Yesterday was the beginning of my 20-day Splinterlands journey.
I started by looking through my collection, playing my first battle and reminding myself that I did not want to approach this series by simply using the same cards over and over again.
I wanted to experiment.
I wanted to learn.
And most importantly, I wanted to see what would happen if I started paying more attention to the cards and strategies I normally ignore.
So today, on Day 2, I decided to do exactly that.
I went back into my collection and started looking through some of the cards I rarely use.
It was actually interesting because I found myself recognising cards that I had probably seen many times before but never really considered.
You know that feeling when you have something in front of you but never really notice it?
That was how I felt.
I had been looking at my collection from the perspective of, “Which cards do I normally use?”
Today, I wanted to look at it differently.
I asked myself:
“Which cards have I been ignoring?”
That question changed the way I looked through the collection.
Choosing the experiment
After going through several cards, I decided to pick one that I normally would not build a team around.
It wasn’t because I thought the card was bad.
I simply wasn’t used to using it.
Usually, when I enter a battle, I already have a few cards that come to mind immediately.
Those are the safe choices.
The cards I know.
The cards I trust.
The cards where I don’t have to spend too much time thinking about how they will perform.
But if I keep doing that, I won’t really learn anything new.
So today I decided that the unfamiliar card was going to be one of the important pieces of my lineup.
I didn’t know exactly how it would perform.
That was the whole point.
The first problem
Of course, building the team wasn’t as simple as I imagined.
Once I decided to use the card, I had to think about what other cards would work with it.
This is where the mana limit started becoming important.
There were several cards I wanted to include, but I couldn’t fit everything together.
So I had to make choices.
Keep this card or replace it?
Use a stronger attacker or save mana for support?
Should I focus on defence?
Should I try to make the lineup faster?
These decisions made me realise that team building is almost like putting together a puzzle.
Every card takes up space.
Every card has a purpose.
And if one piece doesn’t fit, you sometimes have to change the entire plan.
I almost went back to my usual strategy
At one point, I seriously considered abandoning the experiment.
I had a lineup in mind that I already knew would probably work reasonably well.
It would have been much easier.
I could have chosen my familiar cards, submitted the team and moved on.
But then I remembered why I started this 20-day series.
If I keep choosing the safest option, then Day 20 will probably look almost exactly like Day 1.
I don’t want that.
I want to be able to look back at these posts and see how my thinking changed.
So I kept the unfamiliar card.
I built the rest of the team around it as best as I could.
Then I pressed the button.
The battle begins
When the battle started, I immediately watched the card I had chosen.
I wanted to know whether I had made the right decision.
The first few rounds were interesting.
The card wasn’t dominating the battle, but it wasn’t useless either.
It was doing its job.
That actually made me think about yesterday’s lesson.
Not every card needs to be the star.
Sometimes a card’s value comes from how it contributes to the team.
A card doesn’t necessarily need to have the highest attack or the most health.
Sometimes its ability, position or interaction with another card is what makes it useful.
As the battle continued, I started becoming more comfortable with my decision.
Then something unexpected happened.
The card ended up contributing more than I originally expected.
That was probably the most interesting part of today’s battle.
It wasn’t some unbelievable victory where one card destroyed the entire enemy team.
It was something much simpler.
The card worked.
And that was enough to make me reconsider it.
Maybe I judged it too quickly
After the battle, I found myself thinking about the card again.
Why had I ignored it for so long?
Maybe I had been looking at it the wrong way.
Maybe the problem wasn’t the card.
Maybe I simply hadn’t found the right situation for it.
This is something I want to remember throughout the rest of this journey.
A card doesn’t have to be amazing in every situation.
Some cards are going to be much better under specific rulesets.
Some will work better with certain summoners.
Some might need particular teammates around them
That means I probably shouldn’t decide that a card is useless just because one battle doesn’t go well.
I need to give it a proper chance.
The second battle
Because I was already experimenting, I decided not to stop after one battle.
I wanted to see whether the card could work again in a different situation.
The second battle was different.
The ruleset changed.
The available options changed.
And suddenly, the lineup I had just used didn’t make as much sense.
This was another reminder that you can’t simply copy a successful lineup into every battle.
The same strategy that works in one situation can fail badly in another.
So I adjusted.
I changed some of the supporting cards and tried to give the unfamiliar card a slightly different role.
This time, the result wasn’t quite as convincing.
But surprisingly, I wasn’t disappointed.
Yesterday, I probably would have looked at the loss and simply thought, “That didn’t work.”
Today, I was thinking differently.
I was asking why it didn’t work.
Was the card actually the problem?
Was the positioning wrong?
Did the ruleset make the strategy weaker?
Did I choose the wrong supporting cards?
That difference in thinking is probably more important than the result itself.
What Day 2 taught me
The biggest lesson today is simple:
Don’t judge a card before you understand it.
A card that I barely used yesterday became one of the main things I was thinking about today.
I still don’t know if it will become one of my regular cards.
Maybe it won’t.
But now I understand it a little better.
And that is progress.
I also realised that experimenting requires patience.
You can’t try something once, lose a battle and immediately decide that the strategy is terrible.
Sometimes you need to make adjustments.
Sometimes you need to use the card under different rulesets.
Sometimes you need to find the right combination.
That is what I want to do during this series.
I don’t want every day to be about winning.
I want every day to teach me something.
Looking ahead to Day 3
Yesterday I said I wanted to start experimenting.
Today, I actually did it.
Tomorrow, I want to take things a little further.
Instead of focusing on just one unfamiliar card, I want to start thinking more about card combinations.
What happens when two cards that I rarely use are placed on the same team?
Can their abilities complement each other?
Can one card cover the weakness of another?
And can I build an entire strategy around that combination?
I don’t know yet.
But that’s exactly why there are still 18 days left.
Day 1 was about starting.
Day 2 was about looking at my collection differently.
Tomorrow, the experiment gets bigger.
Day 2 complete.
The journey is starting to become interesting.
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