Hello there.
The Splinterlands team just rolled out a new Ranked format, and that is Frontier. Frontier is the Free to Play, new player focused format in Splinterlands. The catch is that only Foundation cards are allowed in this format. If you are a new player, or a returning player and have not yet gotten your Foundation cards, you can do so by playing the Campaign; the new tutorial in Splinterlands. Just go to Play > Campaign, then choose the Book 1. Play and complete the Prologue and chapters, and you will receive Foundations cards afterwards.
After completing all available battles in Book 1, you will have all available cards that all players started with, and you can now head to the Frontier format and play. Since this is the first season of Frontier, everyone starts at 0 rating. What's good about this is that everyone started with the same cards, Experience have very little bearing early on since a lot of experienced players barely use their level 1 foundation cards. The meta has barely been decided this early on.
Some things to take note of are the Energy, and Daily rewards. Playing in Frontier uses energy, similar to Modern and Wild. For Veterans, they will remember daily rewards and will consider this a welcome return. Instead of missions like in the past version [win with dragon, or win with water, etc.], the requirement is just win games. One thing to consider though is that it takes 5 wins to claim a reward, and there are 3 rewards a day. So that would mean you need to win 15/24 games, with 24 being the energy per day. You will have some buffer since we all started at 50.
Similar to Modern and Wild, there are Leagues, Leaderboards, and Leaderboard rewards. The league only goes up to Gold. There are chests and cards up for grabs for those able to reach the top 50. As can be seen from the current leaderboard, there are some monster players with very high win condition and they are already eligible for Silver next season. I'm at 50 percent win rate, and decided to save my energy for the daily rewards. Rating streaks are active here, so those able to win a lot can easily get out of Bronze.
Looking at the leagues more in depth, we can see the rewards once the next tier is unlocked. For the first season, there is no Season reset once the new season starts. Even in the second season there is still no reset. I'm thinking they are waiting for players to reach the Gold league before implementing any resets.
Gold 2 is when the Ultimate chest can be attained via tier unlock. It is interesting to see that all Foundation chests are 50/50, with one half being potions, and the other are cards. That will mean getting Legendary cards can be difficult. They also changed how the Legendary potion also increases the chance for Epic
Apart from the Chest tier unlock, another benefit to moving up in leagues and ratings is the daily reward. Bronze 3 only gets 1 daily card, while Bronze 2 gets 2. I wasn't able to check, but it might be possible to min max by not claiming your first 3 daily rewards until you get Bronze 2. You might be able to get 6 cards instead of just 3.
I would like to note that Bronze 1 still has 2 cards in the daily reward. I think Silver is when it gets the next increase, although I am not sure about that since I'm still stuck in Bronze. I have noticed that players have higher level of Foundations cards now, and I tried selling a few of my cards and they were bought up fairly quickly. I am still waiting for Archons before I even think about leveling up my monsters.
Overall I think the Frontier format is a very nice addition to the game. It is a great gateway for new players, and they can even earn from it. For veteran players, it is more reason to play the game and increase their collection. I think for those already in Silver and in the leaderboards, it can be a form of bragging rights as well since they were able to rise to the top with all players starting from the same position/collection.
That is it for my Frontier format review. How have you been doing with your battles? I'm not doing as well as I hoped and my win rate is a little below 50 percent.
Don't hesitate to let me know what you think, and if you have suggestions for improvement. And as always, these are Not Financial Advice, and Do Your Own Research.
If you want to start playing Splinterlands, you can use my link:
Splinterlands Referral Link