My Hardest season ever!

One of my best Twitter accounts is Splinterlands. It keeps me informed about all the important news in the ecosystem and #Hive posting events like a media challenge. In my opinion, those challenges are an incredible way of increasing the pride of being part of this community, as every player shares his/her game experience with others, allowing others to learn about everyone's successes and mistakes. For this one, I bring a summary of my last season where I found some difficulties reaching Champion. My first objective for 2023. I will analyze the rewards I got vs rental investment and finally, I will share a couple of great battles. Hope you like it!

Season Balance

Reaching Diamond is getting a little bit expensive every single new season. Got to rent about 350KCP with some MVPs like Doctor Scale, Dragon Jumper (paid 500 DEC/day!!), Adelade goes high also... I usually focus on the main blue, with strong Death / Life, renting also Void Dragon, Doctor Scale, Chaos Dragon, and Dragon Jumper with Quix. Total around 3K Dec daily and I play 10 of 14 days of the season for ECR recharging. Also, I've had to manage a little bit of initial frustration being dropped to gold. Since a couple of seasons ago, I've got the feeling that Champion is not affordable for my position because this 30k DEC represents much more money than the rewards I get:

This is not about getting soulbound cards (I've kept every single card I have been rewarded). This is about a couple of frustration points I would like to share:

1. I have received several Champion chests containing barely a couple of SPS on them. It feels frustrating and you think to yourself, it's kinda an opportunity wasted. And what's even worse, Diamond chests are rewarded by a similar amount of SPS in the mean. In my opinion, figures should not be of the same order in regular SPS openings.
2. Similar feeling with cards, it's difficult to plan when will I get a max lvl legendary as I've had not any single drop in 61 Champion chests. And taking a look at some Gold / Diamond chest pulls with Golden foil legendaries hurts.

So, I've reached a point where I have to decide if I continue spending that much money to stay in champion. Today I am on a 50% continue / 50% drop to a lower league. In the picture that follows I will share 4 wishes I would like to come true for my journey in #Splinterlands:

Since a couple of weeks ago I am regularly checking @nfty-arcade for a Max-level Chaos Legion (Riftwatchers would be also welcome!!) scholarship. There's an absolute lack of these decks and an enormous waitlist. I've seen some decks of incredible whales like @timewalk or @brokebloke with a nice player split. I would like to take the opportunity to any potential lender that is reading this post to explain my candidacy short. I love this game and I manage to reach champion optimizing rental budget. I am sure that I would break my marks just having the access to a whole collection. I would like a long-term scholar so both parties would take benefit from it. I also play tier 3 brawls hoping to jump to tier 4 soon and tournaments. So if you are my lender, please reach out!

Everyone should know that a Champion chest is opened just by its content. Feels frustrating reaching the end of the season and opening stuff that it's not worth a champion chest. There are multiple ways of boosting these chests, maybe guaranteeing a nice pull for every 10th opening for example. But please, stop sending 1 SPS for a Champion chest. There are around 3$ in rentals per day to get them.

I am against bots. Bots are hurting the game of its structure. First of all, if they come from multiple accounts, they are planned to extract value from the ecosystem, pushing the SPS price down. And if they are played from the main account it's the dead of the game. I mean, Splinterlands should be attractive enough for players to prefer always to play instead of a machine that does the job. There are tons of alternatives for holidays like rentals. Also, we would know where we are in the real number of human players. Splinterlands will be older when it has 1 million active players, not 1 million bots.

Finally a battle pass would also be very welcome first of all as a B plan to force bots to a minimal investment to the ecosystem before extracting value. Also developing skins or other assets from other games' battle passes would be interesting

All these four points represent are exposed humbly. I just wanted to share with you how difficult has become for a rental player to reach champion in terms of investment vs rewards. I will rest a couple of days to load up my ECR and we see in the Arena for the 106th season!

Show me the battles! - River Nymph + Anti magic CL dragon wombo combo team

Let's jump into battles because this is the part that I like most. I fell in love with Splinterlands thanks to how easy is to learn its basics and how difficult is to master. This game is about details and understanding that the slightest change in a battle formation can make a difference. The main reason I enjoy playing champion is that I am fighting against the greatest and I learn from them. For this case, I faced a 36 mana, Magic only with a cripple. Both formations filled the board as follows:

• My opponent chose a strong front of anti-magic formed by Void Dragon + Djinn Oshannus - jumped into Venari Spellsmith and River Nymph. Placed River Hellondale for a resurrect and Dr. Blight at the end of his army.
• My choice was a bit different, except for the main tank. Then came Nerissa for a second (I have not forgotten how many victories has Nerissa brought to my side only because she is too beefy with 5 Magic damage. Then came Chaos Legion, who has astonishing dynamics with Void Dragon, allowing him increased evading. And finally the MVP of the fight: River Nymph. If Chaos Legion made his work taking casualties thanks to scatter, there was a moment close to the end of the match when I thought that everything was lost. Then came River nymphs cleanse- Cleanse is an OP ability, especially fighting vs Doctor Blight, removing its Afflicion, Poison... and weakening! granting a +1 health to tank that can be the difference between the hell and the glory. You can watch the battle here!

Show me the battles! - Epic win vs Kitty

For my second and last one, I bring my best battle of the season. It was a top Diamond one. I felt a bit frustrated because reaching Champion was resulting very difficult. Found tons of 'perfect armies ruled by perfect bots'. This situation added to the 3 ruleset changes has forced me to rent 150KCP more than I used to, to adapt to all kinds of situations. And then come to those accounts with Yodins and Kitties. This is a real story of a 26 mana - magical armor - no neutral battle where my Lux told Kitty: not today. Both formations filled the board as follows:

• Every time I face a Kitty I know that I am in trouble. This +2 Speed, True strike, and Heal on the tank transform every single battle into a nightmare. But Lux has her tools also. Maybe more basic but that +1 Armor can make the difference (slowing enemy plans vs yours), and this +1 Health it's not a joke. My friend was 5 health vs opponent's only 3.
• While my opponent chose Kelp Initiate and Ice Pixie (fantastic cards played in the right battle conditions), I chose the Merdaali-Angelic wombo combo team. I do love this couple of guyz. They work fantastically together. While Merdaali brings Healing and Repair with +1 Health, Angelic Silences enemies and brings Triage. In this kind of battle, both end supporting back with Repair and Triage.
• Finally, Pelacor was my MVP damage dealer. Finding unarmored opponents it's his best preference. Also, Deeplurker made a fantastic complementary performance while debuffing the enemy's attacks. You can watch the battle here! As you can see, CL cards played properly can beat Untamed!

So thank you for reading this post. I hope you are as expectant as me for the next season! We see you in the Arena!

THANKS FOR REACHING OUT HERE!

Hive - Splinterlands is a great ecosystem to grow in the Crypto world, we are in the best community and we play a game with a solid project and a great future. The only thing we've got to do is believe in the project and fight hard in the arena! Thanks for reading and feel free to share your thoughts.

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