Hi, everyone. Welcome to my post. In the Social Media Challenge, I will discuss anything about SPLINTERLANDS, it can be about cards, abilities, rulesets, battle reviews, End of Season results, or my playing experience.

in this post, I will share my unexpected (new?) experience in the MODERN League. What happened and what should be done will be discussed below...

NO MORE BOTS = BATTLING AGAINTS REAL PLAYERS

This has been discussed many times, in MODERN League, the use of BOTS and Battle Helpers is prohibited. So the opponents we face in each battle are real players. And the chance for us to win against fellow players is no more than 50%. However, if we fight against a "smarter and more experienced" player OR a player who has a "complete card collection" OR a player who "dares to spend money to rent the cards needed", our chance of winning may be lower than 45% (we can still depend on our luck).

In accordance with the title of this post ("It will be much easier if Battling in a Higher League "), when BOTS was first abolished in the MODERN League (Around July 2023), I was in the GOLD League and I struggled a bit when facing each opponent (real players). But I started to adapt and was able to survive in the GOLD League as time went on.

That (fighting in the GOLD League) could only last until last season. Since I failed to finish in GOLD II, this season (October 2023) I started at RATING 1750 (SILVER I).

SILVER League battle experience

Since this was my first season back in the SILVER League, on the first day I tried to raise my RATING to return to the GOLD League (RATING 1900). But I miscalculated. The opponents I faced on the first day were "better prepared" than me. They had prepared (owned or rented) more cards, so they had more options in their formations. I lost badly, even to players with a much lower rating than me (1000~1200). That made my Rating drop even further until it is now at SILVER II.

^{October 4}

Even in SILVER II, I still had that difficulty. There was no progress at all in RATING improvement. RATING has always been around 1300~1400

Causes

One of the reasons I mentioned above is that my opponents have more cards and thus more options. But another reason and probably the main reason is Because I haven't fought in SILVER League for a long time and this is the first time after BOTS was removed from MODERN League (I also never played in WILD League after reaching GOLD League in MODERN League).

I haven't gotten used to the abilities that can only be used in SILVER League from the few monsters I've used.

Monster's Ability on GOLD League	Monster's Ability on SILVER League

In Gold League I often use the combination of Void Dragon and Chaos Dragon* when Dragon Splinter is one of the elements available in a battle. I often utilize the PHASE ability of Void Dragon as well as the BLIND ability of Chaos Dragon to avoid the attacks of the opponent's monsters (especially Magic monsters) as I have done (and discussed here). But in SILVER League, they can't use those abilities yet and that makes me rarely use (and pair) those 2 monsters in SILVER League.

For Cursed Windeku, I often use it when it is in the low and medium manacap (12~40) and when Djinn Chwala is not available. Cursed Windeku in GOLD League has the HEAL Ability so that he can survive several rounds of attacks from opposing monsters. In SILVER League, that ability is not available yet so I look for other options when I want to use Cursed Windeku (such as adding multiple layers of ARMOR so that attacks from Melee or Ranged monsters don't directly hit HEALTH).

This kind of thing (unavailability of abilities from monsters in SILVER League) happens to other monsters as well. But the point of it all is that I'm not used to playing with monsters that have "lost abilities" in SILVER League.

Some battles that I often encounter in the SILVER League

In the GOLD League, I rarely face opponents who use Yodin Zaku. But when I do face them, I still have a 50% chance of winning (depending on the Ruleset and Manacap available).

Things were different in the SILVER League (after BOTS was eliminated), as it was my first time back in the SILVER League, I was still struggling to figure out how to deal with opponents who used Yodin Zaku. As a result, every time I encountered them, I just pressed the SKIP BATTLE button and "relinquished" to the result...

For a more complete view of the battle, you can check out...
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_5c34a09902577138f60705b1b7e182f4&ref=vrezyy

Facing opponents who use 2 RESURRECT is still something I'm used to seeing in the GOLD League. But when the opponent uses 3 RESURRECT (especially in Silver League) is a new experience. In the past, using multiple monsters with the RESURRECT ability was usually combined with the TAUNT ability. But with the existence of MARTYR ability, RESURRECT becomes one of the troublesome abilities and must be defeated immediately so as not to become "more dangerous".

For a more complete view of the battle, you can check out...
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_1063945e79ccfd222ae0e8ce6bb29daf&ref=vrezyy

Solution

The solution to my problem is to "Duplicate "my opponent's strategy by raiding some of the cards that I lost in a battle. Like the 2 examples above, I lost to Yodin Zaku and the strategy of using 3 RESURRECT monsters. As a result, I rented these cards (it turned out that some of them had a cheap rental price)

When I rented some cards, I realized that this card (Doctor Blight) was one of my mainstay cards and became my savior when I played in the SILVER League (before BOTS was eliminated) in both the MODERN League and the WILD League. And the result of renting some of these is...

Today (October 5) I managed to move up to SILVER I after a few days of struggling to do so. I'm still not used to the cards but my chances of winning are higher after using them.

Those are the kinds of things I discussed in this Social Media Challenge. Thank you for reading to the end and see you in other discussions in next week's Social Media Challenge.

<sub>For those of you who are curious and want to experience how fierce the battles are in the Modern League but haven't joined Splinterlands yet, you can use THIS LINK.

Link to this week's Social media Challenge (Here)</sub>