What am I most excited about for the upcoming Conclave Arcana release? Lots of stuff! First, let me just bring it down and say that I am not that excited about my CL deck rotating out of modern. It has served me well, and I have some cards I have grown very fond of, and I'm sad to see them go. In all likelyhood, the CL deck will continue to live on my alt account in Wild, provided it can still make a little bit of profit there.
But onto the exciting stuff. Conclave Arcana will bring an entire new system into the game: Bloodlines. This means that cards will be playable across elements, provided that they match the summoner bloodline. We had this teaser in the official Conclave Arcana announcement post:
Here we can see that there will initially at least be five different summoner with bloodline synergies. The fire summoner will play Dwarves, water will have orcs (hello venka...), earth has elves, life has hippos (could it not have been elephants? Close enough I guess), and Death will have gnomes. Depending on what the bloodline bonuses are, this mechanic can change up a lot of what we currently know about typical elemental strategies.
Fantastic UI changes!
The crisp new looks coming into the Splinterlands site look absolutely great. I believe this is an important step in making the game appear to new users. If they enter the site and everything looks sharp, modern, crisp, fresh, ... whatever other fitting words, I think there is a much better chance that they stay and spend some time in the Splinterlands universe.
Next up, the card art we have seen looks abolutely amazing. One example is the Legendary water card that was teased in the Splinterlands discord server. This one has a black foil, which I think looks awesome. I cant wait to see this one on the battle field. There is also an Arcane Foil, which features extra special effects. I cant wait to see how that one looks in battle either.
Bella looks like she's tuned to give Eternal Tofu a hard time. Its going to be interesting to see if she and the Ulund bloodline are going to be up for the task. It's certainly no easy feat, even if she can naturally deal with the Thorns. Tofu has to rely more on his Scavenger-Triage synergy to handle the hippos, but that is already one of the go-to setups along with Olivia. Time will tell how the spiky cat can cope with the thick hippo skin.
My CA plan
I have not quite locked in my strategy, but I'm currently acquiring more SPS. I plan to swap it back to DEC at some point so that I can participate in the presale. Those presale rewards look pretty sweet and I want to get my hands on some of those.
Depending on how much funds I am able to prepare for the CA release, I will try to build a deck probably either for Gold or Diamond. I already have some maxed Rebellion summoners, and it feels pretty wasteful for me to downgrade to Silver or Bronze because of that. I got my Tofu for a fraction of the current cost, luckily. I could of course sell them, and buy the appropriate levels, but I have a real hard time letting go of my cards. The general situation in the finance world will also matter a bit for me. Paying mortgage sucks.
We have several pack purchase options to think about too. Starter packs, Legendary packs, Alchemy packs, or just the Standard Packs? So many options. Depending on whether you are buying for financial opportunities, deck building or card collection, there will be a different strategy that is the best. I'm happy that they have made the starter packs, I think that is a great way to allow small-budget players to participate. Maybe those will make up the bulk of the sales for Silver and Bronze leagues?
Guilds, soon?
We have heard a bit of teasing and seem some community feedback probing about changes to guilds. I know it will not be a part of the initial release, but I hope it will follow not so long after it (this year hopefully). Guilds were the main reason I committed to this game, and I hope it will receive the same fantastic upgrades as the main game has seen lately. Guilds are also very important in the new player experience - Royaleagle has stated that the player retention stats are crystal clear on this point.
Final words
I hope you are also excited about the upcoming Conclave Arcana release in Splinterlands!
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Best wishes
@Kalkulus