Hello, everyone!
These have been very exciting days of change in Splinterlands.
We've had a few like this in the last few years where there's a whole paradigm shift and players have to evaluate things in light of some special changes that have been made but there's possibly never been a change as monumental as the introduction of Conclave Arcana and the consequent rotation of Chaos Legion from modern ranked play.
I've already talked about my journey in Splinterlands in this old post of mine.
Essentially I started playing in Chaos Legion and spent a few hundred dollars, close to a thousand perhaps, to build a competitive silver deck for modern and just like everyone else in here I got burnt pretty badly by that expansion. You can consult PeakMonsters and you'll see that the combined value of all my CL cards is about 100$. Yikes!
Somewhere around the introduction of Rebellion I stopped playing the game and it wasn't necessarily because of any specific economic consideration (it wasn't really still as bad as now for CL back then) but rather as a matter of principle after the removal of limitations for summoners based on leagues in modern ranked play.
The game just wasn't fun for me anymore.
Felt like an incredible slap in the face and it came as a total surprise. I think the vision behind the game is overall great, it's an exciting project meant to be sustainable and there's a lot of heart and thought put into it.
But that change feels incredibly unnecessary to me and I don't know how anyone could support it.
If there's one thing I'd like to get out of this post would be to start a genuine discussion with someone around this topic because I still don't get why the game needs to in such a state.
From what I understand league caps were removed because leaderboard player would "gatekeep" players with higher level cards from reaching their desired league in a timely fashion during a season.
If that's the best argument to be made in support of this change then the whole thing is baffling.
I don't particularly see why a meritocratic system would be a bad thing and I'm sure that there were many different designs that could have been adopted to mitigate the "problem" without fundamentally compromising the fairness of the game.
Maybe other considerations in regards to match liquidity and use cases for CL cards had also been made but these are just suppositions on my part.
Again, I would love for someone to talk with me about this.
This whole mess with summoner levels makes the whole Splinterlands experience for players with lower stakes in the game incredibly worse compared to how it all worked before Rebellion.
With that being my perspective I'll now talk about my personal experience in the game as well as my plans for the future.
Lots of things have changed. Back then I spent most of my time in Gold and Silver league (with the occasional peak in Diamond) and as most players did I relied almost entirely on the rental of cheap high level Chaos Legion cards to stay competitive.
Then there's been the introduction of season rentals and survival mode, both making it difficult for players to rent too many of these cards so the whole ecosystem of the leagues shifted around for a little bit.
Notably, the Splinterlands app was reintroduced on the app store. This is a fanstastic change as it can be difficult on some days to stay on top of things and being able to get a few battles done from the phone can be a game changer.
And then of course we got the new cards from the Conclave Arcana expansion.
Honestly, Rebellion was a bit overshadowed by the much cheaper Chaos Legion so both expansions feel quite new to me if that makes sense.
But Conclave Arcana is very clearly the most exciting thing for everyone right now.
It's a great set, it introduces a new level of complexity to the game thanks to bloodlines and honestly I'm always a bit conflicted in each game as there's usually several different strategies I could go for with each specific element making the game quite fun, in that sense.
I definetely feel a bit like a little kid on Christmas day with all these new cards to contemplate and that's a great feeling.
I don't know how much this sense of novelty will last but at least for now the game feels extremely fresh and it's hard to be too critical of it.
Lastly, there's been some exciting price movement with SPS, I'm sure everyone noticed it.
Like 
I'm not sure what everyone is doing with their SPS but there's clearly still a lot of extraction happening as it the only liquid asset with some value that comes as a reward from ranked play. Most people are probably trading off their SPS to keep up with the season rentals.
I started playing consistently again a few months ago but it didn't take me too much to catch up with the reward cards.
Many of them are highly desirable. I've been able to get most common and rares ready for silver level games and I've got at least one copy of each epic card.
Oddly enough the epic cards are extremely more impactful than the legendaries.
Olivia was the card I was expecting to like the best but the few times I've used her she's honestly been a bit of a disappointment.
Her mimic ability seems great on paper and it definetely paid off dividends in a big way from time to time.. but in most games she doesn't really survive or really takes off in time.
She could work well paired with some taunters or more in general in strategies where it's supposed a slow war of attrition.
She pairs up decently well, for instance, with the Tofu summoner.. but the again that summoner is so strong that any card would do well with it.
Perhaps I just don't use life summoners often enough.
Or maybe mimic is just not as effective at the lower levels, since there just aren't too many useful effects to steal.
Then, glossing over the halfling refugee.. which is an extremely useful meta card but quite straightforward and dull in its desing, the epic card that actually surprised me the most has been the arachne weaver.
This is another card that even at the low levels already features an entirely unique ability, corrupted healing, and unlike mimic it's almost always useful.
It can be used in situation with some constant, guaranteed damage such as in the games with the venom or earthquake effects.
But even in general it pairs up with some strong, beefy units that you want to mantain alive at all costs.
Lastly it's very effective with the Lorkus summoner as life leech can completely offset the drawback of corrupted healing.
The other epics are incredibly useful too. Kah'zi conjurer is a bit risky, at times, even with its high damage and the night reaper has a bit of a niche use but in general all the epics are key improvements for all decks and right now they all go for around 2$ so they're a reasonable investment for budget players starting out too.
I haven't really had much time to focus on the legendaries.
I've bought the emberguard with my own cash as it seems one of the most impactful reward legendaries and I've definetely used her with some success already.
I've only gotten one legendary using glint and it was blackmoor jinx which isn't exactly the most exciting card but I do like the earth element and it could prove useful in some low mana matches.
In general, it seems that with this current assortment of cards 0-1-2 mana units come at a premium whereas previously on top of the various "fiends" we had the chaos agent as well as several two mana units for all the various splinters.
All in all, most reward legendaries feel a bit underwhelming considering how much they cost so I don't feel like I'm missing out on much.
As shown in my last post I paid for several death and fire units that you can see down here.
They all seemed quite strong and I spent about 30$ to get them all.
Back then my focus was still to be competitive at the silver level but I changed my mind now so in the long term I might have to just sell or rent out these cards. Or get my hands on summoners of the appropriate level.
The key thing is that my vision for my account in the long term has changed.
Even though it's likely that these sets will retain their value much better than Chaos Legion did ( not a tall task at all ) I still don't feel quite comfortable with the amount I might have to spend year after year to stay relevant in the modern silver format and have fun with the strongest cards.
It's just a lot of money for me.
And more in general, as I've talked already about this at the beginning of my post, I don't enjoy the experience we're subjected to in the lower leagues right now. So even without money as a consideration, I still don't feel the need to be as invested in the game.
I just don't like the way that ranked play works right now. I'll keep playing it because I need glint to stay on top of the reward cards but it otherwise feels like a chore and it's never too exciting.
My vision has shifted and I think that it would be fun for me to focus and bronze and novice level modern tournaments, which at the moment is the only place that provides some excitement and an even playing field.
Rebellion and Conclave Arcana will be around for a while. It's definetely in my budget to stay competitive, at least at the bronze level.
If by the time these expansions rotate out this experiment of mine will have failed and modern ranked play will remain the same then that might just be it for me playing Splinterlands.
I hope it won't come to that because I like the game.
I've already participated in some tournaments in the past.
They're very exciting and there's some strong players so there's little room for mistakes.
But at the same time it's hilarious to see players of a high caliber and with a huge stake in the game come to play some of these low level tournaments and still have to leverage every possible edge they have at their disposal in order to win.
They have all sorts of costly meta cards, promo cards.. and honestly, even though I have been playing for a while now I still don't have all the legendary gladiator cards so even those feel like a huge gap to fill at times.
I think it would be a great feeling to beat some of these players so that will be my motivating factor.
Even at the novice level, focusing on 1BCX cards, if one wants to be as competitive as possible there's still a decent amount of spending to do.
Ever since I saw the Rebellion set there's one summoner, above all, that has been my favorite and that's Lorkus. I was able to get my hands on it when it was still valued at around 28$ and I've been unsuccesfully trying to flip it for profit ever since.
Recently I've given up on that effort and have been using it quite a bit in ranked play instead.
It's an incredibly strong summoner and there's many synergistic units that can be paired with it from both splinters.
When it comes to Conclave Arcana I've purchased all the lvl 1 summoners with the exception of Sheng Xiao, all in due time..
These have been my favorites so far. They cost one less mana than their Rebellion counterparts but they grant some effects across the whole board rather than to just two units.
The fire and earth summoners specifically have some highly desirable effects but even Bella Ratajowlski can come in clutch with the force field and in that sense, just like Reklah she can sometimes be a counter of sorts against Tofu.
Of course, these summoners are much more effective when they're paired with units from their respective bloodlines.
| Fithe Bladestone | Bella Ratajowlski | Kaylia Silverleaf |
|---|---|---|
I haven't yet invested much in the gnome and orc bloodlines but I'll certainly have to do so at some point in the future to round out my collection. The unique strategies enabled by Razi Clanktrap from the death splinter seem strong too and there's certainly some premium gnome units that will be meta but the summoners above seem to lead to more solid games overall.
Right now PeakMonsters says that my Rebellion and Conclave Arcana cards are worth around 170$ (200$ if reward cards are counted in as well). On top of that I have 9k+ staked SPS as I was previously playing in silver. As I'll be scaling down to bronze for this next modern cycle that should be plenty of SPS and at it's current value my share of SPS is worth around 90$.
So that represents my current stake in the game for modern format, however I'll soon be spending some more to buy some key cards.
It's obvious that these are extremely powerful summoners and I'll be looking to purchase them in order to always have them at my disposal and be as competitive as possible in tournaments and brawls.
After that I'll still have to round out my collection with 1BCX of other very costly promo and legendary key cards too but even just with the purchase of these two powerhouses I should be in much better shape.
I'm sure Conclave Arcana legendary summoners will be extremely strong and costly too but I'll cross that bridge once I get there.
I think my vision for the game is a bit different from most players. They would rather focus vertically on a few splinters, leveling them up as high as possible and take full advantage of them in ranked play.
My experiment of expanding horizontally across all spinters within the novice and bronze brackets is a bit weird perhaps but I think I'll genuinely have more fun this way and the economical returns will be minimal no matter what I choose to do so I might as well do what seems more fun to me.
Don't forget to take some profits from BTC and have a good one.
Hopefully I've given you a clear idea of what my vision for my account is and didn't ramble too much. My next posts here will be more detail oriented and specific to the actual game and battling.
I'll share what I've been getting up to in brawls, tournaments as well as in the hot mess that is ranked play right now.
