Playing a Gold Foil Tournament!

Hello, Splinterlands Friends and Family! 👋🔥

For this week's Splinterlands Social Media Challenge, I've decided to do something a bit different than usual. This time, I'll showcase the experience of playing in a Gold Foil tournament. 🎮🏆

The goal of this post isn’t to serve as a guide but rather to give you a glimpse into the GF tournament scene in Splinterlands. I'll discuss the account, the competition, how tournaments work in general, and finally, I'll showcase a fight!

Let's get started! 🚀

Why Gold Foil Tournaments?

There's no particular reason I chose a Gold Foil Tournament for this post. I could have chosen any tournament, as they all work similarly. What makes GF tournaments a bit special are the unique prizes and the fact that you can only play with GF cards. 🏆🎟️

But that's not all. Another aspect I really enjoy about GF tournaments is that the competition tends to be thin, and most players (myself included) don't have a complete—or even a "big"—collection. It's fun to engage in tournaments this way because you never know what you'll encounter on the other side, and even when you face whales with tons of cards, the victory feels that much sweeter if you manage to defeat them. 🤩🔥

My GF Tournament Account

Needless to say, to play GF tournaments you need a dedicated GF account. This isn't easy to achieve, and in all honesty, the account I use for these tournaments isn't mine at all. I simply drive it and share the rewards with the owner. I'm sort of a scholar, but only for tournaments; I don't use this account for ranked or brawls. 🎓💼

The account in question is @logantron. If you're a GF player, you've probably seen him around. This account was built for silver-level tournaments, meaning I can only play successfully at bronze and silver levels. The value of the account is quite high. As you can see in the image, it's worth around 16k. So, building or renting a GF account is definitely not cheap. 💰

The Tournament

Next, let's review the tournament I participated in this time:

The tournament is called "Poseidar Wild Silver Invitational GF." I have no idea what "poseidar" means, but the rest is pretty self-descriptive. This is a wild tournament where every card can be used, and it's capped at the silver level. 🏆

As a side note, I believe league caps are a really good idea—without them, tournaments couldn't even exist.

Entering this tournament cost me 400 DEC and yielded some SPS as rewards. Since every tournament now requires a DEC entry fee, I often need to sell SPS to cover these fees. But that's all good. I almost always come out ahead. 💰

Overall, the tournament gives out around $200, though participants only receive a fraction of that.

My Results

First of all, congratulations to @bubke, @thebadwitch, and @housewifeftw for claiming 1st to 3rd place! I hope those accounts aren’t all driven by the same person, lol. 😆

Personally, I did quite well considering the competition. I managed to secure a solid 10th place and earned 792.220 SPS in rewards, that’s a bit more than $5 for a single tournament! While it's not a huge sum per se it eventually adds up; the prize structure is decent and this is just one tournament. I usually play several every week, and these steady rewards help me build my card collection. 💪

As you probably know, these anytime tournaments span two days of fights. During the classification phase, you play against 10 or 11 opponents, and generally, you need 6 or more wins to advance to the next round. I managed to win 8 out of 11 fights, an average record, but enough to move on. I also secured 2 forfeits in my favor, though one was against an opponent I usually handle well, so it's no biggie. 🎯

On the second day—the Final Round—I did a bit worse, which was expected given the tougher competition. I won 5 out of 8 fights, which is still a decent result, especially considering I faced the champion @bubke (always a formidable opponent). 🏆

As mentioned earlier, I ended up in 10th place, though it was more like a shared 8th place since players in spots 8 through 12 all had the same score. In such cases, all players with identical scores share the rewards, with the total rewards being divided among them.

That’s why, even though the rewards for the 9th-16th spots are 720 SPS, I received a bit more since I shared some of the rewards from the 5th-8th bracket.

The Fight

Lastly, let's review one of the fights from the second day that I found quite interesting:

🔗 Battle Link

This fight was against @zawarrior and featured a Valnamor vs. Valnamor mirror match. Mirror matches are particularly interesting, especially in situations like this where not many players have a GF Valnamor. Let's take a closer look at the rulesets and lineups.

🏆 Match Preparation

⚔️ The Ruleset

For this match, we have a 55 mana cap and 3 rulesets:

Ferocity:
All units gain the Fury ability. I found it interesting that for this particular match, under the Ferocity ruleset, I chose to start my team with a unit with Taunt (The Kraken). After watching the fight, you might consider that a mistake, but I really like the combination of The Kraken with Valnamor, so I stuck with it. ⚔️🔥 Was that a mistake? Lets review that when reviewing the fight itself!

Need for Speed:
This ruleset restricts you to summoning only units with 3 or more speed. While it doesn't directly impact the fight, it does affect the card pool from which you can choose your units. ⚡

Super Sneak:
All melee units gain the Sneak ability. This ruleset played a significant role in the fight. I believe it contributed to my enemy's loss. Since Super Sneak was active, I decided to throw my opponent a curveball by not picking a single unit that could benefit from it. My opponent chose Giant Alpine Skink as a back tanker, expecting it to absorb some sneak damage. That plan backfired since I was not dealing any Sneak damage at all. 🤫

🛡️ The Lineups

Opponent's Lineup

Summoner	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th

My opponent ran a strong Valnamor team, except for the Giant Alpine Skink in the back. Honestly, I always find that dividing your damage isn't a great strategy. In my experience, it's better to hit hard and fast in either the front or the back, rather than trying to cover both simultaneously. ⚔️

My Team

Summoner	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th

I opted for a stronger-hitting team overall, especially with Ruler of the Seas. Ruler is a fantastic card for Valnamor, and it surprises me that my opponent didn't choose it. Once again, this is a GF tournament—so not every player has every card. I also picked a taunter as a tank, which might have been a mistake this time, but it probably helped me hold my backline a bit longer. 💪

The teams are set! It's time to see the battle in action! 🎬🔥

Turn 1:

One of the first things that happened in this fight was my tank taking 8 damage from the enemy Ruler of the Abbys. Then, the enemy Djinn Oshannus hit my tank for 6 damage. Even though my Anasth Soothsayer managed to heal my tank for 5 life, after a few more hits, my tank was doomed.
Honestly, this was the consequence of choosing a tank with Taunt in a match where the Ferocity ruleset is active—definitely not a good idea on my part. By the end of Turn 1, only one unit fell, and it was from my team. Things were not looking good. 😟

Turn 2:

Turn 2 was where the tide turned. With all my damage focused on the frontline, I managed to kill the enemy tank Djinn Oshannus. The enemy Giant Alpine Skink missed its hit on my backline, allowing my healer to survive. This was probably the breaking point for the fight; had that unit been able to kill my Anasth Soothsayer, I would likely have lost the match.
It's important to note that my main tank was Djinn Oshannus, equipped with Void and a high speed. Add a healer to that mix, and you have a pretty strong magic-damage tank on the frontline, while the enemy only had a Prismatic Energy unit that reflected some damage but lacked real Void protection. ⚡

Turn 3:

By the end of Turn 3, the outcome of the fight became clear. The enemy Giant Alpine Skink managed to kill my Anasth Soothsayer, but in the meantime, I had killed the enemy Prismatic Energy and the enemy Anasth Soothsayer—leaving the enemy team completely exposed while my Djinn Oshannus remained alive, still tanking hits.
At this point, the fight was effectively over. Even if the enemy Giant Alpine Skink landed another hit on my backline, since it deals 3 damage and my next backline unit has 4 life, it wouldn’t be enough. Moreover, the enemy's frontline units only have 3 and 6 life respectively, making a comeback nearly impossible. 🚀

I think this fight highlights two very important points:

Don't ignore any ruleset like Ferocity in the game (my mistake here).
In Splinterlands, it's almost always better to focus your damage on either the frontline or the backline. Dividing your damage might leave you with neither enough to kill the frontline nor the backline, as demonstrated in this match. 💡

image by @javiss.gif

Final Conclusion

GF tournaments and tournaments in general in Splinterlands offer a unique and thrilling competitive experience that pushes you to constantly adapt and refine your strategy. From managing a dedicated GF tournament account to assembling a versatile team under varying rulesets, every match presents its own set of challenges and learning opportunities. The Poseidar Wild Silver Invitational GF tournament showcased not only the excitement of high-stakes battles but also the critical importance of smart team composition, timing, and tactical execution.

This tournament was a solid experience, and while I didn’t place at the top, finishing in 10th place with 792.220 SPS in rewards is still a decent result. The tournament structure, with two days of intense battles, proved once again how crucial it is to adapt to the competition and make strategic choices at every step.

During the classification phase, I secured 8 wins out of 11 matches, which was enough to move forward, despite a few losses and some fortunate fled wins. The final round was tougher, as expected, and while I managed 5 wins out of 8, facing strong opponents like @bubke was a reminder of how challenging these tournaments can be.

Analyzing my mirror match against @zawarrior, I realized how ignoring the Ferocity ruleset hurt my strategy, as my taunt tank got shredded early. However, my focused damage approach and luck eventually turned the fight in my favor, proving that hitting hard in one area is often better than spreading damage.

Overall, this tournament reinforced a few key lessons:

Pay attention to every ruleset, ignoring them can be costly.
Focused damage is usually better than splitting attacks.
Luck is key. Not every match will go as planned, but sometimes you just get lucky enough to get that W.

Tournaments like these may not make you rich overnight, but they provide consistent rewards, help improve your skills, and allow you to reinvest in your collection. Looking forward to the next challenge! 🔥🏆

Also if you want to check out my latest post you can by clicking the images: