Hello! I've been away from Splinterlands, and Hive in general, for a couple of months now.
Lots of external stimuli and pressure.. but now I'm back to devoting some time and energy to these exciting projects!

Without league caps in place ranked games feel like as dull a chore as ever, nothing much changed there. I've gotten back into knocking out some battles throughout the day and the Splinterlands app has been a big help with that, I have to say.

Perhaps in the future I will buy some new cards and summoners to bolster my collection but for now I'm still doing quite well with Lorkus as my only owned moder legendary summoner.

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In this post I'd like to share my experience in a recent tournament in the Wild Bronze format, which is the only real occasion for me to use my legacy cards from Chaos Legion.

Let's take a look at some of the coolest moments!

The promising first round

This low mana battle was quite easy to plan out. I think if the ruleset allows for it Tarsa can be very strong in these low mana scrambles, "scaling" the units up very effectively.

I had meat shields at the front and at the back here and thanks to the Gobalano soldier and the surly drunk I managed to chip away at the backline faster than the opponent could funnel damage into my frontline. Easy win! 😉

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In this one the summoners made the difference again and the units sealed the deal!

A classic case of the amazing Lorkus summoner carrying me, no surprises there.

In the frontline we had a showoff between two legacy behemots, the cursed windeku and the drybone barbarian. Funnily, we both fielded bloodlust cards but for very different reasons.

The corrupted healing effect might very well be one of the strongest in the game right now making the death splinter.. indeed, very deadly ☠️

The cursed windeku was on the brink of death but after being healed it traded itself for the barbarian. Between this great synergy with the cheap tank and the healer, the thorns and the blast taking away the divine shields, the incredible buff from Lorkus.. the compound advantage was just too big and I secured the win. We both went for some big units but I think mine made more sense here.

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This other battle here was a 99 mana showdown!

I don't really think I fielded the best team possible here but luckily it was still good enough to grant me the win.

I opted not to use Lorkus because of the magic reflect effect and I didn't like various legacy legendary summoners I had available so I chose Kaylia Silverleaf.. odd choice in hindsight since the buffs she grants are not very meaningful in this context.

I was drawn to the elf synergy and wasted a spot on my team for the silverleaf ranger but thankfully she managed to at least attack with a nice volley before being taken out.

Thankfully I had enough damage to get ahead. I'm particularly happy with the choice of Runemancer Florre, which did some great damage in spite of the magic reflect.

In a parallel universe this could have been a loss for me and I should have spent more time figuring out my lineup, though.

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This was one of my few losses in this first round 😅

The placement of my units was a bit funky this time but ultimately I don't think it would have mattered either way. My opponent correctly spotted this cheeky strategy with Llama and Cornealus, enabled by the close range ruleset. There was no way to take down that big, angry eyeball before it would decimate my team. Not sure what team woudl be best to take this on, even if I saw it coming.

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The rest of the battles weren't too interesting and I headed into the second round with the exciting prospect of some nice rewards, having placed in the 10th spot with a 9-2 score and one opponent fleeing the match.

The real point of contention for me there was how to manage my collection at that point.

I knew the second round would be much tougher and I would need all the help I could get but if I rented way too many cards it would eat into my winnings so.. where does the perfect balance lie??

These are the cards that I ended up renting to go along with my collection for the second round.
What do you guys think?? See anything important missing?

I ended up spending over 1000 DEC for rentals of legacy cards and then some more for Tofu and a few other key modern cards.

The chaotic second round

Here's some of my results from the second part of the tournament.

This one was a relatively simple win with Alric as a summoner. The opponent went for this EMP strategy, giving armored strike and piercing to the deadly Isgal Vorst hoping it would scale.

The battle quickly devolved into a scramble between some very powerful units.
Thanks to a well timed blast ricochet from my gladiator card and a nice dodge by phantom of the abyss I ended up in a great position and sealead the deal!

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In this other one here we were forced to play with magic units by the ruleset.

The affliction effect from Lorkus was a nice counter to my healing strategy but by the time the oaken behemoth got to the front my advantage was already clear and thanks to the various magic mitigations in place I was able to win.

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This battle was sadly a loss for me but the ruleset looked promising.

There might have been some better choices for me here but it was tough to decide. There was no way to stop that enraged Grund before he provoked some casualties in my ranks. Ultimately these wild battles are very unpredictable when so many splinters are available to be picked.

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I also suffered some losses against Yodin! It's a formidable summoner and I neglected it because it was very costly to rent. But more importantly I forgot to take it into account when choosing my lineups. The priority is usually to counter magic first but ranged attackers should have been in the back of my mind too in these wild battles when the fire splinter is available.

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Luckily two of my opponents didn't submit teams in time for this second round and I finished the tournament with a 13-7 overall score, netting me a 23rd place finish and 121 liquid SPS as a reward for my performance 😁
That should cover at the very least the rentals for my wild cards and I should be able to turn a decent profit if I do well enough in the other upcoming tournaments for this season.

Thanks to @sps.dao for organizing these awesome competitive tournaments. It's the only game mode that I truly enjoy and for me it justifies being involved with the game, owning cards and other assets.

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I made a Youtube video where I go over my favorite battle of the bunch and open a few gladius packs too! You can find it at this link. Until the next time 😉