So I tried both Splinterlands and Gods Unchained about a year ago and only played them for about a day each because I found it to be too hard to play with the starter cards. Well, I decided I wanted to play one of them again this week and tried them both out again. I ended up going with Splinterlands because I was simply having more fun with it. I dumped about $75 into buying cards and packs for it, along with a bit of SPS to stake for higher rewards, which sounds like a lot to spend on a video game but it's on par with how much I spend on Magic: The Gathering card packs and I've always been kind of a big spender in my MMO of choice (Elder Scrolls Online), so it didn't seem like a big deal to me personally.
I got to the bronze league with the starter cards but didn't like the penalties it gave you in regards to earning the rewards points (season points?) so I decided to put $10 in to replace some starter cards with real ones, and that turned into $20, and then $30, until I realized I had spent about $60 on credits for cards and packs and also spent some of my Bitcoin converting to Hive and then SPS for staking. It's all quite addicting!
I built up a Fire deck I felt pretty confident with, and even lucked out on a booster open and got a golden Tarsa card! When I went back into Battle with this deck, I started winning more frequently and had a lot more fun with it. It's always really enjoyable getting to learn the mechanics of a new card game, and I find that it's as fun as playing MtG for me.
Once I had won a few rounds with my Fire deck I decided to expand my horizons and build a Death deck. I played around with several summoners (Contessa L'Ament and Thaddius Brood) before settling on Dallan as my favorite Death summoner. The Cripple ability is just super useful for quickly taking out your enemies.
I'm currently working on perfecting my Water deck and will probably move on to Earth after that now that I have both Grund and Mycelic Slipspawn just from opening booster packs. I feel like Life and Dragon are the two elements I understand the least at this point, but I'm sure I'll get there soon enough!
Suffice to say, I am having a blast and I'm so happy to have found a new card game to play! MtG was beginning to feel a bit tedious, despite the Lord of the Rings tie-in.
Things I am looking forward to exploring more in my Splinterlands adventure is figuring out Guilds and Land! I also haven't even clicked into the Events tab yet, so I'm excited to see what that is, probably once I feel like I have a solid deck for each element going.
I think my only real complaint with the game is that I hate having to worry about my Hive resource credits when just trying to enjoy a game, and I also am not super into the energy credits needed to Battle. It makes the experience a bit more tedious than I would like, but it's not a deal breaker for me.
Also, despite it being a blockchain game with NFT cards, I'm trying not to think about that too much because I don't want to play it just as an investment, because I find it to be genuinely fun, so I am prioritizing that over how valuable a card might be in 6 months or whatever. Anyway, I am looking forward to continuing my Splinterlands journey!
