Reading the Situation, Not Relying on Brute Force

Greetings, fellow Splinterlands warriors.

I welcomed this final Brawl of January 2026 with rather mixed feelings. On one hand, I glanced at the price of HIVE, which is still holding steady around $0.09 USD per HIVE. Stability can be calming—but it can also be mildly irritating. It feels like holding gold, except the gold stubbornly refuses to go up. Oh well, let’s just pray for it—who knows, maybe one of these days the chart will suddenly skyrocket without any warning.

Now, on to the main story: the Brawl.

As usual, I was placed in Fray 12, a position that somehow has become my permanent “home.” This time, the fray was quiet—not many other guilds filled the slots. There were only 9 battle slots in total, but only 4 of them actually took place. The rest? Walkover wins. No drama, no adrenaline rush. Out of the 4 real matches, I only managed to win 2. All in all, I secured 7 victories, including 5 automatic wins. Not bad, though honestly it felt a bit bland since half of those wins came without a fight.

Overall, the performance of ClaNFT was quite commendable. Our guild managed to secure 105 victories with a total of 315 points.

We outperformed many other guilds, though we still had to acknowledge the superiority of Legendary Hatchlings, who remain above us. Still, the final result was sweet:

The guild has won spoils of 45 Crowns in the latest brawl! Also, each fully participating member was awarded 2,250 Merits and players with a spellbook were awarded 29.472 staked SPS.

On paper, these numbers look impressive, but honestly, deep down there’s still that feeling of, “Is that all?” Maybe my personal expectations were just set a bit too high.

Out of the two losses I suffered, there was one battle that truly deserves reflection. I was overly confident in a melee strategy because of the Melee Mayhem ruleset. On the front line, I deployed Skyspire Leopard, hoping its Retaliate ability would become a nightmare for my opponent. Behind it, I placed Hugo Strongsword and Disintegrator as support.

The problem was that my opponent came in with a completely different approach. They used Chanseus the Great as their Archon, complete with the Triage ability. Magic attacks became their main weapon. As a result, my troops fell one by one—not because they were weak, but because I misread the direction of the game. I was too focused on brute strength and forgot that magic is often far more cruel, since it doesn’t care about armor.

For those who are curious, the full battle can be seen here:

👉 LINK BATTLE 👈

What hurt the most wasn’t the loss itself, but the realization that I could have played smarter.

Fortunately, in other battles I was still able to control the game with cleaner strategies. One opponent even fled, so the victory came without resistance. From all these results, I ended up finishing at rank 8 among ClaNFT guild members. Not bad—but not exactly remarkable either.

As for Merits, this is the slightly disappointing part. The amount I earned is still awkwardly short—not enough to exchange for a Gladius Case. My plan is to keep collecting until I can afford 5 Gladius Cases at once, and only then open them together. That way, the thrill is complete—not half-hearted.

The biggest lesson from this Brawl is simple:
don’t put too much faith in a single strategy. Splinterlands isn’t about who is the strongest, but about who can read the situation best.

My brief advice to friends out there:
join a guild, stay active in Brawls, don’t be afraid to lose, and don’t rush to blame RNG. Sometimes it’s not the universe being cruel—we’re just not patient enough in our thinking.

Talk about Splinterlands,
If you haven't tried out this fantastic game called Splinterlands yet, I invite you to Join.
It's free, but you'll need to invest in a beginning deck or buy gaming cards to gain real assets like cards and tokens.

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If you already joined the splinterlands, and are looking for a place to grow. We need YOU. We are a chill, social guild looking for a few more active members! If you think you might be a fit, join us in our Discord