Splinterlands --Day 3-- First Thoughts On The Game Itself
Hello everyone! This is a continuation of a series detailing my experiences stepping into DAPPs, Hive, and Splinterland. You can read part 1 and part 2 at my bio.
Today I spent some time actually digging into the Splinterland game itself (as opposed to the markets). Since it seems like buying packs is not a good strategy (packs average value is less than the $2), I have decided to buy some cards directly. So, the challenger is figuring out which ones to buy. To do this, I decided to play a bunch of games and see what other people are using.
I am in Bronze Tier III. Not surprisingly, I am losing far more than I am winning. And I am consistently losing to the the same cards. These are the ones that I will buy! The cards that are pissing me off the most are listed below (market price in parentheses). See a card that I've missed? Let me know in the comments!
Neutral
Furious Chicken ($0.110) - this card costs 0 mana! So even though it has only 1 health and no attack, it makes every lineup marginally better for free. I have lost a few games from the chicken being in my opponent's number 2 slot and absorbing a critical shot after their tank goes down. The chicken also acts as a magnet for the cards w/ snipe or opportunity. Basically, a free shield. There is really no downside to using it (other than in the 99 mana games where you want to max out the lineup with high value cards).
Furious Chicken
Creeping Ooze ($0.019)- similar to Furious Chicken, this card only costs 1 mana and can be slotted into the lineup when you have a spare mana left over. It acts as a shield similar to the chicken, with the added advantage of slowing my team, which can sometimes be critical.
Creeping Ooze
Goblin Mech ($0.063)- an expensive card mana-wise, but it packs a punch, and the piercing makes armor less effective. I see this card used a lot in the low-mana games, and I just can't seem to beat it with any of my tanks.
Goblin Mech
Water
Sea Monster ($0.055) - I'm having a ton of trouble with this tank. Its heal skill means that my low-level monsters just can't push through.
Sea Monster
Life
Silver Shield Knight ($0.072)- the +1 melee can make a bunch of weak cards much stronger. Seems to be strong in medium mana games where you can fill up the board with cheaper attackers, but not with expensive ones. Wasted in low mana games where you can't get enough bodies onto the board.
Silvershield Knight
Divine Healer ($0.14)- the heal makes a big difference to tank survivability, and the 1 magic attack isn't bad either.
Divine Healer
Forest
Nectar Queen ($0.017) - 4 attack and 10 health plus flying to increase survivability is brutal in a high-mana game.
Nectar Queen
Fortunately, these are all within my budget, so I picked them all up! Hopefully these cards will help me out in the arena, and allow me to get up to Bronze II.
Next posts I will tackle a few more of my unanswered questions:
Unanswered Questions
How does the leasing market work - is it actually possible to earn returns on these things, or is the amount so low as to be meaningless?
What incentive is there for anybody to buy a pack vs individual cards?
What is Steem versus Hive? What caused Hive to split from Steem? How does Hive relate/power Splinterlands?
Thanks for reading everyone!
Note - this blog post was originally published last week at PublishOx.com. There are 6 posts so far, and the series continues every Wednesday and Sunday. I will be re-publishing one post per day on LEO until I catch up w/ where I am on PublishOx (later this week). After that the posts will come out at the same time on both platforms.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Works well if you need a lot of cards and if you could buy DEC when cheap - still paying only 2000 DEC for a pack, plus you get a chance at the below.
UNTAMED AIRDROPS
There are a total of 14 special Airdrop characters that will be unlocked throughout the Untamed sales event.
Only after a character is unlocked can it be obtained via card packs. For every 100,000 Untamed packs sold, another character is unlocked. When a character is unlocked, all players who have previously purchased a pack receive a random distribution of the new character. Buying more packs will increase your chance of obtaining cards from the Airdrop. There is no guarantee that buying packs will result in receiving bonus cards, however buying more as early as possible will increase the number of opportunities to be rewarded.
difference of opinions :)
Interesting...regarding the airdrops, if I were to buy a pack directly from Splinterlands, tokenize it, and then sell it on the HIVE-ENGINE market would I still be eligible for the airdrop, even though I no longer own/never opened the pack? Or would the person who bought it be eligible? Or neither?
yes you would. people buying off of hive engine are not eligible.
edit: same if you send to another player - the one buying from splinterlands gets the airdrop
On the getting returns from leasing cards out. If you play for several years and you accumulate 1000s of cards like many Magic the gathering players do then the answer is yes you can totally make decent money. If you spend $1000 and go buy the best cards in the game right now the answer is yes you can make money. Now can you make your money back and is it a good investment??? No one knows and if they tell you otherwise they are lying to you.
Yup...will be interesting to see how things play out over the next year or so. It seems like the devs have a lot of new features planned.