Hi everyone, and welcome back to my SPLINTERLANDS Blog, I've returned from Holiday and first needed to clean up all the mess and had a bit of a writers block where I didn't knew what to make a post about, good thing there's so much different things to do inside the Splinterlands Metaverse and positive changes made so I decided that's what I'm going to talk about this week, and of course share a battle, I will try to not get in to too much detail because if I do, this post will get way too long so that's why some things might not get explained in this post, for people new to the game and are left with questions, hook me up in the comments or you can always join our Guilds discord server so you can chat with me, ping me there
Since it's a Social Media Challenge and also meant for people that don't play to let them know it's a great game, let's start with the basics again...
What Is Splinterlands?
So, for people who don't know, Splinterlands is an online collectible card game using blockchain technology. Every card in the game is owned as a NFT and is traded on the Hive blockchain. It's the digital, modern version of Magic: The Gathering with some extra advantages like it's much easier to rent out cards to other players for profit, join tournaments and Guild Brawls.
Cards are available to buy and sell through the ingame marketplace as well as on third-party online marketplaces like Peakmonsters and Monstermarket. Winners can earn real money in the form of Splinterlands own governance token Splinterlands Shards (SPS), making it a lucrative platform for extremely skilled players with the best cards.
With your card set you battle other players, each card has it's own mana value, strengths and abilities and every battle has another mana cap and different rule set, in the higher leagues up to 3 rulesets combined, so if you can wrap your head around the do's and don't in this particular match better than your opponent does, you'll have an advantage already, making it a highly strategic game.
I made some explainer post that goes into more detail on how to play, setup your new account and some basics you need to know, you can find them below.
Splinterlands in 2023
Getting started in Splinterlands
Battle basics, rulesets and card placements
Much to do, it's just a game right?
Yeah... that's what I thought too when I started playing in August 2021, I never played a collectible card game before but I like strategy, my first thoughts about a card game would be that it would be boring, I couldn't be more wrong!
I started by just playing, getting to know the game and the rulesets, memorizing the cards and it's abilities and mana value so I could make better decisions and I tried to better anticipate what my opponent was going to play, and then counter that what on it's own was really fun to do, winning is always nice and in this game it's rewarding too.
I'm just realizing myself it's almost 2 full years I'm playing already, and a lot has changed since then - for the better I need to say, more rulesets were added for even more depth of strategy (and to make it harder for bots) and then last month - finally - bots were banned from Modern League.
Especially in the start of a new season I was fighting bots in 90% of my battles, really annoying especially when the bots 'learn' the new rulesets and beating human players over and over.
I even made a complaining post about it so yeah, just like in life, we've had out ups and downs ??
So now in Modern League, we are only fighting real human players, and seeing more different strategies, I think that's so much better, I don't mind losing at all against a well though out team, or someone with some great cards, you earned it! I just don't like to get my ass handed to me by bots.
Wait... Seasons... Modern League??
Every season in Splinterlands takes about 15 days, in this time we earn daily chests by playing ranked battles. In these chests we can earn cards to play with and SPS which is the governance token. Of course like everything in web 3 in this bear market, SPS is pretty low but it's nice for new players to get in at this point.
At the end of the season we can open a whole bunch of earned season chests at once, which really feels like Christmas twice a month, opening presents ??.
When I have enough time to play my daily chests I earn about 6-10 chests every day to open and on top of that, at the end of the season, I can open around 65 chests.
My last season rewards was this:
The cards we play with are distributed in a new set about once a year, and because older cards are more expensive we have a Modern League, where only the last 2 main sets are allowed to play with, so this is perfect for new players to not get outgunned by older players with overpowered cards from long ago, when you play longer you can expand your deck every month and grow your account like that and maybe try and compete in the Wild League, where all cards are allowed. With the recent changes that's where all the bots are now though, so I'm curious to see how this is going this is going to play out, hopefully bots get banned from Wild League at some point too when there are enough human players to fill both leagues.
Activities besides playing?
Like I wrote, at first I just started with playing, I earned some money with another web3 game, which I used to buy cards with, and I started with only level 1 summoners and monsters. In time I bought extra cards from the new sets, investing €20 monthly to expand my deck and hopefully have more success so I can climb higher in the rankings. I started in low Bronze, and am now playing in high Silver. But besides the ranked battles to earn cards and SPS, I play tournaments too, to earn some more SPS, it's not much and you won't get rich quick but a lot of drops make a shower ??.
Managing your deck, deciding what cards you want or need, and what cards are worth it to level up is a game on it's own I think, in my other posts I explained more about how to do this.
Some cards are really specific for some rulesets, in which you have a real benefit in playing it, for example where in the distance only ruleset, where only archers are allowed, you need to have a high HP archer with the Close Range ability so I can fire from the first position, like the Queen of Crows.
Then I discovered the fun of blogging, I think it's fun and good for my English, since it's not my native language. Making the thumbnails is fun to do also.
With posts like this I'm making about $40-50 a month which I mostly use to expand my deck and buy SPS with.
Splinterlands is on the Hive blockchain and the Hive blogging community is really big on itself, which can bring nice earnings too if you have the time to grow your followers, of course, it won't be fast and easy.
Sometimes new games are launched too on the Hive blockchain so it's easy to start when you already have a Splinterlands and a Hive account, like Golem Overlord, which earns me a couple of $ every month now too. There's a link on the bottom of this post with more information about G.O.
Also on Hive is the Move2Earn project @actifit where you get rewarded for being active, it works with a step tracker on my phone. I'm making a daily post with my progress, earning a few cents there too... again.. drops make a shower ??.
Sharing a battle.
What is a Splinterlands post without of featured battle, right?
For this post, I want to share a battle from my alt account, where I'm only playing a level 1 summoner against a level 3 opponent, to show it's possible to win even against a higher level opponent.
This battle is a 37 mana, Equalizer / Melee Mayhem battle, with only the Life and Dragon splinter are open.
First look at the battlefield.
With Melee Mayhem, I wanted to bring Thorns, so I chose the only dragon summoner my alt account owns, this is such a specific card for a ruleset I was talking about, I bought this summoner when I started playing for Earthquake battles, to give all more monsters the flying ability. For this fight, it's just a extra benefit to make my chance of dodging attacks a little higher, but it's main reason was access to the dragon splinter.
My opponent has a nice team, great summoner, shielded tank with reflection shield behind it to stop thorn damage, well played. We both brought a healer, it's a great help in Equalizer battles. I like his magic card, High Priest Darius, I don't even own it on my main account since it's $15 even now when most cards are low priced.
I brought a Scavenger, Kra'ar Xoc, a epic dragon reward card, it costs only 2 mana but doesn't have any attack so it seems pretty useless, but when it picks up health points when other monsters die, it's a nice tank when it get to the front, and works great when it's healed. When you heal more that your enemy does damage, he will never win!
I really like my last card too, War Pegasus, it's pretty fast, has flying so it dodges a lot of sneak attacks, and has the Shatter ability to destroy enemy armor, a really underrated ability.
My Line-Up:
- : Brighton Bloom - reason: Access to the Dragon splinter.
- First position: Djinn Chwala - reason: Thorns, great tank with good armor and HP.
- Second position: Jared Scar - reason: Great card but not as a tank so it's great for this match where it is protected, the Bloodlust ability can get really dangerous when it gets momentum.
- Third position: Kra'ar Xoc - reason: Cheap mana, Scavenger.
- Fourth position: Pelacor Arbalest - reason: Double Strike, good damage.
- Fifth position: Venari Crystalsmith - reason: Healer.
- Sixth position: War Pegasus - reason: Good sneak defender, Shatter.
You can watch the battle unfold for yourself here.
Because of the length of this post, I'm not getting in to a round by round detailed report, but because of the flying ability, I got in quite a few misses, and once my scavenger got to the front, it was already at 15 HP, so it's getting healed 5 every round, my opponent is simply doing to little damage to get around that.
Well that's it for this week, I hope to see you later in this week for the new Splinterlands challenges. Please visit my Battle Mage Secrets post of this week also and give it a upvote ??.
Thank you for reading!!!
If you haven't made an account already, please consider using my referral link to sign up, I'll happily send the amount I get for your signup back to you in DEC or SPS to help you start.
Have a great day!
Sources: For my thumbnail I used a background from @golemoverlord, when you're not playing this game as a splinterlands player, you're missing out!
I made a post with more info about Golem Overlord here.
