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What is power?

Really three ways I’d say you can judge power in Splinterlands. There’s the simple number that’s your decks power or your league placement. Though these don’t really account for things like land or your guild. And the last is your earning power, which largely comes down to how much sps you have staked. More SPS means more rewards after winning. More rewards means more reward cards or potions bought. Which helps increase your deck power.

A few things I found really helped me build up my power in Splinterlands was understanding the strategy. One of the lines in the tutorials is that Splinterlands is an easy game to learn but a hard game to master and it’s true. And its why the game is so fun. With every match having a new rule set and different splinters active there is no one perfect card combo. There’s also so much nuance in understanding how rule sets and abilities interact. For example, this page from the rules wiki goes in depth into how targeting abilities like stealth and rule sets like equal opportunity interact. With a good understanding of the rules, even with a not very powerful deck I managed to earn enough to get reward cards that made my deck stronger. Then with blogging and earning through freecash I have bought quite a few cards as well.

Most of us are not whales with thousands of dollars worth of DEC to toss around. For this reason it’s important to get the biggest bang for your DEC when it comes time to decide how to spend your precious funds. There’s two options for getting new cards, purchasing them off the secondary market or purchsing packs. Personally, I find the best bang for your buck is purchasing cards directly from monster market. (Monster Market gives Dec back from each purchase which is nice)

How to decide what cards though. There are so many cards even if you are only playing modern. If your playing wild it’s even more. I ask what gap does the card fill? Does it help in a particular rule set or make an existing play stronger? Keeping track of what matches I tend to lose or what splinters I tend to lose with when it’s limited to one or two splinters has guided my purchases quite a bit.

I have also briefly rented cards to see if they were as good as I thought. While this can feel like a waste since you don't keep anything in the long run it does make it easier to save up for those more expensive cards when you know it's awesome.

There also came a time where I realized that for the most part new cards weren’t going to help. I needed to upgrade my deck so I could play higher level cards. Which is expensive as that means upgrading archons. I picked three.

Kaylia because I’d gotten quite a few of her and elves when I purchased packs during the Conclave Arcana pre-sale. I also have a lot of elves. Elise Max Purit because he’s awesome and also covers two splinters, and Sheng Xiao because the dragon splinter is super versatile and I wanted to use my night reaper to their full potential.

With these archons at a higher level I could level up cards are get more abilities and better stats like Commander Slade and Night Reaper both getting deflection shield. Or Ariel shield maiden getting armoured strike. These abilities give a huge edge and having them has absolutely helped me get from bronze to silver. It also means reward cards are stronger as the rare ones can get up to level four which can mean some pretty sweet abilities, or attack going from 2 to 3.

Theres also a lot of potential growth

Seriously level four Commander Slade is a badass.

I will also say that talking to fellow splinterlands players has helped me decide which cards to purchase as well. A huge shout out to @nozem1 and @cheeroke4life for their help on this journey. Their advice along with reading splinterlands blog posts and helped me get better at this fantastic game. From understanding the importance of speed, understanding turn order or realizing that waiting a few days to buy a promo card means getting a better price on secondary they've helped me a lot. So read those blog posts, interact with players, and pay attention to when you lose.

A great deal of my deck is rewards cards. By increasing how much sps I staked i directly increase my glint earning per win. I also get some from being in an active guild. (GO NFG) We've gotten better over time, with our win record I've been gaining quite a bit of sps from that along with making purchases from blog or free cash rewards.

Have fun. Experiment with wacky combos that might just turn out to be really effective. Be the reason someone goes "Why would they do that?" and then realize it's because it's shockingly effective.

Final note

Freecash is a website that I've used to earn a fair bit of cash just by playing phone games. If your interested here's my referral link. We both get a bit of easy money if you use it. https://freecash.com/r/EQBBR

Thank you for reading, and please comment! This is socail media after all!