Splinterlands - Beginner's Guide - Wild VS Modern Battle Format!

Are you new to Splinterlands and searching for some advice, then you found the correct series! In this Beginner’s Guide Series, we are discussing things that new players of Splinterlands should know or try to learn. In this specific episode we will take a look at the novel battle system! For those of you who are living behind a rock: There is a new battle system implemented in the form of Modern vs Wild. We will talk about the differences of these two systems and what the potential consequences could be. In the end I will talk about my approach towards this system after a few days. If this article motivated you to start playing this amazing game, then feel free to join the fun over the following link:
https://splinterlands.com?ref=ga38jem

Modern Vs Wild: Differences

Let’s start first with explaining the new battle format. With the new season, there are now two possible ways to battle. We have the Modern and the Wild format. For all of you that are experienced with card games, this should be nothing new for you. For those of you that never saw this, I will explain it rather quickly. Because after a period of time new cards are getting designed and released, there is always a constant change of meta and newer cards could be much stronger than the old ones. This is why developers are often differentiating between a Modern Card Format and a Wild Card Format. While in the Modern format, only the newest cards are allowed to be played, the Wild Format allows to utilize all cards in the game.

So far so good. Now that I was able to experience both formats I have a few observations to share. First things first, there are two reward pools for each format, which is pretty cool in my opinion. There are also two different Rating systems which is also kind of cool because in the Modern Format, you would need less Collection Power in order to achieve higher leagues. This is definitely benefiting the new players that are just starting out and do not have the big amount of CP as the experienced players. What I observed so far is though, that the Modern Format is much harder to play in. Either everybody is renting full leveled up summoners or people in Modern are genuinely having all of their cards leveled up.

At first I was thinking that these players were just from higher leagues and because of the start of the season, that they will slowly disappear. But I was wrong. I am currently in the Silver levels and there is literally no game that I encounter where the summoner is either legendary or on level 4. Because I am just battling with my level 3 summoners my win rate is obviously not so high and is therefore a little frustrating because the amount of daily chests is not increasing as much as they used to. On the other hand, the DEC rewards are around 10 times higher than in the Wild Format. I am assuming this is because many people realized how hard it could be to win in Modern and are plying therefore the Wild Format more.

On the other hand, the Wild Format is comparable to the previous stage of battling. I must admit that it is much easier to win games and farm Reward Points in this format, which is why my plan is to play this format until I reach a certain amount of chests and then trying to use the rest of my resources to do as good as I can in the modern format as there are better rewards. But more on the approach in the last chapter.

The Potential Consequences

So what might be the consequences of this change? Well, first of all I think this change brings more dynamic into this game. People are having more options and can either chose a more competitive or a more chill route. The more competitive people will have to battle with leveled up summoners. There is no way about that and is requiring some chunk of money, even in a bear market. This is also probably the reason why the rewards in the Modern Pool are higher. People do not want to waste their Resources in a format where they hardly get any Reward Points and therefore no Reward chests.

I am also curious to see how this will influence the Renting market. It is certainly different now and I think that higher quality cards will finally get the attention and pricing that they deserve. While in the past the main restriction was CP, now it actually might be the quality of cards and I think that this is a great step forward. Whilst I am still thinking that the renting market is not at its full potential, I do think that this could be a step into the right direction!

My Approach For The Next Weeks

Going forward, I will have to try out more things. I will definitely continue my approach of battling in Wild for some Reward Chests and once I am satisfied with the result, I would try to get more experience in the Modern Format and maybe even get some DEC rewards along the way. In order to be able to compete in the Modern Format, I think it is inevitable to get yourself a summoner onto the highest level in this specific league. I would consider doing that just because I already have 3 summoners leveled up to level 3.

Furthermore, there is another option for me. I could rent out cheap CP in order to get to the Gold Leagues in the Wild Format. I think it is also a very fun experience to do and would eventually benefit in the future from better reward chests. I will need to think about this potential move but it is worth considering in my opinion.

I also thought about renting the necessary cards in order to bring myself into a good modern position. While this might be interesting later on, I am staying away from these purchases because I did not entirely figured the whole system out and I am afraid to lose DEC on rents that I would not even need while still losing my potential Modern battles.