Road to CHAMPION League #2: Bronze to Gold! The Best Tips for Beginners to improve and place higher!

Thanks for the kind response to my first blog. And special shoutout to @unitqm for hooking me up with some great stuff in New Boost 9.

I bought my first card (Furious Chicken) on Nov. 16. After some grinding I managed to hit Gold yesterday! In this post I'll write about what I've learned and some tips for beginners. Next post I'll write about the economy and how hard that aspect's been for me.

Splinterlands Gameplay: Strategically Deep or Shallow?

SP gameplay is much better than other NFT games I've toured (Axie, Berserk). It also beats most mobile strategy games I've played. I do suspect it's not as strategically deep as "skill games" such as LoL, Clash Royale, and Hearthstone. There's a few reasons why I think the skillcap isn't that high. But I might eat these words one day 😜

(Side note: I have no issues with p2w and p2w makes a lot of sense for NFT games.)

1. Better cards are just better. Unlike other games (see Berserk), SP has well designed card power. The most expensive cards are usually the strongest. Some cards are so strong they win certain matchups single-handedly! People with more better cards will beat players with fewer.
2. I think for each splinter, given a ruleset, you can create a linear list of best cards. The player who creates the best "list", and owns more of them, will win.
3. Each ruleset is mirrored. Some rulesets are really restrictive. In these cases the "better cards win" effect is even stronger. These games are often unwinnable with any combination.

I have no issues with p2w and this p2w model makes a lot of sense for NFT games! Also there are a few things that I love about the design of this game that make me hopeful:

1. The diversity of ability keywords
2. The end game level cards have multiple keywords.

As the card pool expands this will lead to more and more complexity in picking the best list. Right now the lists are simple and linear. Hopefully it gets way harder.

The only cards I have an issue with are the Legendary Summoners. Their winrates are excessively high and I see top tournament decks spam them. The game will get out of control if cards are power crept like this. I only study B/S/G though so I could be wrong.

Tips on How to Improve (Bronze to Gold)

I will just write this out as a list and update this as I learn more.

1. Improve your Gameplay. Keep your eye on the different webtools popping up that help you analyze gameplay. The one I use is SplinterTools. It lets you replay every battle and swap in cards/rearrange positions. A lot of times in Bronze/Silver I realized just a few positional tweaks would get the win. As you practice more you start to understand why certain positionings (such as Sand Worm middle) are the best.

2. Ask Why. Also try to identify why you lost a game. A lot of times the ruleset will leave it as a few splinters against each other. Which one is favored and why? Which cards make the matchup favored?

3. Improving your Decks. There's a few things I'm doing here. One is going to the Events section in the game and looking at completed tournaments. If I plan to mostly play with Bronze or Silver level non-legendary cards, then Bronze Blunderbuss is a very good tournament for picking the best lineups. I write down all of the best players in the leaderboards and see the cards/decks they're using for their tournaments.

4. Watch Top Players. NFT games allow for public tracking of almost every player. So I like to take these best players on the ladder and look at their lineups on splintertools as well. Now I have a big spreadsheet basically tracking their favorite cards and comps for every splinter.

5. Study your Opponent's Last 5. There are a lot of swing cards that can unbalance a matchup. A good example is Oster or Mylor. You need to know if your opponent has these cards.

6. You need Cards to Win. Always remember that you can't win without good cards. I will write more about this in the economy post but when I first started the game I wasn't planning on using the Rent feature at all. Now I am a serial renter. If you can't buy the cards, rent them.

Referral Program and Giveaway

Will be giving away a copy of a Pelacor Bandit to a random person who Likes this post.
Join Splinterlands through my link and let's work together! Happy to share cards and strategies.