This was the prize pool:

In these tournaments, each person plays X games in a 24 hours period. The top 40% advances to the next phase, which works exactly the same in the next 24 hours period. That means you only need enough time to submit all teams, twice, in two days!

I decided to try a Gold level tournament for the first time. I own a Kelya Frendul level 4, but I still don't have the Water Splinter maxed for Silver. The rest of the Splinters are even weaker, so I rented the summoners and several cards for Fire, Earth and Death Splinters. I spent over 500 DEC in these rentals. That is way more than I have ever spent at once! There were 306 players participating, meaning 50 people would be leaving without a prize!

I have a bunch of leveled up cards against all level 1 cards, so it's a very easy win.

In Equalizer rule set, having 2 more monsters than my opponent is a big advantage. Dr. Blight was also very powerful with the poison.

It was a close game, but Cursed Windeku really hurt my team. Healing plus thorns on the same card is very strong.

As soon as I lost the speed tie on the Goblin Psychic, the game was over for me. I checked https://splintertools.io/ and I had about 25% to win this one so, even if I won this speed tie, I wasn't on a 100% win. If I had a level 3 Dr. Blight and used it instead of Queen Mycelia, the odds would invert.

Even though I countered their summoner with mine, Legionnaire Alvar was super strong. On that of that, them having level 3 Dr. Blight and Queen Mycelia was more than I could handle. I don't think I could have beaten them with a Death team, and my Earth team was less leveled than theirs.

A perfect rule set for Riftwing and Dr. Blight, which they had, and I didn't. I would have to get really lucky by always hitting my attacks and dodging Affliction and Poison a bunch of times.

Even though my summoner had the advantage for these rule sets, Carnage Titan and Desert Dragon proved to be much stronger than anything I could present without the Dragons.

This was my biggest mistake of the tournament. There were probably better options than Xenith Monk in the Healed Out rule set, but, even putting him on the third position would likely be enough to win me the game. Terrible play on my part to lose to someone who had several cards at a lower level.

This time I took advantage of my higher levels. Having Grund was also very good, as 8 damage per turn is hard to beat.

When I saw their team and lower level, I expected an easy win. However, Blind from Flying Squid made me miss several attacks and the Stun from Igor was brutal, especially combined with the Knock Out. I was destroyed and could only kill their Fiend. I felt I was on the receiving end of this:

A 4-7, including a flee, is a pretty weak result and not enough to advance to day 2. It was enough to get back the entry fee though, so it could have been worse.

The first lesson is that I need to pay more attention to the rule sets. I've done this before. I do see the rule sets and start building my team according to them. However, if I'm having some doubts or difficulties coming up with a good team, I focus too much on the cards themselves and forget the rule sets. I hope I can avoid this mistake, especially for tournaments where the stakes are higher than just a random ranked match. However, I don't think it would have been enough for a day 2 and/or top128 for the better prize. So, in the end, I don't think I was punished for my mistake.

The most important lesson is that I feel I'm still not prepared for Gold level tournaments. I am used to playing with and against Silver level cards and below. I know what the cards do at those levels, possible good combinations, and what to expect. However, for Gold level, I'm clearly not prepared. I think match 11 was the one that showed this the most. On top of that, I spent over 500 DEC renting all the cards I did and that was only for 3 splinters, with several good cards (either neutral or on those splinters) still missing. It might just be better to go all out and spend 1000 or even 1500 DEC to have most things. I don't really think have 6 splinters is needed, but maybe having Dragon plus 3 others and having almost everything is too important. Water might also be too powerful not to have as one of the choices. The only reason I didn't rent Water is that it's my strongest splinter on owned cards, so I figured I could use it, if necessary.

I made a mistake that's not really related to playing the game. With my rented cards, I had enough power for Gold 3, so I advanced. I took advantage of this for 2 Daily Quests, so it was nice getting those 4 extra chests and a bit more DEC from ranked battles. Was it worth it, though? The downside of advancing is that I lost the ability of playing in many tournaments. All bronze level tournaments became too expensive, and even Silver level tournaments with just Chaos Legion also became too expensive. I haven't played any more tournaments this season, because of that. So, as long as the cards I own are Silver level, I do not intend to advance to Gold, temporarily, just for some extra rewards, and lose the ability to play in several tournaments. Even worse for me, this was one of the longer seasons, so I have been stuck without tournaments for a long time! I can't wait for the new season, so I can get back to them!