My Return to Bloggin (at least for now)

Hello everyone, I'm back~ (not like y'all know or follow me much 🤣)
But I am back to talk about the recent news and updates in Splinterlands which sparked quite a few debates in the community.
Some of these points were brought up to me by my friend @relf87, so please do check his blog as he posts often (NOT LIKE ME).

I will be talking about the following topics in this blog and do let me know your thoughts and opinions:
1. Land Potions
2. End of Tradeable Rewards in Chests
3. Soulbound Rewards (What I'm looking at for Silver League)

You can follow me at @qxacexp for future posts and you are interested to join / play splinterlands feel free to use my referral code: qxACExp. 😁
|| Your comments, follows and upvotes are very much appreciated ||

1. Land Potions

The Splinterlands Team recently proposed the burning of DEC / DECB to increase the rarity rate of Land Plots when surveying.
I would like to first mention that I am one of those that oppose this proposal, allow me to explain.

Photo from Splinterlands Townhall 30/01

• I do not like the fact that Land Owners are penalized for not burning DEC / DECB for the potions
  You can say that it is optional like for packs, but it actually isn't the same... You see alpha packs can't use potions as they were not released beforehand and players have already bought the packs. This is exactly the same as we players have bought out the land from the shop and now it feels like our deeds are downgraded if we do not pay this "Bonus".
• Land on its own will be a big Card & DEC sink
• This burn will only be beneficial to non-land owners
• The introduction of DECB is good enough
  The use of DECB for guild and land buildings are good ideas and I'm all for it as it helps boost the DEC value temporally while the team builds and releases Land.

I would like to point out that there are some ideas that the community introduced that would be so much more interesting such as a Starter kit or a Settler Kit to bring more utility and kickstart and build up your land quickly. (These ideas are from @kira1995 and @genepoolchlrn8r)

2. The end of Tradeable Rewards

A few weeks back, the Splinterlands Team announced the new release of Soulbound reward cards and stop printing the previous set of reward cards. This has affected the prices of quite a number of the reward cards that were released recently as their print rates were really low... Especially the Legendaries such as Jared Scarred, Countess Sinash, and Venator Kinjo!

I have of course bought some cards using the DEC Splex helped increase my overall rental potential to bring my cards to Max Gold Levels!

3. Soulbound Rewards

The new additions of new reward cards were awesome as they brought in new skills broadening the range of gameplay and strategy one could have! (Especially since they added a third ruleset 😆)

Such new skills included:
- Conscript: A summoner ability allowing you to summon Gladius Cards (Strong cards limited to guild battles with the incredible Bloodlust Ability).
- Weapons Training: Providing the adjacent cards with the half of the attack it has.
- Martyr: Upon death, provides a +1 boost in stats to the adjacent cards.

My thoughts:
While the cards are exceptional and fun to collect/grind, I do not really enjoy the idea of them being soulbound as it removed one of the most interesting and attractive features of Splinterlands, which is to be able to sell and buy cards of value whenever the players liked.
It seemed like the team is looking to make the game more and more like web2 games, as this new change looks like a setback from P2E.

Otherwise:
The new cards are exceptionally fun! Especially with the new implementation of Potions in chests it allowed me to grab so many epics and legendaries in 2 days!
My new personal favourite card in this new reward set is the Venari Marksrat!
It is such an easy card to obtain and its also easy to activate his Martyr Ability with its low health! Allow me to show you some gameplays!

Venari Marksrat Demo:

Battle 1:

Ruleset: Silenced Summoners and Earthquake
Making full use of the Earthquake damage to buff me backrows to deal more damage

Battle 2:

Ruleset: Fire & Regret and Close Range
Making full use of return fire to activate self-destruct to buff my other cards while dealing some chip damage.
In this battle, it allowed me to remove Lorna Shine's Divine Shield which wasn't planned (HAPPY MIRACLE)

Thanks For Reading! See You Soon (Hopefully)