Hi guys,
I want to talk about strategies for building your collection, longterm Splinterlands plans and maximizing rewards.
Brief Introduction
I started playing Splinterlands in September of 2021 and invested a couple of thousand dollars over the past year. In the beginning I only put in enough to get the 15k Collection Power required to play in Silver, because Bronze wasn't very lucrative at that time. In January 2022, when Chaos Legion released I saw the opportunity to get some competitive decks and bought a maxed out Water, Death and Dragon deck for Silver league. As I progressed and got more rewards from both playing the game and blogging on here, I slowly build up my collection until I also had a pretty much maxed out Silver league Life and Earth deck. I've since been playing in Silver league, usually cruising through it until I hit top 100 where I can't compete anymore, because I don't have the Untamed and Diced cards. I also used to play tournaments regularly and usually finished somewhere between top 20 and 50, getting some SPS.
Longterm Plan
My longterm plan was to slowly but steadily max out Chaos Legion for Silver and stack and stake SPS, so that when Dice and Untamed rotate out of modern some time in the future I would be one of the "OG's" who has a completely maxed out collection.
Three problems with that plan:
- As the legendary Chaos Legion summoners are releasing I quickly realized that I wouldn't be able to afford all of them in time before the next Set would release
- Same with Riftwatchers, I just don't get enough out of the game to max Riftwatchers without putting in additional capital
- I'm not "good enough" to compete at the highest level. Even though I have strong cards I'm just not as much into the game and its strategy as some of the top players, so competing for the leaderboard or tournament wins is kind of utopian.
This made me think about what I gain from maxing out Chaos Legion and becoming an "OG" and I realized that it's not the best way to maximize returns and hopefully profits in the future, because let's be real: Splinterlands is really fun and I enjoy playing it, but I do want to make money with it sometime in the future.
Because of that I thought about alternative ways to allocate my capital and quickly came to the solution that I don't need maxed out decks, but instead need 2-3 decks I can compete as high up in ranked as possible to get better daily rewards.
New Plans
The new plan therefore is simple: I want to specify my collection to have 2-3 decks competitive for Gold league. The team has been incentivizing players to move up in leagues over and over again and Silver is just no longer the best spot to be in from a cost to reward perspective.
That's why I'm currently selling part of my collection and started purchasing water and life cards to level up for Gold. When I'm currently playing in Silver I often find my self having too much to chose from and going for some fun decks and not necessarily the best one. I think it's better to be highly competitive with 2-3 splinters and winning more games when those are available, than having all the options but not knowing the best strategies. I've competed in Silver with only 2-3 decks in the past and got very good rewards, so I think I'll be able to do the same in Gold.
Also, after a year of playing in Silver and things getting kind of stale, the thought of playing in Gold and having new abilities on cards and new strategies excites me a lot.
Tournaments
One potential downside of having a few specified decks, instead of a broader collection, are tournaments. You just need all the option to really be competitive in those However! The team is introducing a new format called "Ghost card tournaments" where you don't play with your own collection, but can chose from every card in the game. Not only is this a great idea to make tournaments more competitive and not farming grounds for players who have maxed out collections, but it also makes maxing out a collection obsolete in my opinion.
SPS
This brings me to my last point. SPS. Instead of reinvesting my returns from playing and blogging into cards, slowly maxing out my collection, I'll most likely will be putting those returns into SPS, because I think SPS is the future of Splinterlands.
Sure, you'll always want to have a decent collection to play the game and get rewards, but with all the new games the team is developing and probably more to come in the future, all using SPS and giving some sort of returns to SPS holders, I think SPS will be the most important asset in the Splinterlands ecosystem. Therefore I want to get as much as possible of it and just hodl it.
Even with prices being down etc. etc., if you just stake it, you get a 30% APR, which is pretty decent in my opinion.
There's always things like Nodes and Land which might be more fruitful than just staking your SPS, but those are out of my price range.
Conclusion
TL;DR
I'm selling some of my maxed out Silver decks to level up my other decks for Gold to move up and compete there
Instead of trying to max out an entire set for a certain league I think it's better to get a few decks as high up the ranks as possible
I'll no longer reinvest my returns into maxing out my collection, but rather reinvesting them into SPS
One potential downside of selling my decks is possibly losing money due to market fees and DEC price volatility, but I'm using bids and watching the price to make up for that as much as possible
Disclaimer
None of this is financial advice. These tips are for educational purposes only and might all fall out of date as both Splinterlands and the Crypto Market in general are subject to constant change.
Referrals
Thanks to Carrie Allen for the amazing Markdown Tutorial Hope you enjoyed the read. Have a great day and until next time! Pinkmank45
and to Chris Roberts for this Thumbnail Tutorial
Background Thumbnail image is from Pexels
Free image editing software used Canva
Check out my 5 tips for new players series: Part I, Part II, Part III
Check out my Bronze league strategy guides: Part I, Part II