NOTE: This is a cross-post from my blog on Publish0X

Yeah, that happens. A lot. But do NOT get discouraged. I have literally lost track of the battles I have not won since I started playing. (Actually, I can keep track of my lost battles - but I'd rather not). I would try, try, and try again to earn some DEC (and thereby increasing my stake of the daily SPS airdrop) by winning Ranked Battles until my Capture Rate was in the 60-something percent range. So, what DEC I did earn wasn't much - or not as much as it could have been.

And then I realized I had been doing it wrong all along.

Practice, Practice and Practice Some More

The answer was right there all along. The Practice battle mode. Yeah, you don't earn any DEC for victories, but you DO learn how to better utilize your cards. And you don't burn any precious Capture Rate percent points, either. And this next piece of advice is critical.

Focus on two summoners (Splinters) and get good with them before moving on to others.

In addition to the two that you focus on, make sure you have a good third one as a back-up to focus on, too. But not as much as the main two you are focusing on. This method allows you to get better acquainted with the abilities and how the cards work. It also allows you to focus your card-buying or card-renting power on just two or three splinters rather than buying or renting cards that are all over the splinter spectrum. Once you have settled on two splinters to focus on - PRACTICE.

I am just now learning to take my own advice on this. My Capture Power was greatly suffering one evening as I was trying to earn some DEC, but I didn't want to stop playing so I started practicing. Slowly, my understanding of the abilities that splinters give the monsters started to improve. For example: The Malric Inferno splinter gives monsters with melee attack a boost of plus one.

So, it makes sense to pick monsters that have a melee attack so that that stat is increased. I know this may seem obvious, but to new players like myself who have never really played card battle games it took me a while to catch on to even the basics. The other big factor is where you place your cards in the line-up. I'm still trying to figure this out and I will get back to you at some point with some tips on that.

One More Thing...
Mana. Mana is SO important. In case you're new and don't know how this works, I'll give you a brief rundown. (Practice mode also helps greatly with learning how to utilize the mana you're given to work with).

Mana is how much "card energy" you can spend in a battle. It shows up here on the screen after a battle is found:

In this example, I can only spend 30 mana on my monster cards. The mana of a monster card is found in the upper left corner of the card:
So, just pick your cards and don't let them add up to more than 30 (in this example) and you're good to go! Of course, paying attention to what abilities (if any) your splinter gives the monster cards, where you place the cards in your line-up, etc, etc, etc.

There's a lot to learn but, as I've said before, it's FUN! Also, if you happen to be waiting for Capture Points to build back up to an acceptable level, or want to just do something other than battle to earn DEC - I'll go over that in the next blog. I'm not very well-versed on that topic yet, but I know enough to share with some beginner players.

If you haven't signed up for Splinterlands yet and all of this sounds intriguing to you, or you just want to explore the world of NFT-based, play-to-earn gaming, give Splinterlands a try here. It's a blast and it's the future of gaming.