Survival: My Favorite Mode
Greetings everyone and welcome to another #Splinterlands post, this week we are going to dive a bit deeper into my FAVORITE game mode in Splinterlands: Survival. Survival is a mode that has a lot more strategy outside of lineup to lineup. It moreso relies on your collection overall and less on purely a few maxxed out lineups, your fodder cards stay dead so you need to have multiples (perhaps even at lower levels for a greater strategic value if they are just going to die and recharge anyway). There are various interesting aspects to what is going on in this particular game mode, including FULL use of ALL cards. This is a "wild" mode that allows me to still use all my cards in a competitive way, it's been my go to mobile web3 time killer since it's came out. I refuse to pay to play with cards I already paid for, even if there is a chance at mathmatically coming out ahead it's a more principled take in TCG/CCG game theory. If at some point you can't play with your cards why buy them? Now there IS a reason to open packs in mass, buy mass cards, and put forth an interest in card ownership beyond "a land sink". The majority of Splinterlands players don't actually own land, and this is a mode that they can still gain value off of their older cards "sitting around" in their collection gathering dust.
Variations: Full collection v. Lineup by Lineup
Here is my rundown of the strategic differences present in this mode as oppose to normal ladder (wild/modern).
Quantity matters: How many cards you have matter in this mode, your cannon fodder stays dead, and your glass cannons stay broken. As oppose to normal ranked (where having maxxed out lineups in more beneficial), in this mode having multiple copies of cards like "furious chicken" are more beneficial than having a maxxed out copy.
Always Overprepare: There is no overkilling or overdoing it in this mode. If you can win a decisive victory with cards much more powerful than the average you go for it, as long as nothing is anticipated to actually die in your lineup. The only exceptions are....
Cutting your loses: You will come across lineups where you anticipate no chance of victory. In these cases it's advised to "bunt" the lineup with some cards you don't mind putting on cooldown.
Suggestions: Better Statistic Tracking
One aspect of this mode I currently dislike is that there is no easy menu for displaying your cards that are out of action. Available to play etc. not to mention there is no easy graphing of which lineups or cards you are encountering the most etc. Either splinterlands or one of our lovely third party developers like Peakmonsters etc. should develop something to track the happenings in survival mode easily. I know I would greatly appreciate it. It would allow for greater strategic thought without wasting time sorting through match after match.
Like a menu somewhere thereabouts would be awesome that you click on and it brings up an additional menu. It would allow for more strategic formulation of lineups and give the player greater agency to use the information they gather to improve their gameplay.
Talking Tidbits: Soulkeep?
Survival mode has given me a bit of Splinterfever and made me want to catch up on a lot of cards I've missed while I've been gone. I also want to actually take a look at soulkeep all this time later and see if it was really worth the teams effort or is sortof a flop. It might be fun is what I am hoping for. Anywho, thanks for the continued support everyone. You all rock and are what make it worth posting to HIVE in the first place. Thanks for coming by, see you in the Splinterlands battlemages.