When you are new to splinterlands it might be difficult to come up with some decent low level strategies. The "Bronze strategies" series aims to help new players out with coming up with good strategies resulting in higher win rates.
In this post I will cover the Earth splinter with Mylor Crowling as the summoner.
About Mylor Crowling
"Although the Magi hates to admit it, Mylor is the most gifted student who has attended Summoners’ Green in many years. In his hundreds of years, the Magi has taught many students whose ambition exceeded reason and morality. When he looks into Mylor’s eyes, the Magi still sees a power-greedy child. Against the headmaster’s wishes, Mylor responded to a Gloridax invitation to Mount Mox and now summons competitively in the tournaments. His style is wild and reckless and he laughs while summoning, like it is all a big game."
Mylor Crowling is a 3 mana summoner and gives all the monsters the thorns ability. When a monster with the thorns ability is attacked by a melee monster, the attacker will receive 2 (regular) damage.
The thorns ability is extremely powerfull, especially when u anticipate a lot of melee monsters. Also, in bronze, Mylor seems to be not used that often, but he is extremely strong at this level... If you use him right!
Game plan
The game plan is pretty straightforward, we want to make as much use of our summoner ability as possible. This means that we need to be able to absorb a lot of attacks. Also, since the thorns ability is only effective against melee monsters, we either want to use it only when we expect a lot of melee monsters, or we can put some anti-magic monsters in our lineup.
Core cards
I feel like this strategy doesn't really rely on core cards. However, you just want to use the strong monsters, and you want to have a lot of "tankyness" in the frontline.
At level 3, the flesh golem becomes incredibly strong in bronze league. This is also why he is one of the most expensive common cards in the game. If you can't afford him yet, you should consider renting him. This is definetly my go-to tanky option, in low and high mana battles.
The Stone Golem is also a great -somewhat mana cheap- frontline tank because he has the shield ability. Combinding the shield ability + thorns is really nasty, if you actually face a lot of melee monsters. This is what makes the stone golem a bit tricky, you might be overcomitting to countering melee monsters, therefore I mainly use the stone golem if the battle rules rule out magic monsters.
The Failed Summoner is a card that I often use if I think there is a decent chance I will be facing a magic lineup. Note that, if it's a high mana battle, this card alone will not be enough to win you the game. However, with 6 health (at level 3) and only 2 mana cost, it's almost always a nice card to throw in there. In higher mana battles u might consider a mustang unicorn or even prismatic energy.
There are plenty of other good options in the earth splinter, I would encourage you to try out some stuff and see what works best for you. I often use cards like Mitica Headhunter, Sporcerer, Centauri Mage, Khmer princess and Earth elemental to complete my lineup.
When to play this strategy
Let me start by saying that Mylor is a decent option in a basic ruleset. He does get countered a bit by a pure magic lineup, but overall he will do very good in bronze.
That being said there are obviously ruleset where he thrives. The most obvious one being "up close & personal" because this guarantees that there will only be melee monsters in the match. Make sure to bring your monsters with the shield ability to these games (stone golem, I'm looking at you). Mylor is usually a better option here than other good picks like Malric and Zintar.
However, there are plenty of rulesets where you can expect a lot of melee monsters being used. All the rules that allow melee monsters to attack from any position, or when magic monsters are banned are beneficial for Mylor because these rules increase the chances of your opponent using melee monsters.
Conclusion
Using Mylor is more about anticipating what your enemy will do. Therefore I'm not showing you lineup examples because it varies a lot. Using Mylor in combination with strong cards will simply be enough to win a lot of your games. If you learn to anticipate your enemies better over the time, your win rate will get really high. Also, I believe that he will increase in price over the next coming months, simply because he is so strong (no financial advice, just a personal opinion).