Welcome to my 33rd #BrawlReport as part of the 
I was back to battling in Fray #1 for this brawl and while we didn't have any top 100 guilds in our group this time, there was some tough competition!
While we didn't have any guild members go undefeated in this brawl, we did have four of us finish with 5 wins and 2 losses. Congrats to 
We earned 17 crowns and 915 merits for finishing in 2nd place in this brawl. The first place team had only four more wins than we did. Unfortunately, the first place team is one of the two opponents that I lost against.
As I mentioned earlier, I tied for first place amongst our guild with 5 wins and 2 losses. Winning against the first place team would have helped us a lot, but I got pretty well destroyed in that battle as you'll see soon.
Featured Battles
Battle #3 - Loss
This is my battle against the first place guild. At first glance, things look like they might be close-ish. However, this opponent's stun ability absolutely killed me from gaining any momentum in this battle. I was taken out very methodically in this battle.
I would have to study this battle for a while to figure out how to overcome the stun attack that kept disabling my tank. The only thing I can think of is putting blockers up front to get hit with the stun and depending on my back line cards as the primary attackers.
This was a great strategy from my opponent and I'll have to rent the stun card and experiment with this a bit.
Battle #5 - Win
Watch the battle.
This was a pretty cool showdown. I relied on a summoner that would reflect magic attacks and my opponent relied on a summoner that would reflect melee attacks. This strategy comes down to who guessed correctly about what their opponent would do.
The reason I chose to reflect magic is because one of the battle buffs was +2 shield so I didn't expect a player to rely on melee attack. It would make sense to use a magic focused strategy when every monster gets extra shields. My opponent seemed to think I would use melee attack as my primary strategy.
Despite Kron's health regeneration ability, I was able to wear him down with the magic reflect and prevail in this battle.
I'm happy with how I performed in this brawl and continue to realize that Fray #1 continues to get more competitive. I see more and more high-valued cards in play and some better strategies from players overall.
On another note, I only really battle when I rent cards for brawls and noticed the new battle rewards scheme that was deployed this week. Suddenly there is no DEC awarded for winning a battle and instead I received an absolutely tiny amount of SPS. I'll need to go back and look up the official announcement from Splinterlands about why they made this change, but this seems to completely destroy the "Play to Earn" model that the game was founded on.
At this point, the only reason I continue to play is to compete in brawls with my PIZZA guild pals and the HIVE and HBD that I earn from these brawl reports. Outside of that, Splinterlands provides no benefit anymore and appears to be heading down a path of eliminating any financial incentive for playing.
@hive.pizza #BrawlReport?kennysgaminglife spearheaded the #BrawlReport project as a way to get PIZZA guild members more engaged in the @Splinterlands community. Here's what he had to say:
*Starting with the brawl that just ended, I've invited/asked members of the #HivePizza guild to publish a #BrawlReport, breaking down their highs & lows, where they need help, questions they have, strategies they love, and so on. The idea is to help us all reflect a bit, learn a bit, share a bit, earn a bit, and connect a bit :-)
Check out the latest update on the Hive Pizza token project. We also have an announcement in there about the newest PIZZA guild! We are up to four Splinterlands guilds now and are consistently well-ranking.
Check out the other recent #BrawlReport posts from the #HIVEPIZZA family:
