I started playing this game on January 7th, 2022 and it's been an amazing experience so far. I've been a gamer all my life and a huge passion of mine is to always be the best I can at whatever game I'm playing.
Normally, I struggle with the idea that gaming is mostly a waste of time. It's fun of course and entertaining but at the end of the day, I'd be better off practicing my Japanese, learning to code or even working in the garden which produces food and saves on the grocery bill. They would all be better uses of my time.
Splinterlands has changed that mindset for me. For the first time, I feel like being me, and doing what I do best, might actually be the best use of my time. The more I learn about this game, the more time I spend on it, the more rewarding it seems to be and that's how it should be.
I've spent money on other games like Empires and Puzzles and AFK Arena and the same thing always happens. I burn out on them and regret that I'll never get any of that money back. This is why I think play2earn gaming has so much room to grow. Even if I quit right now I could liquidate all my assets for a profit and move on to something else.
Of course I have no intention of doing that anytime soon but it's nice to know I always could.
I still have a long way to go. Winning 80 SPS is nice but it's only the beginning.
I need bigger and better cards so I can compete in the higher stakes tournaments. They pay out way more but require a significantly larger investment in cards and staked SPS to enter, let alone be competitive.
So the plan is to basically reinvest whatever I win in tournaments and what I earn through blogging to continually grow my card collection and work my way up. If you'd like to support me and my Splinterlands dream I'd love a like / follow and I'll do my best to keep you entertained! ❤️
As for the tournament, its Novice League, No legendaries which is good for me as I only have 2 legendary cards in these sets.
I'm pretty familiar with the Chaos Legion set as most of the cards I own are from there and I've been practicing with Untamed cards in the quick match modern tournaments. What's nice about Novice is that I can use the cards from the starter set we all have and rentals for level 1's are pretty cheap. Since we have all the commons and rares in the starter set and Legendaries aren't allowed, we only need to look at the Epics.
Mitica Headhunter and Beatrix Ironhand are very good cards from Untamed that give the Earth team a wider range of strategies other than just spam as much magic as you can with Obsidian. The Unicorn Mustang is a very commonly used tank in such lineups and with the Void ability it's very strong against magic so by subbing in these two high damage ranged attackers you often come out ahead.
I would definitely like to own War Chaang as it's one of the few cards I've ever seen with both ranged and melee attack and as a neutral card you can use it with any splinter so it's always an option. Really strong in the rulesets where all monsters have Sneak, Opportunity, or Melee Mayhem.
Hero of Beyond and Thunderbird are really nice cards with General Sloan and improve the Life splinter a ton. Hero of Beyond has the close range ability and acts as a secondary tank while Thunderbird is 3 mana, archery damage, with decent speed, health, and flying.
Normally Death falls off at anything over 30 mana and also lacks a good reach monster for the second position. The Gorlodon solves both of those problems. Soulstorm on the other hand is just a nice monster. 3 Damage, 5 speed, and Flying is a good deal for 5 mana, though you have to be careful with only 2 HP.
The Water epics from Untamed aren't my favorite but with only two sets in play they will still give you a bit of advantage. Lobstradamus in particular is really good in the blast ruleset in the second position because it's shield ability will usually block the blast damage when the tank in front gets hit.
Now, let's take a look at some of the games from the second round since that's where it starts to get exciting.
Perfect example of why I recommended War Chaang in the rental section, what a beast! It ended up being a pretty close game, I'm glad Grund was able to solo the last two enemies.
After this game I was in 5th place. I had two battles left and wasn't totally sure what was going to happen but I needed at least 1 win to break into the top 3. I thought my opponents might flee as time was winding down and they still hadn't entered their teams but they got them in at the last second!
Low mana battles like this seem easy but they can actually be pretty tricky.
My go strategy is usually The Forgotten One with his Immunity ability but he's 9 mana and Tarsa's 4 so with 12 mana it doesn't work. My clock is ticking down, it's under a minute now and I don't like any of the lineups I'm making.
Calm down, think, you got this... and then it hit me, play Pyre for 3 mana and it fits! 3 seconds left on the clock, hit submit, PHEW! Another win.
Now I'm up to 2nd place with 1 game left, if I win that it's mathematically impossible for me to not get 1st so I'm starting to get pretty hyped and a little nervous even though I have nothing to lose!
As soon as I see the lineups I know I'm going to win first place. We have a strong sneak monster in Silent Sha-Vi that can hit his backline archer and we have the thorns tank and ranged damage to take down the Mustang.
What a crazy day. I had high hopes going in but to actually beat 88 other players, to actually do it was such a cool feeling. Thank you for all the support this community has given me, it's honestly the best community I've ever been a part of and I hope to bring you more awesome recaps.
What should I do with my Tournament Winnings? Save for War Chaang? Buy a couple Chaos Legion Packs? Swap the SPS to DEC or Stake it since I need more long term anyway for the higher tournaments? So many things I need still that I'm always torn about what's best!
Oh and if anyone was wondering, Thoogen is my alt account I'll be using for tournaments going forward.
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Cya next time!