Splinterlands is a universe of collectible cards, in this world users can use their cards in different events and combats, the game is inspired by great successes, such as Hearthstone or YuGiOh, although with big differences when it comes to combat and gameplay. The game was born under this unique concept of Blockchain network, which is hosted on the Hive network, allowing all consumers, that these cards are unique and exclusive to them, receiving all the right on it, this revolutionized the ability of collection between users, creating a unique market in the virtual environment, and leading to these cards to be sold for exorbitant prices.
Gameplay
This is one of the elements that most distinguishes this video game, its unique and original gameplay, although perhaps boring for some people, because the mechanics are automatic, so, in this section, I will talk a little of the basics of the card game and the use of all these elements; Firstly, there are two main types of cards in the video game:
• Summoners: This is your main card of your deck, and the one that will allow the ability to summon monsters on the battlefield, this summoner will implement a number of benefits to the monster cards you choose, being very useful for the basis of your strategy, it should be noted that these cards are the most coveted by users, for its rarity.
• Monsters: These last cards are in charge of combat, which are divided into different types, which are: Fire, Water, Earth, Life, Death and Dragon, each of these types define the personality and style of play of each card, as there are a number of archetypes that define the monsters, which are called statistics in this game, which allows the user to define their level of attack, and which happen to be as follows:
Melee Attack: As the name suggests, you are attacking an enemy in melee combat, in normal game strategies, the attacking monster is in the first position, the damage done by this card is assigned to the enemy's armour, rather than health, and the enemy can manage to dodge it.
Ranged Attack: This stat is essential on monsters in the third or fourth positions, the further away from direct combat the better, and like melee damage, this is allocated to armour first until health is affected and enemies can also dodge it.
Magic Attack: The statistic that differs the most from the previous ones, as this one has the ability to fight from any position on the field, the mages also do damage directly to the opponent's life, avoiding all the armour they may have, as well as being attacks that cannot be avoided.
Card Breakdown
*Mana Cost: This number defines the amount of magic, or mana, needed to summon this card in combat.
*Stats: Reflects the damage this card does to opponents, and the drawing reflects the type of damage it does, melee, magic or long range.
*Splinter: This is the type of the card.
*Name: This is the name given to each card, it should be noted, that the developers don't kill themselves with such names.
*Level: The level is one of the most important factors in the game, as it defines all the previous stats, because, with repeated cards, you can use them to combine with another one, this will level up the card, changing a little bit the base stats.
*Experience: This bar indicates how much is left to reach a new level
*Abilities: And, finally, we have the abilities that each card has, inside each deck there is an image, this will come with a text explaining the effect it has, which can range from Affliction to Weaken, making a total of more than 60 skills in the game.
Game Mechanics
We move on to the gameplay part, the game has very simple mechanics, but the strategy is more than complex, we have a board with six spaces and an exclusive space for our summoner and the rest for the monsters, these spaces are distributed in the following way:
As we can see in the image, it is divided into two rows, the first row is where cards with more life and armour are usually placed, then we have the following six positions, where the placement varies depending on the strategy of each player, melee combat is performed between equal numbers 1 vs 1 and vice versa, long distance attacks can be performed from the second row, and the mages have the ability to hit in any position.
At the beginning we have a limit of mana, for the use of cards, making a total between 18 and 20, distributed in the cards that we want to place in the field, before the combat we have two minutes of duration, to choose our combatants, once culminated, the combat begins, here the user no longer has control, and the battle begins automatically by turns, we can see how the combats unfold or simply click the button to see the results.
Play To Earn System
The NFT Game, are distinguished by the ability to have some economic reward in real life, and Splinterlands is no exception, although the amount we can earn is quite small, if there are users and investor, who have brought a good amount of income, there are different methods to earn in the game, the first is with the sale of the reward token DEC, Another method, and one of the most profitable, is that if you are a very good competitive user, the community and the creators of the game create events and tournaments, which are valued by a very good rewards for the best.
And finally, the most profitable method for users, is the purchase and sale of cards on the market, this method is infallible, because like all collectible section, there are cards that are revalued too much, reaching incredible costs, this may be due to the need for these cards in the competitive, or by the rarity that has that card, this conforms to the availability of NFT that exists at the time, such rarity is identified by a colour, within the type of the card:
Grey: Common cards.
Blue: Rare
Violet: Epic
Gold: These are the rarest of all, Legendary, and these have a total issue of only 10.000 cards in the market.
Conclusion
Undoubtedly the world of the NFT game is here to stay, although many projects will be adrift and many others will disappear, the few that remain will change the history of video games forever, in the case of Splinterlands, we do not know exactly, although it is one of the few that has been maintained over time, If it must reinvent itself completely to achieve that stardom achieved by other titles of the genre, if you really want to compete with the big ones, with this we end this article today, hoping that it is to your liking, and I invite you to enter this vast universe called Splinterlands.
