My Splinterlands Blog #173 - More Reward Changes

Welcome to another article where I write about my journey playing Splinterlands! The third Rebellion Conflict, or airdrop, has occurred for Venka The Vile, a Neutral card that seems designed to counter the highly used Grimbardun Smith deck at high level play. I got no copies, as usual, with my airdrop chances being relatively low.

The update to the Battle History and Team Creation pages has not been a smooth release. There have been a number of hot fixes to address various problems, as well as numerous fixes being in the normal update this past Tuesday. Speaking of the last patch, the big news is that staked Splintershards (SPS) is now a requirement to earn anything in the game. Previously you would earn something as long as you had cards, but this is no longer the case. It was also announced on the last Town Hall that starter cards will now only be playable in Modern format, presumably to try to incentivize new players to stick to that format - even though Wild is a much easier place to play right now.

The other big news from the last Town Hall was that the Glint reward shop was going to have set card rarity options added in this upcoming update, so you would choose if you were buying a common card or a legendary card. There were also plans announced to replace the current random card draws with something similar to the old reward chests, except that instead of SPS being in them, they will have a very small chance of having a jackpot prize, likely to be a pack or something similar with real value. The new random chests, as well as a Dark Energy Crystal (DEC) - Grain liquidity pool, and the land leaderboard titles should be released sometime in May, according to the team.

Brawls

Guild Brawl #209 playing Bronze League Gold Foil Only. The guild came in second place. I've gotten a bit bad at remembering to check these, and missed one brawl battle. Not as bad as the next brawl, where I missed recording any of the battles!

Vs. EFRZZ of THE ELITE

Vs. NARUTO05 of SKYLAR SKYRUW (missed recording this one)

Vs. VASSAL3 of TALK TO THE HAND

Vs. HEROMEEEE of SPLINTERSBANE

Vs. CHICKN0001 of IMMORTAL BEAVERS

Guild Brawl #210 playing Bronze League Gold Foil Only. The guild came in first place! However, I missed writing down any of the results, though I did write down the match-ups.

Vs. ALLREWARDTEAM of PULANG ARAW

Vs. PROMOTE.HELPER of HOLIDAYS

Vs. HIPPOGRYPH of DRAGONSPEAKER MAGES

Vs. PIOG of 1STSTRIKE

Guild Brawl #211 playing Bronze League Gold Foil Only. The guild came in first place! The guild has been doing pretty good at staying in the top few spots.

Vs. SHAKAWBR of RENEGADOS

Vs. KIDDRKYLE of BLOCKRAIDERS

Vs. NILS2D22 of THE AGED AVENGERS

Vs. RIANNFT of KNIGHT RIDERS - opponent fled

Vs. ISLANDIA of WASH-RINSE-REPEAT

Vs. CHIPPYMONKEY of THE SYNDICATE - opponent fled

I realized as I was writing this that I hadn't bought any Gladiator packs! I bought four and opened them all together:

And, got a gold foil Legendary! It was a little nicer when you could burn them for DEC, but this will still go into my Brawl deck!

The Rest

I am playing a mix of Modern and Wild this season. Both of my accounts hit Champion at one point in Wild, though I did fall back into Diamond a few times. In playing Modern, I've been able to get into Silver I with my main account - which actually had a lot of random max level Chaos Legion cards. However, my alternate account has been stuck in Bronze I.

The team has added some bots to Modern to provide opponents with lower level decks, as right now there's a large percent of the Modern players that have max level decks. At the high end of Silver, I've been running into a lot of them, whereas in Wild play decks with Bronze level cards are getting up into Diamond league. I haven't spent any Glint since the end of the last season, though I will probably get some right before the reset.

The sentiment of the player base in Discord has been a bit more hostile towards the game of late. People are upset about getting fewer chests than they used to, though that may be because they're buying higher tier chests than they used to get. Though, I do think the math works out to less draws than chest openings for most people. It probably also doesn't help that the price of SPS is near an all time low, with no new listings or the Sushiswap bond program having appeared yet.

I'm a little behind in writing this article as a mid-week update, as the season will be ending in a few days. But, it's easier to get writing done on the weekends, so there might be some delay for the end-of-season article. Anyhow, thank you for reading and I'll be back soon with that season wrap-up!