Welcome to another article where I write about my journey playing Splinterlands! This is the last season before the next big reward changes happen, though the exact details of the new reward system haven't been shared publicly yet. It was stated on the last Town Hall that a post would be made before April 2nd, when the new reward season goes live at the end of this season.
Other items of note that were mentioned is that Gladiator cards will no longer be able to be burnt for Dark Energy Crystals (DEC), but will instead give more Merits (which can be used to get Gladiator packs). Since DEC is a currency that can be sold outside the system, a lot of people have been burning their Gladiator cards prior to the next update. Chests will also be going away, replaced with a new currency, Glint, that you get for winning battles and that can be spent to buy specific things like a random account-bound card, potions, or Merits.
Since this is the last season with chests, I've mainly been playing in Wild since I already was in higher leagues in that format. It won't be quite as bad to switch to Modern when you aren't trying to fill up a bar for a specific tier of chest, but instead are just getting points for playing. I haven't burned any of my Gladiator cards yet, though I can see the temptation to do so. I might see if there are any that I have never played, and nuke those for more DEC.
The 2nd Rebellion Conflict just ended, which airdropped the new legendary Dragon unit, Kei, to those who got staked a lot of Rebellion cards and packs, or got lucky. It took 250 "chances" to get a guaranteed card, but I only have enough staked to end up with about 70. Long story short, I did not get lucky and get one.
I did open up another Rebellion pack:
While there were no Keis in here either, this was a ridiculously good pack. I got an epic, a gold foil common, and gold foil rare. Anarchron Bolter is a great card and will definitely see some use in my gold foil Brawl deck.
Brawls
Guild Brawl #203 playing Bronze League Gold Foil Only. The guild came in 1st place! Can't really do better than that, and nice to see us move up. Granted, the change that when a guild doesn't fill a spot, your opponents get a win, might have something to do with it.
Vs. QUEENOFMONSTERS of MERCENARIES
Vs. MAYAN34 of SPLINTER-LEDGES
Vs. NAIVE-PANDS of CLAN PHOENIX CHERAW TRIBE
Vs. CHEESEEATINGED of SCORPIONS
Vs. VASSAL4 of TALK TO THE HAND
Guild Brawl #204 playing Bronze League Gold Foil Only. The guild came in 1st place again! The 6 guilds that didn't field gold foil Bronze teams meant that I actually picked up 6 more wins for free.
Vs. ALLREWARDTEAM of PULANG ARAW
Vs. UNLEASHPOWER of TEAM POSSIBLE PHALANX
I opened a few Gladiator packs after our good results this past week:
Nothing too crazy in any of these packs. The extra rare card in the first two is always nice, but no gold foils for my actual brawl deck.
The Rest
While Modern is reportedly seeing issues with a lack of mid-tier players, Wild is full of bots playing mediocre decks. The general feeling is that a lot of the players in Modern have, or are renting, max level cards. This means that with the summoner level limits by league removed, players are running into opponents with max level cards at all tiers of play.
I personally have not been playing in Modern much, but some players have been very vocal in Discord about their issues finding what they consider fair opponents. This may just be an issue of when they play versus when other people are online, but the suggestion has typically been to try playing in Wild. With all of the bot decks providing easier opponents, my main deck is in Diamond II and my formerly Silver alternate account is now in Diamond III in Wild.
I'm running into a lot of opponents with level 4 summoners in Diamond in Wild, which is what my alternate account has. My main account has more higher level cards, and while I got into Diamond much earlier in the season I spent most of the first half in Diamond III. The Splintershards (SPS) per battle are much better in Modern, but I'd rather try to finish out my reward card collection.
This is going to be an extra long season, as it has been extended to end on April 2nd so that the reward update can be applied immediately after the end of the season. It was already announced that the next Town Hall was cancelled, due to Matt being unavailable. But, hopefully we'll get the post detailing the reward system changes soon.
One last item of note, there was an announcement that the mobile app version of the game was going to officially be deprecated. It's been poorly updated over the past couple of years since it was released, and apparently the team is planning on just pushing people to use the web-site on their phones. It's not a great experience from when I've tried it, but it's workable in case of emergencies.
Anyhow, that's about it for this week! Thank you for reading! If you have any question or comments let me know below, and I'll be back in April with a season wrap up!