My Splinterlands Origin Story

One of the @splinterlands social media challenges this week was to share how we got into the game, so here is my origin story: finding the game and diving head-first into the best strategy trading card game (TCG) in #web3.

I first heard about Splinterlands in October 2021 during the big NFT craze from a friend whom I used to travel and test with for premier events in the competitive Magic: the Gathering scene back in 2012 - 2017.

He told me about this game that was a strategy TCG quick-time auto-battler using NFTs as cards. I was immediately interested and spent the next month or so learning about the game and its ecosystem. The combination of strategy, collectibility, and tokenized #DeFi was very appealing.

I finally bought my spellbook while at home during the Thanksgiving holiday here in the US which falls on the 4th Thursday of November. I had just read about the ability to rent out cards via the blockchain that were not being used to battle and something clicked when I looked at the thousands of valuable Magic cards sitting at home in my parent's closet.

Now, a few months past my 2nd Splinterlands anniversary, I can say I am so glad I decided to join the Splinterverse and take part in the best strategy TCG in Web3. Whether on desktop, laptop, or mobile, I've engaged with the game on a near-daily basis for 800 days!

The first few months started slowly as I learned the different elements' strengths and weaknesses. Just like in Magic, I was drawn to the strategy of death and water the most as well as the multi-element benefit of choosing the dragon splinter.

It was an interesting time for Splinterlands too, with the public sale for Chaos Legion just underway as Untamed starter cards got phased out. I spent about 2 weeks playing with Alric as a summoner before it was replaced by Kelya!

The single biggest catalyst for my development as a Splinterlands player was joining a guild! Before a few subsequent name changes, I decided to join @the420syndicate because of my affinity for cannabis and the friendly banter in its Discord server. The guild leader @sneakry was a huge help in discovering best practices for accumulating more assets and the multitude of third-party websites that help.

Similar to my addiction to collecting foils and promos in Magic: the Gathering, I soon went down the rabbit hole and began my penchant for collecting gold foil Splinterlands cards. Once my collection was playable at Gold Foil Silver League, I found my guild forever home with @shield-of-glory.

Over my two years in the game, I have maintained a minimum dollar-cost average (DCA) investment into Splinterlands every month, with a major focus on accumulating cards to play with and SPS to stake for governance power and yield via in-game APR. Over time, I would turn to rentals, liquidity pools, and creating alternate accounts (@treycrypto and @shaelien) to grow my assets.

Additionally, I have twice decided to sell off chunks of my paper Magic collection to further invest in Splinterlands. My timing of the Magic market turned out to be great, as I was able to get 5-figure value from cards near their peak before a big market dip due to the mismanagement of Hasbro, which owns the rights to Magic now.

The goals I'm still working towards are finishing my gold foil collection of the complete Chaos Legion set, staking 400K SPS on my main account, and getting our Shield of Glory guild into Tier 5, the highest level of brawl competition in Splinterlands.

In addition to these personal goals, I am also on a few committees of the Yield Guild Games Splinterlands guild alliance with YGG Brawlers and YGG 420 Fam. YGG is doing a great job of providing benefits to its players by encouraging teamwork and helping us grow together.

Remember, if you are a new player, joining a guild and finding a like-minded community is the best way to learn this game and create lasting friendships along the way. If you are curious about joining a guild, I have attached a link below the divider to join the discord servers of the three different guilds I participate in.

Thanks for reading about my origin story. I'd love to hear about yours too, so if you want to share your story (or your article link) in the comments, I look forward to checking them out!

See you in the Splinterlands!