Welcome to part one of my splinter reviews! I decided to give my opinions and some line-ups pre-untamed!
I will very likely do another one post untamed! Im planing to do one per splinters, with the exception of dragon and neutral. Instead, I will include neutral and dragon cards that work well with the current discussed splinter.

As you can see from the thumbnail, Im starting with water! It was the first splinter I used, the first I bought cards for, and its still one of my favorites! (Maybe even #1)

In these reviews were gonna look at the cards by rarity, going from common to legendary. Aswell as the summoners!

~~~ Common Cards ~~~

So we have six cards in the common slot, two tanks, a tank healer, a sneak melee attacker and a snipe ranged unit.

As for tanks we got the Spineback Turtle for 4 mana, and the Sea Monster for 8 Mana, both of them are very good and used in different rulesets / manacaps.

Once the turtle reaches lvl 4, it gets the thorn ability, which makes it very strong for its manacost!
(Note: the thorn ability does 2 damage to monsters that attack the unit with melee attacks)

The other very good and must have card here is the Crustacean King, hes the only tank-heal unit in the water splinter, and provides protect aswell once he reaches level 6. Dont forget, this card does not have any attack value before lvl 3. That means it can be played in broken arrows rulesets.

~~~ Rare Cards ~~~

Once again we have six cards in this rarity bracket, one tank, three ranked units, a magic attacker and a melee unit with reach.
I would say the best three cards to use are:

1. Electric Eels
2. Pirate Archer
3. Water Elemental

The eel can be an okay unit to use earlier on, as a melee unit with reach, but it reaches its potential once it hits lvl 5. At that point the Eel gains blast, which means he will hit 2 targets at once. Its the only reach unit with blast in the game!

For 4 mana you get 2attack, 4speed and 6hp with blast. Thats really good stats! So think about adding this card to your deck once you reach gold league. (An upgraded your summoners!)

Pirate Archer is a current reward-card, althought he is nearly out of print (96%) and for 2 mana he is very powerful!
Starting at lvl 1 he does 1 dmg on two targets, which in most scenarios happens, unless the enemy only has one unit. So you get two damage for two mana, thats really good! Starting at lvl 5 his attack reaches his max of 2, that means he does 2 dmg to the main target and 1 dmg the second, that again is really strong in gold league! It a bit weaker later own, since his attack doesnt increase anymore. The upgrades from lvl 5 to lvl 8 is only 2 speed and 1hp. So a lvl 5 Archer will work for you for a very long time!

The Water Elemental is meant as a backline unit that defends the last spot in your team. He has enough HP to tank a few sneak unit hits and thanks to his heals he can endure quite a lot of them! His offences arent too bad either, he starts off with 2 dmg, gets to 3 dmg really fast already on lvl 3. And his max is 4 dmg starting from lvl 7.

There is one more card Id like to talk about from the rares, and its the Naga Windmaster.

Starting out, he isnt very good, while he provides the headwinds debuff (-1 ranged attack for enemies), that is very rare, he only comes with 1 dmg and 3 HP. Thats very bad for 4 mana.

But starting at lvl 5 he brings some real value to the team. He now has 2 dmg and the ability "shatter". Shatter is really strong, it removes all of the targets armor when the attack hits. That means that Naga Windmaster is best used, when you suspect your enemy to use a armor frontliner.
While the max dmg does not increase past 2, he gets the poison ability once he reaches his max lvl of 8.

~~~ Epic Cards ~~~

As you can see, there are only three epic cards and all of them are rarely used.

The Naga Warrior is an agressive frontline with retaliate, that can potentialy be used is "melee mayham" or "super sneak" rulesets. I have seen it a few times in different rulesets, but not that much.

Mermaid Healer is a support unit with the unique ability "triage". As of right now, before UNTAMED, she is the only unit with this ability. It is similar to "tank heal", but it instead heals units that are NOT in the tank/frontline position. She starts out with no dmg stat and gets 1 magic dmg at lvl 3, that is also her max amount of dmg.
At lvl 4 she gets the "strengthen" ability, which gives all of your units +1HP.
The difference between lvl 4 and 6 is only 1hp and the cleanse ability, right now cleanse is not that valuable, so I would not recommend maxing this card.

Mischievous Mermaid is all about bringing that damage! For 5 mana you get 2 dmg early on, which becomes 3 at lvl 4, and 4 dmg once she is maxed.
If you are looking for a good magic dmg dealer, look no further! If you are playing a high manacap game, and need some magic dmg, she can be a good option! There is only one magic damage dealer that is better than her for the water splinter.

~~~ Legendary Cards ~~~

Most splinters have one legendary monster each, but two of them got a 2nd legendary as reward cards, becouse the first one wasnt that impactful. Water is one of them, life is the other.

So the "not impactful" card or simply bad card is the Frost Giant. He can be good in very nieche setups or games, and his speed is consistently on 1, so hes good in reverse speed, but he is almost never used.

But that brings us to the star of the water splinter!

He is a ruler indeed, he is very efficent in dealer out huge magic dmg and killing small fry really fast! Since blast is very strong early game, ruler can is able to carry your deck into mid silver league if you know what you are doing!
He starts out with 2 magic dmg, 3 speed and 5hp. Sadly 5HP is also is max, so he is a real glas cannon, you have to hide him behind some units if you want to get off more than one attack!
His dmg increases to 3 at lvl 2 and to 4 at lvl 4, which is the max. At level two he also gets the swiftness buff, which gives all of your creates +1 speed. (7 speed is the max, anything above does nothing)
And at lvl 3 he gets the silence debuff, which reduces the magic dmg of every enemy unit by one.

Rule of the seas is a very powerful card early on, hes a bit worse in later Leagues, since magic reflect will show up is almost every game, mostly from Lord Arianthus. I would still suggest to get your rulers pretty fast! Since he is a reward card, hes basicly on a timer, of when new copies stop beeing "printed". Currently 86% of all ever printed Rulers have already been awarded from daily quests and from the season end reward. So there are only 14% more. Expect him to rise in price once none can show up anymore!

~~~ Summoner Cards ~~~

Its time to talk about the summoners! As off right now, there are three to choose from!

Lets start off with the default summoner, Alric. Everyone has access to him, since he is one of the starter cards. He defines the water splinter with his +1 to magic dmg on units. As with all default summonrs his cost is 3 mana.
He really shines early on, where many magic units only have 1 dmg, and where magic reflect isnt really seen! Back 2 basic is also a really good ruleset for him, it means that you can just spam magic-users without having to be afraid of reflect!

The first other option is Xia Seachan, all splinters (except dragon) have a 2 mana summoner that doesnt have any stats, and Xia is the water one. Saving one mana can be something that wins you the game! If you play in the "silenced summoner" ruleset she is the obvious pick. But she is also really good in game where you might only pick one or even none magic monsters!

The last option here is the legendary summoner Valnamor, he is th obvious choice high manacap games. He buffs your team with +1 speed +1 magic dmg and +1hp.
Getting more speed is really valuable in most cases, if you manage to attack before your enemy and maybe even kill a unit, that is a big deal!
You might not want to use him in the reverse speed ruleset, since you would slow down your team instead!

~~~ Neutral Cards ~~~

Here are two neutral cards that work quite well with the water splinter! There are others aswell, that generaly work well in all splinters. The same could be said about the chicken, but Im gonna include it anyway, so you remember how important this little critter is! GET A CHICKEN! Its only around 10cents. (at the time off writing)

The other one is the prismatic energy, a very expensive magic user with lots of HP and magic reflect. It can be used as a frontline tank in game where melee units are not allowed!

One amazing (maybe too amazing) neutral unit is Lord Arianthus. He can be used very well in all splinters. He starts being really good in the gold league, and is in almost all the game of diamond+

To counter him you want to use sneak and snipe units or ranged attack units. Since both melee attackers and magic attacker take damage when attacking him.

The last neutral card I want to highlight is the Pixie!

Now Pixie isnt the best attacker, but since she is a magic attacker she gets buffed by alric, and 2 magic dmg early on is really good!
If you can manage to get her to lvl 5, she gains more HP, so maybe she'll even survive a hit. But most importantly she gains the "inspire" ability, which gives all of your melee units +1 dmg.
(Note: The Pirate Captain also gains Inspire later on, meaning you can buff your melee units with +2 dmg if you use both!)

~~~ Dragon Cards ~~~

One of the strongest earlygame lineups for the water splinter is the combination of Sea Monster in the front and Manticore in the second spot, with Daria as the summoner.
(Daria adds +1dmg to all melee units)

If you can manage to get your hands on a lvl 4 Harpy, thats a good choice aswell! Thats when she gets "Opportunity" a unique ability thats only on this card so far.

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Beginner overview! Video and Text version

Steem-Engine Overview & How to buy and sell DEC

Peakmonsters Overview & How to rent cards!