builds to take advantage of high speed and dodge tank with cards like Serpentine Soldier, fire elemental, and spark pixies. At the same time Malric can use lots of melee attacks with sneak or opportunity such as serpentine spy and kobold miners. Both of these are quite effective against a variety of builds and mana levels. The main place where they fail is against the magic burst from Alaric. In terms of potential damage output Malric is the best and in terms of fast and targeted damage Pyre works incredibly well.

4) Life

The Life splinter feels like it lags behind the others a little bit in power at the starting level. To truly become effective the Life splinter seems to need quite a lot more mana than the other splinters though in very high mana battles it can shine. One particularly effective but high mana build would be making use of the Silvershield Knight with its rally ability. When you combine this with other strong melee cards such as shieldbearer, luminous eagle and feral spirit. At high mana levels this can compete in terms of damage with Malric and have more survivability. You can also go for a more sustain and slowly break them down with the divine healer and using ranged attackers such as lone boatman or peacebringer. Overall, the life splinter does have some good combinations to use but feels like it lacks a little bit at the starting level in comparison with the death splinter or the fire splinter.

5) Earth

This is the one splinter that really feels lacking in comparison with all of the rest. It is a lot more difficult to build a coherent setup with the earth splinter that will beat one of the other splinters with just the starting cards. The main advantage earth has is one of the strongest single monsters in the unicorn mustang but that can still be beaten down by the burst magic from Alaric which it should be a counter to. The other main notable setup to do is focus on sneak with the goblin thief and goblin sorcerer which can in certain circumstances be successful. The lack of 2 damage ranged cards or some sustain with the starter cards is what really holds the earth splinter back. At the starter level the flesh golem does not have healing so it loses a lot of the power it could bring and at the same time there is no tank healer or other monster that can heal among any of the starting cards for the earth splinter. One of the best times that the earth splinter can be used is to cut through armor in the armored up battlefield condition but that cannot happen at the starter level and it is a conditional situation.

Conclusion

It feels like the death, fire and life splinters are all balanced pretty well at the starting level. The water splinter feels like it is a little overly strong with Alaric and the earth splinter feels like it doesn't have quite enough at the starting level. This will all of course change once Chaos Legion, the new set, comes out.

Let me know what you all think of this breakdown of the splinters at the starting level. One thing to note is that with the new release of card rentals it is easier than ever to simply rent a card to strengthen your deck beyond the starting level and even a single card can bring your weakest splinter to becoming your strongest.