The Overpowered Kitty at play!
Introduction to the Underdog Mini-series
Grabbing Wins Here and There
This mini-series is aimed to be a fun one that will hopefully inspire players on a budget. Playing myself with mostly low-level cards in Gold, even though I have now a reliable Life Splinter, stealing wins against much stronger decks is always satisfying.
An Apple-to-Orange Comparison
My Win Rate hovers only around the 50% range, which is far from others who might be between 70% to 90%. Part of it is certainly a lack of skills for sure. That being said, I believe, we also have to take into consideration the tools each of us can rely on. In the end, the goal is to simply do our best with what we have available.
Win-Rate Going Forward
With the New Reward System coming this week, I needed to slightly tweak my approach when interacting with the game.
Before the change
Before, I wasn’t too focused on my Win Rate as I usually had a higher rating than the league I was playing in would require. Like many other players, the main thing that capped my progress was essentially Collection Power. So, the extra rating wasn’t very beneficial. I might even say that it was sometimes detrimental because it made completing my Daily Quests much harder. Furthermore, a higher rating provided me room for forcing matches to complete my Daily Quests as quickly as I could, which didn’t help my Win Rate.
After the change
Now that Reward Shares are the main thing to chase, draining too much ECR will have much more negative consequences than it used to when it comes to the overall rewards I’ll be able to unlock. With roughly 30 battles a day, I won't be able to rely on playing more (Quantity) to compensate for the lack of depth in my deck, but I'll most probably have to play a bit smarter (Quality). Therefore, relying on a few additional key rentals will be the way to go in my situation as I don't see myself suddenly spending hundreds of dollars on purchasing the most expensive cards.
The Benefits of the Accumulation Phase
During the last few months, I have been accumulating cheap Collection Power as much as I could afford. My CP went from less than 7,000 at the beginning of the year to over 77,000 today. Thanks to that, my daily rental revenue can now provide me with a comfortable DEC cushion that I can spend on renting more powerful cards to boost the quality of my deck. I enjoy seeing that consistency and long-term thinking seem to be rewarded in this game.
This should also inspire new players on a budget to start their journey with whatever they have and keep growing their assets by simply showing up every day.
An “Unfair" Advantage for Less than 10 DEC per Day
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Last week, I had to complete two Dragon Daily Quests in 3 days. Those got completed lightning-fast mostly thanks to one single card I had rented for the first time, the Byzantine Kitty. In fact, my first quest took me a total of 6 battles, while the second only 8.
I rented this Untamed Legendary Summoner for about 9 DEC the first time, and I then got one for less than 6 DEC per day. Basically, my thinking during this process was that I had to get used to those “overpowered” cards before the change in the reward system as I never had the chance to play with them.
I’ve also tried out other household names like The Scarred Llama, Kron The Undying, and the Carnage Titan. Depending on what my Daily Focus will be for the coming days, I might also test out each of all the other Untamed Legendaries, whether it be Summoners or Monsters.
This small shift in my strategy will hopefully help me maintain a better Win Rate going forward.
Below, I’ll illustrate a few of my recent battles on how an even base-level Kitty successfully overtook a much more “powerful” team on paper.
The Overpowered Kitty at play!
Battle #01: Byzantine Kitty Level 1 VS Level 5 Talia Firestorm
In this first battle, we can quickly notice a substantial difference in terms of levels between my team and the one of my opponent.
While I was mostly playing with Level 1 cards, except for Djinn Chwala and Pelacor Arbalest both at Level 2, my opponent could rely on a heavy team with cards up to Level 8!
Even though the rulesets weren’t completely advantageous to the Kitty as the Healed Out ruleset restricted the use of Tank Heal, Byzantine Kitty still ended up being hugely dominant in this battle. The +2 Speed combined with True Strike were largely enough to get the job done.
My thinking going into this battle was to put into work the Thorns of Djinn Chwala in the front as I knew that my opponent’s tank wouldn’t be allowed to heal back up. Then, even though Life monsters are generally relatively slow, the buff in Speed and True Strike completely made this shortcoming irrelevant. I didn’t have to worry about Pelacor Arbalest missing or being hit as Shieldbearer acted as a distraction for the whole team.
Rulesets: Healed Out + Lost Legendaries
Mana Cap: 52
League: Gold III
Available Splinters: Fire, Water, Earth, Life, Death, Dragon
On Mobile:
https://m.splinterlands.io/#/battle/game/process/sl_72366c58aa3bfc3e4c1925992706b247
On Desktop:
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_72366c58aa3bfc3e4c1925992706b247&ref=tt88
Splintertools (100% Win Rate):
Battle #02: Byzantine Kitty Level 1 VS Level 5 General Sloan
This was another high Mana Cap battle, which made Kitty’s 7 Mana cost easy to fit into. In Explosive Weaponry, Speed matters. By firing first, we have the opportunity to potentially deal so much damage to the opposite line that our opponent might have difficulty recovering from.
Again, the gap in terms of levels between the two lineups was meaningful. But once again, it didn’t matter much as my chances of winning this confrontation were once more 100% according to Splintertools.io.
In this battle, I went with as many Double Strike as I could to get rid of the Divine Shield as quickly as possible while also being able to start dealing some damage right from Round 1. Three of my characters had this insanely strong ability, Carnage Titan, Silvershield Assassin and Pelacor Arbalest. I’ve recently rented the first two as well, which was part of my “new” approach to this game.
Then, to make sure I had Speed on my side I added the Creeping Ooze. And finally, Truthspeaker offered an additional layer of protection to the whole team on top of the Divine Shield.
Rulesets: Explosive Weaponry + Holy Protection
Mana Cap: 46
League: Gold III
Available Splinters: Life, Dragon
On Mobile:
https://m.splinterlands.io/#/battle/game/process/sl_ce5a39bf382712748314fd79745907ac
On Desktop:
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_80f1a88c68aabb3237f1dd7cbf17cced&ref=tt88
Splintertools (100% Win-Rate):
More Battles featuring the Kitty!
Battle #03: Byzantine Kitty Level 1 VS Level 4 Tarsa
Battle #04: Byzantine Kitty Level 1 VS Level 6 Thaddius Brood
Battle #05: Byzantine Kitty Level 1 VS Level 3 Kelya Frendul
Ending with my First Thoughts on the Chaos Legion Summoners
At first glance, Grandmaster Rathe while interesting in many ways doesn’t seem to be quite as powerful as a Yodin Zaku or a Byzantine Kitty. However, while I was counting on those Summoners to considerably upgrade my deck, I can still appreciate the controlled escalation in the release of power creep summoners. And, even though I am a fairly new player without any of these Untamed Legendary Summoners, I also appreciate the fact that the team tries to maintain the value & utility of older cards because, someday, I might be the one with “older” cards in this game.
Wish you all a great day!
Thomas
For new players interested in joining this amazing game, you can support me by using the following referral link (at no extra cost to you!):
https://splinterlands.com?ref=tt88
Thank you.