It got real

https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_551ecdc1302fb73783c39f8e3f154357&ref=andy-plays

I wasn‘t expecting it to happen. Actually I was lurking in some streams as I was looking to get together some DEC to rent some good cards for the brawl and getting up to Silver 1 or 2.
And then this happened. Since my opponent got Llama + Flesh Golem and Kron, the last thing I expected was to win this game.

I was really surprised that at round 6 only two of my monsters have died! This made it possible to finally beat that combination for real and for good! It took me another four rounds and I had an unfortunate miss. But Kron could "only" heal for six HP, while I could deal up to 10 damage to him. And he was only able to do three damage to my Torhilo, which was healed for two each round. So yes, it is possible to beat Llama + Flesh Golem + Kron - and Torhilo + Djinn Oshannus is a good combination to do it:

My first merits

Today another brawl finished and our guild got to the second place! Since our store is at level 3, we are eligible for merits – which got me my first merits in the game! A whopping 1,562 merits for winning for of my brawl matches.

So I am only short 438 merits of my first ever Gladius Case! I hope to be able and allowed to participate in the next brawl as well – so I could open my first pack. Ever.

I also learned a valuable lesson: Don’t rent to early in brawls! Usually I don’t care too much if my rentals are canceled, but I didn’t know, that if a card you rented is getting canceled you auto flee in the brawl. I don’t know if I could’ve won that particular fight, if I didn’t flee since my opponent had more than 10x my power and probably a lot of higher level cards, but at least I would’ve had the chance. So either play with cards, that are not rented or rent very late, so that even if the rent gets canceled it won’t matter. Or rent with people, that don’t cancel rents.

Leveling cards

So far most of the time I am playing with level 1 cards. This is mainly due to the reason, that I don’t have leveled up summoners. I have some leveled up monsters though, but they get reduced to level 1 since my summoners are to low. Until recently I didn’t mind, since with the right monsters and tactics it still was possible to win a lot of battles and get enough rewards. But slowly but steadily I am getting to a point in the game, where it is inevitable to level cards up, if I want to climb up the ranks and keep winning. Recently I had a very low win rate, and I think this was also partly due to my monsters all being level 1, while my opponents are often fighting with leveled up monsters and summoners.
It is still possible to win games, even with lower level monsters, but it is getting more difficult. As long as my opponents are only level 2 or 3, I would think that it is possible and with good skill even likely, that I can win more, than I loose. But the closer I get to the Silver 1 and Gold 3 MMR rating, the more I see leveled up opponents.

https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_fde6c1af1ec683c2100ea350aec20db9&ref=andy-plays

In games like this one, it is pretty hard to win. I also didn't choose the right monsters and possible would've done better, if I would've chosen life as well or water, although I wasn't able to use my "top" line up, because of Odd Ones Out allowing me only to use monsters with odd mana cost.
This is also only one of many examples, but it was a really good one, since in this game all of his monsters have been leveled up for a decent amount.

Reducing my rent outs

I recently reduced my rented out cards. This is mainly due to the reason, that I didn't get any big delegations and therefore need to rent a lot for power. Although some of my rented out monster do have a bigger return, than some of the monsters I rented, I wanted to reduce my dependency on other people - and also I am thinking of combining some of my cards.

Since I didn't get Silver daily rewards for quite some days and only received one loot box most of the time, I really want to stay at Silver level power all the time. My own power is not sufficient so far, and recently I didn't get a lot of good new cards. But I will try to accumulate more cards with time.

SPS and liquidity pools

I sold my vouchers, and probably will continue to do so. After getting my first - and so far only - CL pack, I am getting SPS for the vouchers or accumulating swap.hive to use it later. I also sold some of my other tokens to stock up swap.hive.

Right now I am sitting on ~116 SPS, which are all staked. Most of the "new" additions are from selling other assets, to gain more SPS. As long as the vouchers are dropping and are high in price, I think it is a good idea to stake a lot of SPS to get more and more vouchers, which can be sold again. 0,025 vouchers a day, might not be much, but it is still some good money I can use to invest in other assets.

I also put some money into diesel pools. I am not sure, if it's worth it, since the amounts are very small, put actually my main objective was to get more airdrop points and put my other assets to good use. So far I didn't even get rewards for it. I am also not sure, if this is the best decision having a financial viewpoint. It is more an experiment and me trying out some things. Usually, what I heard is, that it isn't too good to use volatile currencies because of impermanent loss.

Special thanks

Thanks to @skyn for the Venari Bonesmith and @aftersound for the DEC. Also thanks to @infidel1258, @cryptollamatv, @bulldog1205, @oldmanqt and @wtp-gaming for their great YouTube videos on tactics and best buy practices. I still need to learn a lot, but it surely helps!

Cheers, andy-plays