Splinterlands is
A. A trading card game. You may be familiar with other TCGs like Magic the Gathering, Yugioh or Pokémon. I used to play a lot of MTG, I would read articles and think about Magic every day. Splinterlands has supplanted Magic in that part of my life.
B. B play2earn game. You may be familiar with other play2earn games too, like Axie Infinity or The Sandbox. I’m not going to pretend that I’m an expert on those games, but it seems to me that Splinterlands has supplanted Axie as the premier game in the play2earn space.
Getting started
It’s free to try out the game. My biggest advice would be to take your time. Set up an account and play a few matches, try the tutorial. You can always go back and try the tutorial again if something isn’t clicking. The game is complex, so learn about it in various places. PeakD has great material, but most of the folks who know how to access PeakD are already familiar with the game. When I was first starting out on Splinterlands, I went through quite a few YouTube videos. Some of the content creators are better than others. My favorites are probably Aftersound, Hawks21, Infidel1258 and Bulldog1205. The big trouble that I have with the content these guys put out is that they’re whales compared to the minnow that I am. They’ve also been playing for years. I think Aftersound started around the same time I did 2 years ago, so most of us are well removed from being new players. When I was new it was more helpful to review some beginner stuff. You could check out some of the older videos from Luke or Ashley, but some of the strategy in those videos is a little dated. There are probably newer Splinterlands streamers, but I haven't encountered them yet.
Here's links for most of the Youtube channels I talked about. I couldn't find Ashley's
https://www.youtube.com/@Luke_Jech
https://www.youtube.com/@AfterSoundGaming
https://www.youtube.com/@DwayneCunningham
https://www.youtube.com/@Hawks21
https://www.youtube.com/@Bulldog1205
Here are some of their handles on PeakD and in the game
@macfillet @aftersound @hawks21 @bulldog1205
Strategy Tips
Find a niche for yourself. There are plenty of ways to win matches. Some of the summoners will offer a buff to some type of attack like General Sloan or Obsidian. For these types of summoners I like to have a big tank in the front of my lineup with some tank heal to support it. If you’re busy supporting your tank it sometimes becomes easy to take out your back line with a handful of sneak or opportunity attackers. Maybe that will be where you excel. Try both modern and wild format. Wild format has a much larger card pool which includes a lot of cards that you won’t have access to until you buy or rent some. While that may seem intimidating for someone new I think it’s been easier to win in wild recently. I haven’t played modern since Rebellion was released, so feel free to take that advice with a grain of salt. You’re welcome to rent out the cards that I have in my secondary account. With these cards I do well in bronze league wild format. I could probably take it into silver league, but I don’t have enough SPS staked in that account for silver league to be practical. You can rent cards and SPS before buying. I would recommend sticking to bronze league for a while before you venture into silver league.
You can look up anyone's card collection as well as see what they're renting or delegating or having delegated to them with peakmonsters.com
Here's my secondary account https://peakmonsters.com/@submo/cards
and my main account https://peakmonsters.com/@jingo-submo/cards
You can check out anyone's card collection on here like the handles I listed earlier
https://peakmonsters.com/@macfillet/cards
https://peakmonsters.com/@aftersound/cards
https://peakmonsters.com/@hawks21/cards
https://peakmonsters.com/@bulldog1205/cards
I think it's helpful for keeping track of what my own cards are worth. You can see that if you want to duplicate what I have in my bronze account it would only cost a little over $40 to outright buy the cards I'm using. Pair that with about $10 worth of SPS and you should be off to a great start.
Community welcome
Unlike my days playing Magic the Gathering I don’t get to meet people in a card shop and play against people in person. With everything online, I also don’t have to go to a card shop to play. There are other ways to interact with others playing the game. Feel free to leave a comment on any of my PeakD posts. Most of the YouTube content creators also seem to be responsive to comments.
My early experience
I was focused on the play to earn aspects of the game when I started out. You may see some YouTube videos talking about earning such and such return on investment. You’ll probably find that the percentages are higher for smaller capital investments, so don’t quit your day job. It was the same when I started playing MTG. I was excited about the value of the cards. When I found that the cards I cracked open weren’t worth as much as I hoped, I learned the game and found that building decks to play was more fun than flipping cards anyways.
Take your time and enjoy the ride. Don’t take it too seriously, if you want ROI you’ll do much better creating your own content.
I hope this post has been helpful and informative. Thanks for reading and thanks for all the upvotes, reblogs, comments and follows. I'll see you in the game. If you're interested in starting your own Splinterlands adventure feel free to use my affiliate link to get started https://splinterlands.com?ref=jingo-submo PeakD is a terrific site for learning more about the game and the market.
Also here's another post I made that's geared to new players with some screenshots that may be helpful if you're trying to set up a new account.
@jingo-submo/tips-and-tricks-for-the-new-splinterlands-player