As I have now been playing "Splinterlands" for over TWO YEARS, I've wanted to contribute something of ACTIONABLE value to my fellow players (and FUTURE players) - but NOT just fill my #Hive feed with daily images of quest reward - or battle - SPAM (no offense to those doing so). Ultimately, Hive is about ADDING VALUE to the social experience - that is the magic of blockchain social media technology. So, after some serious pondering, I decided that a semi-weekly ""Splinterlands" player strategy diary"" type series, with CONCISE and ACTIONABLE tips, would be of most value to my audience. Please let me know your thoughts (good and/or bad), and I hope that readers (now and into the future) will benefit from this series. If you gain a better understanding of blockchain, gaming, "blockchain gaming", marketing, psychology, addiction science, geopolitics, forensics, law, guerilla warfare tactics, ethics, philosophy, accounting, ergonomics, investing, anger management, the occult, and/or any other area(s) of knowledge I end up exploring (voluntarily or involuntarily) as this series naturally progresses, then I will have done my "good deed" (of providing value) for the week, AND can then do a few "bad" deeds (HEDONISTICALLY speaking) - AND have a little extra Hive to buy/upgrade some more Splinterlands cards and/or buy some more swap.btc ( #Bitcoin ) and/or swap.doge ( #Dogecoin ). Also, feel free to hit me up on the battlefield.
[ DISCLAIMER: Sorry, Homos (Sapiens). This past week-and-a-half I had some SERIOUS issues with my back pain - IN ADDITION to being sidetracked by some other survival issues, and other projects. This back issue is, unfortunately, becoming an obstacle to me getting these posts published on schedule. I'm working on solutions, but it's a difficult, and complex, situation right now. I will make some tweaks to the workflow process in the coming weeks to get a better sense of my maximum POTENTIAL output at this juncture. I will also assume that I will be able to produce ONLY ONE post per week in the meantime. As a result of that, I will stop making the swap.doge purchases (and use ONLY the Doge proceeds from my https://faucetcrypto.com/ref/746118 effort to maintain a small trickle of Doge, which I will continue to withdraw into my 
1 ) The "battle of the post" is another JUICY one this week.
"Cursed Slimeball" (Gold (Max)) wins with the mega kill-shot:
https://steemmonsters.com?p=battle&id=5ed0409318b24b1ab87f753215de85f13bb39309&ref=transcript-junky
In this battle we can see how the "thorns" ability of my (now maxed) "Giant Scorpion" (Gold) weakened the enemy substantially, so that my (now maxed) "Cursed Slimeball" (Gold) could make the final major kill-shot, via the "redemption" ability, which knocked out three of the remaining monsters of the opponent, and lead to a "photo finish" with my (maxed) "Creeping Ooze" making the final win-shot with only "+1" health remaining. This battle shows the benefit of my ongoing "buy one gold card per day" strategy, as the maxed out "Giant Scorpion" and "Cursed Slimeball" Untamed cards enabled me to win this specific battle (and others), in addition to earning a nice 40% "gold" bonus (which can be used to offset the cost of the cards over time). In the past week, since this battle, I hit a high-value card in one of the Untamed quest rewards packs, and sold that for over 300,000 DEC, which I have been using to focus more on upgrading more Untamed gold cards to max. This is important because, as I have shown in previous posts, there have been a few "Untamed Gold" tournaments which I was just within a few thousand "collection power" points of being eligible for, and so with these additional Untamed gold cards I am now in the process of buying the hope is that I will be able to progressively get into the "eligible zone" of more and more of these higher-level tournaments, which often have LESS THAN the lower tier amount of players signed-in (due to the high collection power requirement), and these situations have a tendency to grant AUTOMATIC placing, and winning (assuming you win at last one battle), in these tournaments. Such tournaments often pay in the THOUSANDS of DEC (with an entry cost of only 10 DEC), and so as far as I'm concerned that is "free DEC" by which to offset the cost of the ongoing purchase of the gold cards, and previously purchased cards and packs.
2 ) I FINALLY hit one of the "high value" cards I needed to get out of my several-week-long DEC liquidity rut. In addition, I got this (Yodin Zaku) $300 USD+ value card (market quote) in one of the Untamed packs which I essentially got for FREE in the natural course of getting daily quest and season reward dumps! The card is the "Yodin Zaku" (Gold - Level 2 - $399 USD (current market price on the day of opening the pack)). I originally asked some of those Homos (Sapiens) in Splinterlands #Discord if anyone was game to buy this card, and a few trusted buddies suggested I put it on the market for $300 USD for a few days, and then drop it down to $200 USD if it didn't sell within a week. Then I started thinking that - with the upcoming "Guild Brawl" system being rolled out soon - it would probably be IDEAL to keep this card within my "DEC Hunters" guild. So I approached my buddy 
4 ) Due to several main factors, including: back pain issues, plus my rather long daily mountain bike rides (sometimes 50-60 kilometers per day), plus the need to focus on MULTIPLE research tasks along with my #Splinterlands activity , plus a significant amount of overall stress and insomnia, I have HONESTLY been having trouble keeping up with publishing the intended "two semi-weekly posts" of this series. But instead of GIVING UP, I will simply make some TWEAKS, as I usually do. Firstly, my MAIN goal of using the payouts of the posts in this series is to buy swap.btc ( in other words, #Bitcoin ). I set the goal of using the SECOND weekly post HBD payout to buy #Dogecoin ( swap.doge ), but if I can't produce the second weekly posts I think the best thing is to use the (minimum) ONE weekly post payout to buy swap.btc, and IF I can publish the second weekly post I can CONSIDER using that to buy swap.doge, OR now I am thinking that the small trickle of 5-10 Dogecoin from the https://faucetcrypto.com/ref/746118 site may be GOOD ENOUGH for now to slowly and steadily rebuild my Dogecoin reserves. I will continue following the news about Doge, and if I feel that it become SIGNIFICANTLY more feasible to buy Doge I will adjust the strategy accordingly. The price od Doge for the past few weeks has remained stable, so it is probably best to take the "slow and steady" approach for now. I am content to settle for the 5-10 Doge per week from the faucet site at this time, as I believe that #Bitcoin is going to become increasingly more scarce over time, and so it is best to buy up as much BTC as possible at this juncture. Some experts are even saying that at some point in the future it will LITERALLY be IMPOSSIBLE to buy more Bitcoin, because the demand will be too high, and most people will be HODLing, so I want to try to GOBBLE up as much BTC as possible while it is still available. As I have explained in previous posts of this series, my ORIGINAL cryptocurrency holdings (starting in 2013-2014) consisted of ONLY Bitcoin - which was the only crypto available on #Coinbase at the time , and I which was paid to me by a client for some transcription and online marketing services. That was, let's say - hypothetically - ~ 1.0 BTC. And so, one of my MAIN metrics with this overall Splinterlands effort is to see how much of that original amount I can EARN back through my efforts in this game. I think that's a healthy challenge - especially since I lost a significant amount of that original BTC in a few of those SCAM Bitcoin CASINOS run by the "the usual suspects"...
5 ) Okay. As I have done in the previous posts in this series, the highly-detailed "diary" of my daily #splinterlands activity is laid out in the last part here, for those of you who are inclined to follow, more closely, what I am doing. It occurred to me that this "diary" section is JUST THAT - a highly detailed record of my daily activity in the game, with some JUICY "play-by-play" analysis notes, and commentary, on what works, what doesn't, and some suggestions for further tweaking and experimentation. So, with this in mind, I hope some/any of you will enjoy this information. If not, you are under no pressure to read it fully, and are free to SKIM, or even IGNORE, any parts, or ALL parts, completely - at your discretion. I lay this out because it also HELPS ME to document my progress in the game over time, and may help some people NOW, and into the perpetual future...
Starting DEC : 223,069 DEC
Starting Capture Rate : ~ 71.79%
Ending DEC - 228,410 DEC
Ending Capture rate : 76.19%
Balance = DEC Earning = 5,341 DEC = 9.658 HIVE x ~ $00.363 USD/Hive = ~ $3.50 USD
Spent:
6 x "Mantoid" (Gold - Level 3 -$3.43 USD - 4,923 DEC -- bumped up to Level 8 (to increase "health" from "+6" to "+7"))
earned 5,000 DEC for placing 33rd in the "The Wealthy Gambit" tournament. The lowest rank in this tournament was 32nd, and so I got lucky (again) in that they paid out too additional "bonus" ranks (at 5,000 DEC instead of 10,000 DEC for the lowest (32nd) rank).
https://steemmonsters.com/?p=tournament&id=a08775ef5366fd9670132d624dd7dac81ecdf03f
Daily Quest (yesterday's "snipe" quest)
Notes: I got caught off guard with this new type of quest, so only completed one of five battles. Will finish this quest tomorrow.
Starting DEC : 223,473 DEC
Starting Capture Rate : ~ 89.07%
Ending DEC - 225,794 DEC
Ending Capture rate : 82.06%
Balance = DEC Earning = 2,321 DEC = 4.945 HIVE x ~ $00.370 USD/Hive = ~ $1.83 USD
Spent:
1 x "Goblin Fireballer" (Gold - Level 3 - $0.52 USD - 728 DEC -- bumped up to Level 0 (to increase "health" from "+3" to "+4"))
1 x "Magma Troll" (Gold - Level 3 - $0.55 USD - 772 DEC -- bumped up to Level 7 (to increase "health" from "+4" to "+5"))
1 x "Sniping Narwhal" (Gold - Level 3 - $0.56 USD - 792 DEC -- three (3) cards remaining to Level 8)
earned 1,000 DEC by placing 30th in the "The Untamed Shiny Path" tournament:
https://steemmonsters.com/?p=tournament&id=1bc2256f5747db94957aca4d3eb83ecab35130ab
Daily Quest (yesterday's "snipe" quest)
keepers -
(+) 40 DEC
nonkeepers -
(+) 20 DEC
potions - 1 legendary potions, 5 alchemy/gold potions
Untamed - 0 packs
DEC - 131 DEC
Daily Quest (today's "sneak" quest)
keepers -
(+) 20 DEC
nonkeepers -
(+) 60 DEC
potions - 1 legendary potions, 3 alchemy/gold potions
Untamed - 0 packs
DEC - 58 DEC
Starting DEC : 223,501 DEC
Starting Capture Rate : ~ 91.81%
Ending DEC - 227,099 DEC
Ending Capture rate : 88.04%
Balance = DEC Earning = 3,589 DEC = 7.457 HIVE x ~ $00.419 USD/Hive = ~ $3.12 USD
Spent:
5 x "Sniping Narwhal" (Gold - Level 3 - $2.70 USD - 3,232 DEC -- bumped up to Level 8 (to increase "speed" from "+3" to "+4"))
contributed 200 DEC to the new "arena" building of our new "DEC Hunters" Guild Brawl section. This 200 DEC was out of the 300 DEC I earned for placing 38th (below the lowest tier) of the "Untamed Gold Encased Diamonds" tournament (link below).
earned 1,500 DEC for placing 26th in the "Golden Rule - Silver" tournament:
https://steemmonsters.com/?p=tournament&id=b22f09095c3d256225297aa80d09d6a6e2456b7b
earned 300 DEC for placing 35th in the "Untamed Gold Encased Diamonds" tournament:
https://steemmonsters.com/?p=tournament&id=2a1d381706a6748990bd69a25764f585c294a19c
Untamed (milestone pack for reaching "Diamond III" season level - + 10 loot chests -> + 40 season loot chests )
keepers -
(+) 40 DEC
non-keepers -
(+) 70 DEC
Daily Quest (today's "death" quest)
keepers -
(+) 50 DEC
nonkeepers -
(+) 60 DEC
potions - 2 legendary potions, 2 alchemy/gold potions
Untamed - 1 packs
DEC - 875 DEC
Whew! These posts are growing dense - but that's okay. Take what resonates with you, and leave the rest. I hope you find some/any of these tips useful in increasing your understanding and/or skill level in the Splinterlands and/or any other game(s) - and the " blockchain gaming " industry as whole - which I end up exploring as this series evolves. More JUICY tips to come with each semi-weekly update, as I dig deeper into this whole REVOLUTIONARY PHENOMENON, and become more experienced and successful in the game(s).
See you on the battlefield...
@transcript-junky