Hello, everyone! This was a rollercoaster of emotions for me. In this post I want to talk about the Modern Novice tournament I just participated in.

I knew from the start that something was up as the opposition in the first round of the tournament seemed weaker than usual. One of my opponents even used foundation set cards. Imagine that! 😅

This is just speculation on my part but I think some of the players that usually occupy the top spots in these competitions received some unlucky groupings for the first round and got penalized by fighting against each others more than usual.

Could be something else too, I don't know. Regardless, my performance in the first round was much better than usual and it gave me an incredible headstart.
I achieved ten wins and only one loss, netting me 6th place at the end of the first round.

Seeing this advantage I decided to rent Tofu to be fully competitive and see how far I could push my luck.

Now that I've set the stage I'll show you my battles and thought process, enjoy!

This battle was my favorite and you can watch it here : https://splinterlands.com/battle/sm_vcXuan7OLXlqfHLO0SgD

It was a 17 mana cap battle with no special restrictions. I wasn't really sure about what my opponent would but I decided to go for this elf sinergy. Lord Thalanor is a recent addition to my collection and he's quite strong. Of course the amplify effect is ideal with Tofu but when paired with the elf summoner he gets an incredibly powerful execute attack.

I suppose a cheesy strategy but it worked quite well for me and in the moment I wasn't really sure if doing this was a mistake or not so watching the battle unfold was quite exciting.

This other battle was also interesting. Here's the link:
https://splinterlands.com/battle/sm_LgIyNwD6SU1FrYuAeNY1

This one was tricky because both me and my opponent were tempted to use Lorkus as a summoner but the low mana cap didn't make it the ideal choice. Moreover, by using Fithe Bladestone I was able to nicely counter the magic sinergy that Lorkus brings about.

It was a battle where most units died quickly but thanks to the "Close range" modifier I was able to make the most out of my resilient dwarves and win.

I think in some of these battles there's a psychological component at play in the sense that it's difficult not to use some of the strong and expensive legendary cards even if the mana cap is quite low. Using summoners such as Lorkus and Tofu here might not have been the best idea, for instance, and I'm glad I resisted the temptation.

In this next battle I was able to make use of the Tofu I was renting. Here's the link to the battle :
https://splinterlands.com/battle/sm_QEMUm1SE0ejiSc46FV8Z

The mana cap was still a little bit too low for comfort but since there was the counterspell modifier I figured I would be reasonably safe from Lorkus and most other magic strategies.

My opponent here went for this powerful strategy of giving armored strike and pierce to Commander Slade. This is one of the best frontline units, especially when magic's off the table!
However a mix of divine shield, corrosive ward and the natural beefiness provided by Tofy was enough to bring him down.

This other battle featured a lot of the same people 🤣
https://splinterlands.com/battle/sm_dh8CJkL0U0AJI6PwbLTe

This battle was a nice showcase of some other very pricy additions to my collection. Namely Venka and Mantaroth!

The big question for me here was which Tofu's effect to select. I'm not too experienced with this summoner but I have seen many people trying to stick the scavenger perk on "carry" cards such as Venka in hope that they will do a lot of work.
I guess ultimately it comes down where you predict the damage will go and in this case spreading the love around with the three divine shields was a much better choice, I think. Corrosive ward is an incredibly powerful effect too, as it goes off before the thorn damage and really does some work against melee attackers.

The main concern here was wether or not Mantaroth could survive the magic damage but thanks to the healing there were no issues!

You can watch the next battle at this link :
https://splinterlands.com/battle/sm_7sFwVQQhLoXxCtuTmRqS

The main thing here was the restriction to neutral units, making it difficult to form a proper team.
My opponent used Lorkus but didn't rely heavily enough on the magic sinergy so he was outmatched against my Tofu lineup.

https://splinterlands.com/battle/sm_ZlZIkxD8h0rJ0WVJXxD0
This other battle was difficult because of the beefcakes modifier, a significan restriction.

I debated this for a while but i decided to go for Mantaroth. I tried to assemple a few different 3-units lineups but in the end I felt more confident in this one.

I wanted to try out Bera Dalli, a dwarf, as a tank but since she has taunt she would not have been ideal here!

In the end I decided that even without the bloodline sinergy this was still a solid lineup, given the mana cap and restrictions.

It was a little bit too close for comfort because of the strong magic attacks from the orc but Mantaroth absolutely slaps. He can take a hit or two but he also, without a doubt, can pack a punch!

Of course I also lost some games, here's an example :
https://splinterlands.com/battle/sm_270LQ6zAMTm99hRdQJBi

This was another battle with the beefcake modifier 💪💪💪 Somewhat difficult to form a coherent team here in spite of the high mana cap.

I made at least a couple of obvious mistakes here. One was to use Lorkus, which doesn't grant me any benefit because of the silences summoners modifier. I guess I justified, in my mind, using him because it's one of the few summoners that allows me to use higher level cards but this being a Novice tournament completely counters that line of reasoning. With four extra mana to spare, had I not chosen Lorkus, I could have picked a more competitive lineup, too bad.

The other mistake, and this is something that has already gotten me in trouble in the past a few times, was to not respect Barashkukor. This is a very strong card and completely counters all taunt units, I should have known better even before the battle began, honestly.

The previous were all battles from the second round, but I have a couple more to share from the first one too. Here's one :
https://splinterlands.com/battle/sm_p2jOj7rP6ygFWLJb1B96

This time I got to use Oridum Graybrow. In spite of being a legendary card I don't use it too often.
It's much too weak to magic so it's quite a situational pick. Here, however, because of the "Super sneak" rule I was able to use it to its highest potential, both attacking and defending.

The opponent had a couple of magic attackers which did some damage but I managed to come out on top.
Perhaps a stroke of luck, but the forked-tongue sage was actually a very valuable unit since it took down the opponent's arachne weaver. If it had lived longer, things might have been much more complicated.

This was one of the few difficult battles from the first round :
https://splinterlands.com/battle/sm_Xu6mdqjBCAerAyTRUFyN

I honestly expected my opponent to go with Tofu or Lorkus.

Cryptic is an interesting summoner. I haven't faced him often enough so I don't have a strong opinion.

Tofu and Lorkus are naturally above him in the pecking order and even EMP is, generally, a bit better. For now I'd put Cryptic around the same level of strenght as Akane and Sheng Xiao. They're all great surprise weapons that can lead to unforeseen attacks but in general they lack the solidity that those other summoners provide.

A lot of the things Cryptic does are not too meaningful against magic attackers and it certainly was the case here so I was able to win.

Parting words

This tournament was definetely very exciting. I didn't expect to achieve this result and I don't think I'll be able to top it anytime soon.

My collection is still not complete ( and I imagine that new legendary summoners will be added soon, meaning additional expenses ) but at least now I know that I'm starting to have what it takes to compete in these tournaments.

I'm still a bit puzzled by the final scoreboard. Have a look.

It states that I should receive 196 SPS but the rules for this tournament were such that a 4th place finish should award me 295 instead. Don't know what's up with that, maybe someone can shed some light on it. But honestly I'm still too happy about the result to be upset by this little detail 🤣

---

I hope you enjoyed my battles. Let me know which was your favorite and how I can improve on this performance. What would you have done differently??

Anyway, I also made a YouTube video where I talk about my experience in this tournament. You can find it at this link right here.

Cheers 😉