Is it actually easier to win battles in SILVER than in BRONZE? How my first month playing Splinterlands went.

My husband got into Axie Infinity and he was really excitedly telling me about blockchain gaming for about a week until I finally decided to check it out myself. I did some research on Play-to-earn games and Splinterlands was said to be one of the best ones out there. I created an account, bought my spellbook the very same day and I started playing.

I like games with simple rules and though in the beginning it seemed complicated, after a few hours I got the hang of the game... more or less.
At first it was a struggle to even get out of the Novice league but in no time I found myself in Bronze. Well, Bronze turned out to be quite a challenge.

I started noticing the presence of bots and I realised that more often than not, I wasn't playing against actual humans. This post is not about the controversy around bots but their presence is worth mentioning, being a part of my journey playing Splinterlands. Bots were quite annoying but after battling with them for a while I could see their strategy patterns and learn to deal with them, most of the time.

Meanwhile, I have been making some purchases on the market and some of them weren't very smart. To the new players, here is a list of cards I bought that actually proved to be useful:

Brighton Bloom
Centauri Mage
Delwyn Dragonscale lvl3
Demented Shark lvl3
Kelp Initiate
Mylor Crowling
Nectar Queen
Nightmare lvl3
Owster Rotwell
Prismatic Energy
Sand Worm
Sea Monster lvl3
Wood Nymph

I also wanted to try my luck opening some Untamed Packs. I know, they are so expensive now and most of the time not worth the price. Still, I bought 2 packs and I had so much fun opening them. There was nothing really special inside but I had some money left in my wallet, so I thought, what the hell, let's try one last time. I bought the third pack and I drew a gold foil legendary summoner Lir Deepswimmer!

You can imagine my excitement when I checked the card's current price on the market and when I found out that I was now able to advance to Silver.

I decided not to advance because for some reason, I was afraid. I thought that in Silver I would get smashed by the other players and would never be able to win any battles, so I stayed in Bronze.

Well, in Bronze I managed to get to 1800 something rank and that was the highest I achieved. I rented some powerful cards to test them out in battle, such as Scarred Llama Mage or Kron the Undying. For some reason I was still loosing a lot of battles and I felt like I was going nowhere.

Finally, since it started to get boring and the season is ending anyway, I pushed the button and found myself instantly thrown into Silver 2. I was a bit afraid to start a battle but when I finally did, it was my victory. And then another one and another. I managed to almost get to 2000 in a few battles!

I suspect this has to do with a few things:

1. The mana cap is higher in Silver than in Bronze, so you can use more of your powerful cards.
2. There are less bots in Silver and you can play with humans who actually make mistakes.
3. There are more rules which makes it impossible to rely on just one or two super-powerful cards.

So this is my experience and my thoughts after playing Splinterlands for a month!
I hope it's useful to some beginning players. Enjoy the game!