Hello! In the usual Splinterlands Sunday post, I will be analysing some of the DICE cards for the Silver League. The reason for that is this is a set that I don't see nearly anyone use outside of the top players - whether as rented cards or owned ones.

Sure enough, Mylor Crowling is the star of the set that might be the most popular summoner to rent, but outside of summoners in general, there is very little that is being used. This interested me a lot and thought that maybe it is just underrated. Because of this, I decided to go over the cards and check them out both at level 1, as well as maxed for Silver in order to gauge whether they are overlooked or simply not good enough to compete.

Summoners

As I already said above, Mylor Crowling is the absolute star of the show in DICE. Granting Thorns to an entire team makes some rulesets nearly auto-wins if only one player has access to Mylor, while even in most standard rulesets he will give you a big win rate boost. Likely the strongest rare summoner in the game overall, so it is no surprise he is also the one I see the most in Silver outside of the starters.

Most of the other DICE summoners are also quite powerful. Lorna can shine (hehe.) in pretty much every situation, as Divine Shield provides units with incredible survivability, especially against teams with spread damage threats. I still encounter her fairly often, though in most cases it is due to bots playing the infamous Lorna Sneak composition. Both Brighton Bloom and Owster Rotwell are situational at best, and especially Brighton is a little underplayed - his extremely low rental (and not so expensive purchase) price should, in my opinion, warrant seeing him more. Extremely strong in earthquake and Flying is nothing to scoff at outside of it as well!

Finally, Qid Yuff and Vera Salacia are some of the most niche cards in the game - Vera is played mostly in Earthquake, while Qid.. I've seen Qid maybe 3 times in my whole SPL journey. They are the cheapest summoners and I've seen some levelled Veras likely due to the price tag - but now this will be pushed out by the new CL summoners being fairly cheap for a while due to their large supply.

Overall, summoners are likely DICE's biggest share on the Silver ladder, with Mylor and Lorna leading the way.

Legendaries

Legendaries in the DICE set came with two themes - 1-mana monsters to slot into a team, as well as big and powerful threats with large mana costs.LEt's dissect the two separately.

I will start with the 1-mana cards. They obviously will always be rented slightly less, as they aren't too flashy - while also not being the 0-mana cards you can fit in anywhere like Chicken and Fiends. While I understand the low popularity of Two-Gun Pete (it is always just a 1-damage card in Water in Silver, barring using Selenia Sky), some of the other cards are quite powerful.

Theorosa Nightshade, Lensmaster and Aganju are all cards that can deal damage from the backline that have summoners that buff them in Delwyn, Sloan and Malric/Tarsa respectively. In my opinion, combined with their tiny rental pricing, they are underutilized.. But they're definitely not gamechangers and it is easy to overlook them. All of them also happen to be extremely vulnerable to Thorns, Return Fire and Magic Reflect. Finally, Epona is a great addition for any Earth team and I believe she is the best of the legendaries - Strengthen and Divine Shield at 1-mana? That's a great deal to me.

As for the expensive monsters, I believe many of them.. Just don't help you win hard enough. Caladuum is great, but you're paying 11 mana.. Unless it's a really high mana battle, you would often rather play Tusk the Wide and spend the 5 mana on an additional damage threat. Oaken Behemoth does good damage, as does Poseidon with the additional anti-Sneak potential.. But none of these three make you win enough games to really warrant getting them over other powerful options.

The final two are Cthulhu and Kralus. I have actually began seeing the former in some games, especially in high mana, paired with Ancient Lich. Great Reverse Speed card and seeing it so little before that felt quite weird to me. The real deal, however, is Kralus.. Kralus is criminally underrated in Silver, while at level 2 it solo-wins pretty much every Noxious Fumes game. Immunity, Heal AND Flying, while also having a varied damage profile!

I do see why legendaries are not played - outside of Kralus, none of them is really an auto-win in any circumstances and often enough they just can't be played due to their cost - or do too little to make any difference.

The Rest

This will be the shortest paragraph, as there is very little other cards. Mere 3 Epics and 6 commons, out of which most are extremely situational or just outright bad.

The Void Armor trio is simple - Frost Lion and Marrow's Ghost are great anti-opportunity cards and cheap ways to tank up 2 shots of magic, while Naga Brute with its Thorns at level 5 becomes a decent tank - but not much more beyond that.

The Oppress Duo consists of Lunakari Mistress and Grenadier. The latter is very much a serviceable card, even outside of trying to counter Lord A or Baakjira. 2 damage at level 1 and the Snare added at 3 for only 3 mana is a good deal, especially when you hit the Equalizer ruleset. Lunakari is slightly weaker than that, but the 3rd point of attack at level 3 is a bit of a saving grace.

The other 4 are.. well, they exist. Battering Ram is the only card I meet sometimes, as it is a good addition to cheap melee teams. Flamesmith and Goblin Dartling are both victims of slightly overpricing Shatter, while Dragon Spirit can be a tank in Keep Your Distance and slot in for Noxious Fumes when maxed, but it's anything but flashy.

Conclusion

After taking a closer look at what I thought could be an underrated set of cards, I have to adjust my opinion. DICE is fairly underwhelming for Silver outside of its summoners - renting cards that are extremely situational and do not win games by themselves is generally ill-advised and I detinitely understand the lack of excitement towards these monsters among renters.

That said, some cards I am surprised to see so rarely - this includes mainly Kralus, but also Epona and Grenadier. All in all, perhaps I have overestimated DICE at first sight.

All images used in this post were from SPLINTERLANDS. The link is my affiliate link, so if you have not yet joined the game, you can do so and support me with each of your purchase made using credits!
The image in the thumbnail is the Splinterlands banner from the SPL facebook page.