My second (almost) full season of Splinterlands in a while wrapped up the other day and so today I ran the Splinterstats Report Card to see how I did with rewards and have a bit of a review of the season. The season overall was a bit of a grind early on as I was struggling to put the hours in. I was finding the game a bit tedious, however at some point I got my 2nd wind. It was probably a combination of things so I’ll brain dump them out in this post and see if the penny drops….
1. Martyr Strategy
This season I wanted to focus on the Martyr cards. I tried putting them at the front of a Big Mana card, gambled occasionally to put them into middle positions where they would be Sniped, Poisoned or Earthquaked. I tried to combine them with the Resurrect ability too so my Astral Entity Summoner got a good workout this season, but my favourite trick play was to put them 2nd last and wedge them between a Big Mana backline card and a final card with Camoufluge so that Sneak attacks would pass over the Camouflaged card and the death of the Martyr would benefit 2 backline cards. I had some mixed success with this, but have started getting the hang of it.
2. Incorporating Gladius Cards
Next thing I tried this season was getting the Gladius cards into the Ranked play battles. It took me a while to realize just how powerful these cards are but I started getting my ass handed to me by Quora Towershead in a few Brawls so figured it out quick. The problem I have is that the Summoners I have earned who enable Gladius cards to be played in Ranked are not powered up to Silver League level so it was a bit of a trade-off as I’d often go into battles with weaker Monsters or lacking other important Abilities. I was initially frustrated by this but have now realised the masterstroke of the developers to keep people playing….to get those Gladius cards upgraded. Now that I’m playing Brawls regularly I've decided that upgrading these Summoners is a new goal that I’ve set for myself.
3. Committing to a Guild
Following on from that - I also decided this season to commit to my Guild Full Time so I made a big contribution to my Drop Bears Guild and we’ve upgraded our Arena to Level 5 so that we can have a shot at the Tier 3 Brawls. We had been winning the lower tier Brawls so this current one will be a good tester to see if we can go to the next level. I’m really enjoying the Brawl concept and our Guild is pretty good with helping each other out and re-organising playing decks together so I’m really pleased to be a part of it. Shout out to 
4. Experimenting with Bots
Next thing I ended up trying this season was the Xbot.app – which I took the 7 day trial to end the season. I was both happy and dismayed to discover that it plays better than I do. At one point it projected me up into rank #22 on Wild Ranked (which is worth a DEC prize) so I am pretty impressed with how it works. I’m going to give its older competitor Archmage a try this season for comparison as I’m loaning an ARCHMAGE token and have just set up my reward delegations. I don’t really expect it to be better than the newer Xbot but I’m a Dev and a Tinkerer so I’m curious if nothing else. Not really sure how the upcoming ban on bots in Modern Ranked is going to affect these bot products - or the Rewards for Modern and Wild Ranked. I’ll probably post about all that later once I have a better handle on things.
5. Grinding Modern Ranked
My card collection has a really good mix of both Modern and older cards so I generally play Wild Ranked to give myself more choices and options. Once I had the bot running on Wild Ranked however, I decided to give Modern Ranked a try and I was a bit surprised to realize just how dependent I was on the older cards. It’s not even that the old cards are necessarily better, but I realized I have been using some cards more out of habit and patterned behavior. So while I didn’t do that great in Modern, it was a bit of an eye opener and I eventually enjoyed playing with (and against) a different set of cards. In many ways it was like playing a whole new game.
6. Weapons Training Strategy
The last few days of the season I started trying to use the cards with Weapons Training Ability that I have been picking up as Rewards. I wedged them between cards like Chaos Agent, Pelacor Conjurer and Lord Arianthus with some success. These cards aren’t available on the market either so mine aren’t upgraded but I can see that they are going to be potential game changers too. Just another reason for me to keep playing I guess.
Finally I guess I should mention the Rewards won this season. I picked up 150 Standard Cards and 4 Gold Foils. I did get a Gold Foil Epic but it’s the 2 Legendary Standard cards that I’ll be looking to get into my game play going forward. Skok Duskblight and Berix Snakeye – Both with the Weapons Training Ability. They look like a couple of keepers to me. Very difficult to put a value on the Rewards cards as they aren’t currently trade-able, but my gut feel is that I’ve done a fair bit better than I would have done Renting my cards out. It certainly was a pretty busy season for me but I think I've got a good handle on how the game is evolving now and that was my primary goal.
See you on the Battlefield!