Most people reading this will be familiar with Splinterlands, but just in case you're not: Splinterlands is a trading card game built on the $HIVE blockchain where you own all your in-game assets as NFTs, and where you battle with them against other players in a fast-paced auto-battler that has infinite replayability due to the diversity of card stats & abilities as well as the randomized rulesets that get generated for each battle. I've been playing Splinterlands since 2021 and in this article I cover the top 10 reasons why I love Splinterlands and am extremely bullish for its future growth.

If you're not playing Splinterlands yet, get in the game!

1. Gameplay is FUN

I could probably write a small novel on why the Splinterlands gameplay is fantastic. Many people think of Splinterlands as somewhat similar to other TCGs like Magic The Gathering, and in some respects the similarity is earned: it's set in a sort of medieval fantasy world and the cards you play with each have their own special stats and abilities used in battle. However, the gameplay itself is significantly different: each battle takes approximately 3-4 minutes where you & your opponent each select cards based on a randomized set of rules (which include a mana cap and up to 3 rulesets that determine how cards will behave in battle). With 46 different rulesets, there are over 16,000 different ruleset possibilities, and when you add the fact that mana caps can vary from 12 to 99, and that there are over 650 different cards to pick from, you can see why there is, in fact, infinite replayability.

The thrill I get from playing Splinterlands is actually somewhat similar to when I play Poker, for 2 essential reasons: first, the gameplay is somewhat reminiscent of Poker, in that you have to strategize based on the available information. You have to apply game theory to consider what the opponent might play, and attempt to counter it. But if they're thinking the same, you may need to go a level deeper and counter the counter. The second reason it's reminiscent of Poker is because of Splinterlands' DNA as a blockchain-based Play-to-Earn game, where each victory in the arena earns you some $SPS.

I've been playing since October 2021 and have accumulated ~35k battles in those ~850 days, which amounts to ~40 battles every day since late 2021. Yup, I love this game.

2. Awesome cards that I'm emotionally attached to

Since I started in late 2021, I joined a little bit after the game's "Untamed" set was released. The Untamed set had some INCREDIBLE summoners, namely the likes of Byzantine Kitty and Yodin Zaku, who are still some of the best cards in the game to this day. Early on, I didn't have many Untamed cards, but as I kept playing I decided that I needed to have these cards. Part of that decision was strategic (because they're awesome cards that took my collection up a few levels) but another part of it was EMOTIONAL. I absolutely love these cards. I bought plushies of the cards. I'm not entirely sure I'll ever be able to part with Kitty, but the fact that I CAN is amazing.

Another thing that's awesome, given that this is a blockchain based game where all transactions exist on-chain forever, is that I can see the history of my cards. Kitty, for example, I bought from the one & only @infidel1258 and it makes it, in my humble opinion, the best Kitty in the game 😊

Nowadays my focus has shifted to Rebellion, the latest set available in Splinterlands, and I've grown very attached to some of the new amazing cards from this set, namely Grimbardun Smith (who I love to spam, to my opponent's likely chagrin), and Mantaroth.

Splinterlands implemented a new airdrop mechanism for this latest set that involves "Conflicts", where players can stake Rebellion cards into "wagons" that fight for the Rebellion, and accumulate points that help earn them airdrop card chances. I've gone heavy into this Conflict system because I want all the airdrop cards, and am especially excited about one of the Legendary summoners that will be coming up which will be Tofu-themed, given that I was one of the top buyers in the Rebellion presale 🥳.

As you can see, I love Splinterlands. Very much.

3. Tokenomics are robust

This is another point I could write a small book about. @yabapmatt and the team have done an amazing job crafting the tokenomics for Splinterlands, and it has not always gone smoothly. Early on in the life of $SPS, an airdrop was given to $DEC holders that overinflated the price of $DEC due to its value in the airdrop. This has caused a glut of $DEC to exist, which is something we're still in the process of fixing to this day. However, the team didn't give up and instead have repeatedly finetuned and improved the tokenomics of $SPS and $DEC, leading to a system we have today which I am confident is poised to grow sustainably over time.

For those who are uninitiated in $SPS and $DEC, I have for you an article I wrote ~1 month ago covering utility for both of these in depth: https://peakd.com/hive-167922/@bravetofu/sps-dec-vouchers-card-utility-review-january-2023-splinterlands.

Besides being needed to earn more ranked rewards, the primary utility of $SPS is that you can burn it for $DEC, which is Splinterlands' marketplace currency and is an "asset-backed" stablecoin that retains its peg based on demand for in-game assets. In time, $SPS burning has become the primary source of new $DEC, and this well-engineered flywheel mechanism is one of the primary reasons I'm bullish on $SPS. $DEC, meanwhile, has a ton of in-game utility, being the primary currency used to buy & rent cards, buy packs, refill battle energy, buy points to increase card rarity chances, and more.

The Splinterlands economy is a whole game in and of itself. A lot of us gamers love min-maxing resources and grinding the "economic" aspects of games. And the Splinterlands economy is just getting started in that respect, with the Land expansion being an entire other dimension of the economy. Land is in the early innings of its life right now, but in the future it will play a central role in the Splinterlands economy.

So yeah. I love the Splinterlands economy.

4. Player community is involved, engaged, and deeply care about the game

The Splinterlands community is one of the most engaged in all of crypto. I speak of this as someone who has been in crypto for a decade, and who has been active in hundreds of Discord servers over the years. If there was a way to analyze the activity level of the Splinterlands community, I'm sure it would sit near the top. People are constantly discussing everything from gameplay to tokenomics to marketing opportunities. Due to the nature of crypto, people often have their "skin" in the game. In Splinterlands, players have their minds, bodies and souls in the game. I've made friends playing Splinterlands, have had thoughtful and intelligent conversations with other players and investors, and am constantly impressed by the caliber of people we have in this community.

To join the Splinterlands Discord, go here: https://discord.gg/7wTGQQXA

I love the Splinterlands Community.

5. 3rd party ecosystem is thriving

Splinterlands has an absolutely THRIVING ecosystem of 3rd party apps and services. In fact, it has more services built on it than some L1s. And yet this frequently goes unsung in my opinion. I wrote an article indexing many of the great marketplaces, automation services, and more here: https://peakd.com/game/@bravetofu/splinterlands-ecosystem-and-index-or-january-2024.

Some highlights from that article:
🃏 SplinterCards @splintercards (http://splintercards.com): THE source for SPL token and game information
🐉 PeakMonsters (@peakmonsters) (http://peakmonsters.com): Card market, land market, dashboards, deck builder, and more
🚉 Splex (http://splex.gg): Card market, rental automation, battle stats
🤖 Xbot (http://xbot.app): Great bot service (only to be used in Wild!), SPS rentals, and more
🧙‍♂️ Archmage (@archmage.app) (http://archmage.app): One of the OG bot services (only to be used in Wild!)
🦮 SplinterGuide (http://splinterguide.com): Card stats & tiers, provided by
@bravetofu (me!) & @hawks21
🔨 SplinterForge (@splinterforge) (http://splinterforge.io): 3rd party game, boss battles, using SPL assets
⚔️ SplinterRoyale (@splinterroyale) (http://play.splinterroyale.com): 3rd party game, a tactical battler, using SPL assets

There are tons of great 3rd party tools, but the one deserving the biggest of shoutouts is really @peakmonsters, which is an ESSENTIAL part of a heavy Splinterlands player's daily life. With its incredible card-management user experience, it makes it easy even for players with thousands of cards (like yours truly) to manage their collections.

Another EXTREMELY important game that is being built on top of Splinterlands, and which is now officially "3rd party", is the Tower Defense game Soulkeep. This game was initially built by Double Coconut with Splinterlands commissioning it, however was recently sold to DC and they will take charge of completing it and launching the game. It will use $SPS and $DEC per the initial specifications, and is set to be an integral part of Splinterlands in the future.

6. Splinterlands core team is very close to the Community

Every 2 weeks, @yabapmatt, the CEO of Splinterlands, holds a Town Hall where he talks about recent events and the evolution of the game and takes questions from the audience. The team has been doing this FOR YEARS (in fact it used to be weekly!). In Town Halls, the team goes into lots of detail on their sprint releases, discuss big decisions that often require community feedback, and cover future developments. It's always a fun watch and frankly listening to Matt is consistently inspiring.

To catch the Town Halls, check out Splinterlands on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/@SplinterlandsOfficial

The team has a history of being open, honest, and engaged with the Community. This is true of @yabapmatt as well as @aggroed, who is the previous CEO of Splinterlands and, despite no longer being in the role, continues to pour his heart into the game and its community. Other key team members like @nateaguila, investygator, farpetrad, and @cryptomancer regularly interact with the Community both on Discord and in forums like the Town Hall.

I love the Splinterlands team.

7. Card rentals great for owners & for renters

Another aspect of Splinterlands which I feel is somewhat underappreciated is the rental system.

In the 90s, I started playing Magic the Gathering and owned a bunch of cards. Some of them I loaned out to friends so they could play with them, and more than a few of my cards got more than a little messed up from those experiences.

In Splinterlands, cards can be rented out and suffer zero risk of damage since they are digital goods. I don't need to worry if the messiest player in all of Praetoria were to rent out one of my most expensive cards, because I can trust that they'll return the card undamaged at the end of the rental period.

In addition, even though I have A LOT of cards, I definitely don't have them all. Sometimes I join Gold Foil-only tournaments, and I don't have a full Gold Foil collection so I go on the market to rent out some of the cards I need.

This functionality is incredible for owners and players alike. And @peakmonsters deserves another resounding shoutout for enabling the most seamless rental experience you can in a TCG. Frankly I have tried marketplaces in many other games and there is absolutely no comparison.

I love the rental experience in Splinterlands.

8. Invenium platform is getting going

The Splinterlands company spun off an initiative called Invenium a little while back, and the idea behind this was to build a platform that enabled other games to build on top of the infrastructure that Splinterlands had built over time, allowing other developers and publishers to bootstrap web3 games with blockchain-based in-game assets and strong tokenomics without having to build them from scratch.

Invenium has two core platforms in its arsenal: Genesis League Sports (GLS) and Arcade Colony (AC). GLS launched with a soccer-based game called Genesis League Goals and, truly, has had a bit of a bumpy ride so far. The game has somewhat mixed reviews which is the main contributing factor. However, the company continues to improve the game and plans to use GLS as a platform for future sports-themed games.

The second, Arcade Colony (AC) is just in the early innings, and the first game on Arcade Colony, Moonkarts, is set to launch soon. The game is similar to Mario Karts but with web3 gaming elements, and so far the reviews seem very positive.

The idea for AC is to build a platform for all your favorite arcade games to come to life on the blockchain, and as an old-school gamer I am extremely excited about this prospect as well as what it can do to further help Splinterlands develop. In some cases, direct integrations with Splinterlands assets may be possible, but one thing that seems to be for sure is that @aggroed who is leading AC and GLS will continue to give value to Splinterlands players by airdropping assets from new games to $SPS stakers. To follow what's going on in Arcade Colony, check them out on @peakd: https://peakd.com/@arcadecolony.

I love the vision of Invenium and what it can do to bring players & value to Splinterlands.

9. Runi NFTs are 🔥

In October 2022, the Splinterlands team released Runis, their inaugural collection on #Ethereum. This is a collection of ~3500 NFTs which represent Legendary cards in-game that can be used in battle. Furthermore, Runis can be staked on Land and bring lots of benefits there. The team has consistently said that they plan to continue adding more value to Runis over time. You can check out Runis on OpenSea here: https://opensea.io/collection/runi.

I recently did an analysis of Runi here: https://peakd.com/hive-167922/@bravetofu/splinterlands-runi-analysis

I own a variety of NFTs, and primarily focus on NFT collections which have actual UTILITY (i.e. not just PFPs). Runis have incredible utility in-game, and are very cool to boot - here's my favorite one from my own collection:

I love Runi.

10. Brawls & Tournaments are highly competitive

To cap off this top 10 list, I want to go back to an aspect of gameplay which is where I started things off. Besides the arena, where you get randomly matched up against an opponent, there are two other key forms of battle gameplay available: tournaments and brawls.

Tournaments require you to pay an entry fee in SPS and have participation thresholds based on collection power and staked SPS, and often come with very attractive prizes for the winners. The competition in higher end tournaments is fierce - while I routinely get 65-70% win rates in the arena I'm probably closer to 50-60% in tournaments. These are really just getting started in my opinion, and updates to the formats are happening as we speak, but this is an aspect of Splinterlands I already very much enjoy today.

Brawls are guild vs guild fights with some slightly different mechanics and which are very fun and also highly competitive. Given you're fighting for your guild, the stakes are even higher (I don't want to let my guild down...) and the additional mechanics make these even more interesting (things like "tactics" that the guild can purchase to get an advantage in battle, and "gladiator" soulbound cards which can be used in every brawl battle).

I didn't talk much about guilds in this article, but that's another aspect of Splinterlands that has a huge amount of growth potential. It's already good enough to nurture things like brawls as well as strong "nested communities" within the game, but future improvements will likely make involvement in guilds an essential part of the game.

I love tournaments and brawls in Splinterlands.

If you've made it to the bottom of this article, thank you and I hope you found it interesting or at the very least entertaining. And in case you missed the main takeaway, here it is:

I ❤️ Splinterlands

See you in the arena!

Play Splinterlands today: https://splinterlands.com?ref=bravetofu

#alpha #bullrun

Posted Using InLeo Alpha

Posted Using InLeo Alpha