Next week the first Splinterlands Chaos Legion packs will be opened and played in battle. With 1306 packs and the guaranteed drops of Dr Blights, I will have 6556 of my own cards, to trawl through and decide what to do with. My initial thoughts with this batch (I hope to get more later) are to combine all I can to MAX and see what is leftover, if anything. I don't have a lot of maxed cards, but sine I rarely play in the upper leagues, it doesn't matter that much as long as they are high enough. However I prefer to have them maxed or the capabilities to max if I can, just in case. I will MAX a Blight.
What is going to be really interesting once these cards hit the open game, is how people are going to adjust their gameplay. Most probably build habitual responses to certain rule sets and with a raft of new cards hitting the field, many are going to find their approach lacking. a lot of the new cards are quite powerful and the summoners can mix things up a bit.
For example, I am looking forward to the Earth Summoner that provides +1 magic, as that changes my own Earth set potential quite a lot. Throwing a Djinn Bilkja, a Khmer Princess and a Goblin Sorcerer into the mix and add in the CL tank Mycelic Slipspawn or in lower mana games, Regal Peryton, and things are looking interesting on the earth magic side, which has been lacking in my set thus far.
But, it isn't only going to be me who will struggle in the early weeks (I always struggle), because this injection of new cards will mean everyone is out there trying to work out what works in the new set and how it works in combination with what they already have. Plus, they have to consider what other people are playing and in what combination. It is a welcome disruption in my opinion, but at the same time, I am going to struggle for a long time to come I feel, while there are the more mathematically-minded who will catch on to the possibilities much faster.
But for many who are making their first foray into buying a substantial number of packs, I think they are going to find that they are able to compete on a gameplay level far better than they were, as some of these cards are very strong. Of course, the people who have near or full sets will always have an advantage of suitability to the widest set of rules, but there will hopefully be some shakeup happening in the rankings, where there are more unfamiliar names up the top. Though, I am not expecting earthshattering change.
Really, I am just looking forward to more people getting involved and this is a great opportunity for those who have been already, but have only been renting to start to collect a wider set of cards. A lot of people seem that they don't want to buy into anything digital, even though they likely spend thousands on other entertainment activities per year that return nothing to them. If you are going to waste time gaming, may as well make some scratch in the process.
Currently, there are a lot of people playing the new cards in the test server, but I can't get in, so I will have to wait to give them a burl next week for the first. In the meantime, I will just continue having casual conversation with the regulars to see what their plans are and of course, asking the audience. There is going to be a lot of learning going on.
And I think this is what is going to be both interesting and annoying in the coming weeks, as there are going to be a lot of excited posts over what people got in packs, how they are playing, the combinations, the prices on the secondary markets and everything else Splinterlands. It won't be to everyone's tastes for sure - but what is?
Taraz
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