Splinterlands Social Media Challenge - Theme: Tips for Beginners!

ghostlybg(73)

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Splinterlands offers an interesting spin to the Trading Card Game (TCG) genre. While it has the vibes of games such as Magic The Gathering, Hearthstone, Gwent in terms of its High Fantasy setting, it is very fast-paced and you can literally play 10 battles for the same time you might be only half-way through one battle in most of the other popular TCGs. This does not mean that the game is simple in terms of strategy and depth, on the contrary, there are usually a lot of options to choose from and it is often a challenge to come up with the best line-up. So let me explain in a bit more detail how a normal battle goes:

- you start by pressing the "Battle" button in the middle of the screen:

- then, when you find a match you see the following pop-up where you can see the last 5 teams which your opponent has played, the Rulesets for this particular battle (Rules of Combat), what the Mana Cap (every card costs a different amount of mana and the total of all cards cannot exceed the cap), the active Element for this battle (there are a total of 6 Elements in the game - Fire, Water, Earth, Life, Death and Dragon), and last but not least - the Countdown (how much time you've got left to submit your team)

- When you press "Create Team" - the team selection phase begins. You have a limited time to assemble your team based on the cards you own, rent, or have available from the starter set (using starter cards is generally not recommended because you are penalized for that in the form of earning less points towards your daily/seasonal chests when you win a battle). You can see on the screenshot below all Summoners that are available to me. Those designated with an "S" are the Starter set ones, as you can see I don't own/rent them either but I do have leveled other Summoners I can use. You need to choose a Summoner before choosing the rest of your line-up. Every Summoner has different abilities ergo different strengths/weaknesses, so a part of mastering the game is definitely getting to know when to use what Summoner and also try to predict what your opponents is going to do, so you can potentially counter them.

- So after I've chosen my team the Battle Stage begins. It's generally an auto-battle, but Rebellion has changed that a bit by introducing an additional phase with some of the Rebellion summoners, so you sit back and enjoy the way the battle develops round by round. In my case I knew I was going to lose the battle from the very beginning even though it took me a few rounds to get to that point. Do not be afraid to try stuff and fail, that is part of the learning curve and of the fun. I like experimenting with teams that often fail miserably but when something a bit more strange works, it's always satisfying to watch it play out. RNG does play a role in the Battles so careful with your keyboard and monitor...

Here are some more tips I have for you:

after you get your Spellbook, get acquainted with the Hive ecosystem - how the Hive keychain works, how the forums work (peakd), join the Splinterlands discord and do not be afraid to ask questions in the #tavern
get a deck from nfty arcade and play with it for a season. This way you will get a good feel of the game, the meta, and the cards you like playing and you hate playing against.
once you've gathered info on the meta you can do two things - rent the cards you like and the cards you hate to play against and/or buy them off the market (if your budget allows that). I prefer ownership than rentals but that is just me, I don't think there is a right and a wrong approach in this case.
join a guild - this is very important apart from the guild-specific perks you get from joining a guild, it also gives you the chance to take part in brawls and earn SPS and merits. Merits are used to buy gladius packs which is where you get gladiator cards from. Gladiator cards are really strong in lower leagues, so you will definitely not regret the time you spend on collecting them.
and most importantly - have fun and don't go to Peakmonsters to look at your collection value every day. I almost never do that and I sleep better at night for sure.
get in touch with me in Discord if you have any questions.
start doing the weekly challenges on PeakD (such as this one you are currently reading) and you will start earning curation rewards which will help you a lot to build your hive account. I'm constantly getting some of the rewards I earn from blogging and putting them back into Splinterlands.
buy some SPS so you can boost our reward multiplier.

The Community is one of Splinterlands strongest assets in my humble opinion, even though we're still in Bear territory and you will definitely come across some salty people here and there, the passionate and helpful people are definitely a lot more than the salty bears. Thankfully the end of the Bear market is not that far off anymore so I'm sure that the mood will improve significantly in the next few months.

So, I have been actively playing the game for almost two years now. It has been a very interesting experience as a whole since the Bear Market has been rather rough but I definitely do not give up easily, and as I said, if I enjoy playing a game, it is very hard for me to stop playing it and direct my attention elsewhere. Something that really helped me persevere were definitely the content creators in addition to the community at large. I began watching all the youtube stars from day 1 basically and I really enjoyed the content they provided - SteveR, Infidel, Aftersound, Gank and Walkingkeys, Tales from the Crypt Mancer, Hawks, Gathering the Magic, Bulldog, Br0nzedragon - just to name a few. It is really encouraging and somewhat surprising that the game has managed to keep all these content creators engaged and providing content on a regular basis. This definitely helps a lot. Another thing that also helps the community stay engaged are the regular updates we've been receiving from the company in the form of Town Halls and Town Squares.