Reached Champion !!!!

One of my best Twitter accounts is Splinterlands. It keeps me informed about all the important news in the ecosystem and #Hive posting events like a weekly challenge. In my opinion, those challenges are an incredible way of increasing the pride of being part of this community, as every player shares his/her game experience with others, allowing others to learn about everyone's successes and mistakes. For this one, I bring news I would never have imagined would come true: I reached Champion in the final rush. I will explain how I felt and which decisions I had to take in an expensive rental market 6 hours before the season ended, which information I managed and changes I made in my strategies, and my final battle with tactical analysis. Hope you like it!

From Diamond 1 to Glory in 6 hours: 300 points rush

It was early in the morning in Barcelona when I faced the final rush. It was the first season I reached Diamond 1 with decent ECR (90%) and with some time to plan my last actions. I believed that this was not my moment but I wanted all the experience I could gather. When I play #Splinterlands I need Jazz Music in the background. It gives me all the flow I need and focus. Focus on taking the best decisions I can with the short time we've got!! Less than 3 minutes! Facing opponents that are willing to beat you and also trying to do their best. Instead of thinking about the big goal, I decided to focus on a match after a match. First one victory and after the other. Try to get as many winning strikes as I can to get the bonus points. But I knew that I had to make some changes to my old strategy of 2 summoners and + Dragon. I know that with 2 summoners and Dragon I am limited to Diamond 1. I needed to get at least one more summoner to increase my options. At the same time, my win rate has drastically increased thanks to Lux. If I could resume my reasons to try a hard push to Champion were this:

Lux has changed everything. When speaking about the modern format we are entering a kinda Lux meta, where she can change the whole dynamics of a summoner just with her buffs. In my opinion, she gives 2 of the most important buffs in the game (+1 Speed - striking first always is the first step to victory, and +1 Armor - in most battles and even lower mana, this +1 Armor often ofers +1 hit resistance and if ur units get more speed it can be turned into 2 or 3). I wrote a post about how I liked playing her and my first impressions, but I did not expect to take that much profit of her since the very first day I picked her.
Splinterlands is a social game. This means you have to research and stay tuned in Social media. I came into this fantastic world thanks to @bulldog1205 and took my firsts steps as wise as I could thanks to his welcome tutorials (never stop doing them because increasing players' base is one of the keys to the future!), I joined the #THGaming community thanks to @jim-crypto, who gave me a master's in the hive ecosystem, helped me a lot with content creation, and gave me the chance of joining the THGaming Brawlers guild. And recently, I joined the nest joined by such great people with @hawks21. I would like to mention my 2 latest discoveries. The first one is a podcast ruled by @thepeoplesguild (never I would have imagined improving my English while listening to interviews about Splinterlands) and the final one @yukihyakubai. It was very late in the night while navigating on Twitter and found that precious joy. Honestly guyz if you own Lux Vega either u wanna rent it, take a look to it:

It belongs to a series of posts where he shows duels in the Champion league and how to take the maximum profit to Lux. With tons of quality tactical analysis. The main question is that I was ignoring the fire. I did not feel comfortable with Tarsa or Pyre. He showed that Fire can master low mana battle caps with Lux and some key cards like Fire Monkey and Serpentinte Spy thanks to Lux buffs (especially speed and armor). And also showed me where I would like to bring my content creation (love those inserted Youtube shorts inside the post).

Finally but not least important, master Peakmonsters. If you are relatively new to the game (less than 2 years), probably you'll have to rent to play higher leagues. Peakmonsters is launching plenty of functions that help to manage your budget, through renting cards that you don't use and saving DEC (i.e. comparing prices through renewals). In the picture that follows, I needed 3K DEC rentals for reaching Champion, but a little over 1k was obtained through renting my cards):

The battle of my life

So, I had Lux on my side and a wider variety of cards. Focusing on Water, Death, and Dragons with a splash of Fire. I had a couple of win streaks cut off with bad luck in battles conditions. I told myself after my last lose. Ok, last try. When I lose again I give up.. 5 wins in a row and was 3.686 ranked points. This was the battle I faced:

It was a 28 Mana Cap with No healings and No Armor and I was overusing Lux (she granted my 5 winning strikes). As armor was banned, I decided to pick Camila (my second best summoner, just for 3 mana -1 Attack). Camila has access to the best anti-magic card in the game for 5 mana (Void Dragon). I love Void Dragon guyz. He is a great frontliner in mid-mana battles and he can support a ton of attacks before falling. He made evading 4 attacks and only Regal Peryton hit him. As second, River Nymph. In my opinion, she is an underrated creature. She brings such interesting buffs and her value increases where healing is banned. Cleanse for tanks, Amplify (interesting in new Battle Conditions), and Speed. I knew that every single speed would help. Then I built a trio of carries with Uraeus, Pelacor Bandit and Dragon Jumper. And finally, another +1 Speed 2 ranged. Naga Assassin is a great, great creature.
I was lucky my opponent chose Obsidian and Magic. Understanding how to manage enemy damage sources is more than half of a victory. Once Mycelic was destroyed, I knew everything would go well... And finally!

Reaching Champion within 2 hours of the end feels so good! And another benefit is beginning from Diamond 3!! Here I leave you the entire battle. Hope you enjoy it!

Hive - Splinterlands is a great ecosystem to grow in the Crypto world, we are in the best community and we play a game with a solid project and a great future. The only thing we've got to do is believe in the project and fight hard in the arena! Thanks for reading and feel free to share your thoughts. Happy weekend splinters!

In case you are new to this wonderful game here, I leave you my referral