So you made it in Silver with your level 1 cards and are getting crushed now?

You check the rental markets and you are getting a heart attack on how much it cost?
This post then might be for you then it will suggest strategies to build competitive decks, on a budget.

My name is acantoni and I have been playing since August 2021.

I immediately applied a strategy of playing efficiently from the very first season and I have been sitting in Gold ever since, always playing at a disadvantage with a Silver level deck and massively gaining every season.

Things to know before building the deck

The first thing you need to understand is that every league has a maximum Summoner Cap which for Silver is 5-4-3-2.

This means your cards will at maximum be level 5 common, lvl 4 epic, lvl 3 rare, lvl 2 legendary.
This applies to all monsters and summoners as a maximum for the league.

The second is that your summoner will determine if your monster can reach that maximum for the league or not.

The rule of thumb is that if your summoner is 5-4-3-2 level in Silver you will have the ability to play monsters that are at a maximum of 5-4-3-2 and that is what you should strive to acquire/rent to play as efficiently as possible

If your summoner is a higher level than 5-4-3-2 it will be treated as a 5-4-3-2
If your summoner is a lower level than 5-4-3-2 then it will create a new lower cap for all your cards... you might not want that.

Examples!

Lets again imagine you are in silver so the level limits are 5-4-3-2
You want to play a rare summoner: Vera

Vera is a rare card so her limit, in Silver, is level 4 and you see it will allow monsters that are 5-4-3-2 exactly the limit cap.

If you have a Vera that is level 4 you will have in Silver the ability to play monsters that are 5-4-3-2
If your Vera is level 5, in Silver your monsters will still be at maximum 5-4-3-2 because your Vera will be treated as a level 4
If your Vera is a level 2, in Silver your monsters will be at maximum 3-2-2-1 which will give you a significant disadvantage as other players, in the same league, will field higher level monsters

CHEAP DECKBUILDING

The first thing you want to determine is what level you want your cards to be.
This example will be for a Silver level deck (5-4-3-2) that will be extremely competitive in Silver even if offmeta and will do okay also in Gold even though will be significantly underpowered (in Gold you can play 8-6-5-3)
We will use peakmonster.com and usually try this filter

OFFMETA Water Deck

We will work on obtaining a set of melee/ranged cards which will be significantly cheaper vs the meta-magic version and leverage the speed of water to win games

Summoner

Including also cheap dragon options we have, at today price, 5 possible summoners

• Vera is the cheaper option
• Lir is the luxury option and except in very low mana games is a great choice
• Xia is the low mana option and the one i personally use
• As dragon, Brighton Bloom is also a very very good option for water
• As dragon, Drake is also good and cheap

General Setup

Obviously different rules will mean different setups but in general you can imagine a setup like this for most games

1. Tank - Soak Damage
2. Off-Tank/DPS - Soak Damage and DPS
3. DPS - Magic or Close Range Archer or Melee with Opportunity/Sneak. In our off-meta deck this can be also a "protected slot" for important troops like Demented Shark in melee only games
4. Utility/DPS - This can be a healer or another DPS
5. DPS/Utility - This is another flexible slot, usually with archers
6. Off-Tank/DPS - This last slot main role is to protect from Sneak and ideally dish out damage

Lets now look at great cheap troops for the different roles

Tank

In Water we have lots of amazing tanks.

Great usually cheap picks are:

• Sea Monster - This is okay even at lvl1, lvl3 or lvl4 is the cheap alternative i would personally go for lvl5. Lvl6 which we can't play in Silver is where it shines but we cant use it...
• Frozen Soldier - Lvl3 for budget, Lvl4 is the cap for silver. Once again at lvl5 which we cant play would be even better
• Serpent of Eld - Lvl 4 is great especially if using Brighton as summoner
• Kelp Initiate - Lvl 3 for cleanse. This is not so useful in this off-meta build (it's a must-have in the mage meta build). I personally rarely use him
• Battle Ora - cheap choice for low mana games
• Spineback Turtle - Excellent Option at lvl5 with 2 attacks and thorns

You can of course also use neutrals like Goblin Mech.
As mentioned we have plenty of options. you don't need all of these you should just pick the ones you like the most.
If i were to pick 2 i would go for Sea Monster (all games except low mana) and Spineback Turtle (low mana)

Off-Tank/DPS

• Wave Runner - lvl 4 for the extra damage
• Electric Eels - lvl 3 is fine. Lvl4 if you can spare the DEC
• Grumpy Dwarfs - Very solid pick at lvl5 with enrage

DPS (can be used in slot 3-4-5-6)

• Sabre Shark - Lvl 2 minimum
• Pelacor Bandit - Lvl 4 minimum
• Sniping Narwahal - lvl 4 minimum
• Pirate Captain - lvl 5 ideally, lvl2 is budget
• Feasting Seaweed - lvl 3 minimum
• Axemaster - lvl 3 ideally

it is good to have a couple of magic options like Ice Pixie or Sea Genie just in case.
I like to have 2 sneak or 2 snipe cards together

Utility

• Naga Windmaster - lvl 3 minimum
• Crustacean King - even lvl 1 is okay. Extremely powerful with the Sea Monster for the double heal
• Demented Shark - lvl 3 minimum. this card is a must have in melee only game, or sneak games.
• Venari Wavesmith - Great addition to the roster al lvl4 it is a great utility/dps card
• Giant Squid - I find it underwhelming but if you have nothing better...

Last Slot

• Water Elemental - lvl3... at lvl 5 which we cant play would be even a more awesome last card with the dodge
• Cornealus/War Chaang - If you can afford them they are good option
• Pelacor Bandit - can be played here aswell having speed and flying

Bringing it all together

This is an all-melee game where Demented Shark is King
My opponent decided to use all the mana points but in doing so he is very defensive and can attack only with the Kraken, the Sand Worm and 1 ranged with the WarChaang.

My setup instead have all slots attacking except the Demented Shark.
I have 2 opportunities and 1 sneak which are currently countered by the Kraken
Finally, i have WarChaang in last position for the possible retaliate

In Round 2 the kraken is already dead and i expect my opportunity monster to decimate the opponent

In Round 4 the game is already decided

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Here we have a typical setup (bronze cap tournament) with the Sea Monster as Tank, Wave Runner as offtank/dps. Sea Shark as DPS. Venari WaveSmith as utility, Crustacean King as healer and finally the chicken just to soak damage

Its a well fought match but i am able to dish out more damage and the game is starting to move in my favour by eliminating the ranged dps of the enemy while keeping my all team (except the chicken) alive till now.
We will now both lose the healers but my tank is in much better shape

And the game is now over

How much does all of this cost?

I do have a growing collection of cards but until recently the vast majority of my cards are rental.
By playing off-meta with rentals of 400 Dec a day I have 6 splinters I can play competitively in Gold 2. on average i win 10-15 games a day which give me around 1000 DEC

This is what i am renting, today, its 102 cards across all splinters.

If you were to start from absolute nothing I reckon with just renting 10 cards you can have a competitive water deck, in silver, costing you less than 50 DEC/Day with rewards of 10 DEC/day+ for each win that can become 30 DEC/day if you reach gold3