Splinterlands Share Your Battle Challenge + SPS Staking Updates

Hello everyone and welcome! This post will be a bit longer than the typical Share Your Battle Challenge because this week we also have some new SPS staking updates to cover, so I thought why not make this one MEGA post and share my battle as well as showing you how to earn up to 421% APR by staking your SPS tokens! If you like Splinterlands and/or you like earning passive crypto income then this is the post for you.

Before we get into the staking rewards, we've got a challenge! In this week's challenge, we have been tasked to fight a match using Cave Slugs. Cave Slugs is a common, Life Splinter monster that has a melee attack combined with the "opportunity" ability which allows it to attack from any position AND it attacks the monster with the lowest health on the opponent's team. It's not a card that I use a lot, but a challenge is a challenge, so let's put it into a match and see if it can help lead us to victory.

Since this was a standard match with no modifications to the normal ruleset, I decided to play Silvershield Knight in the first position. Silvershield Knight is a strong monster in and of his own right, but the main reason that I played him was so that the rest of my melee monsters could get a +1 attack boost using Silvershield Knight's "Inspire" ability.

With Silvershield Knight leading the charge, I wanted a strong second position monster to back him up. Normally I would have played Luminous Eagle (with its "reach" ability in second and then Cave Slugs in third, so that I could have three monsters attacking at once, but as this was a 21 Mana cap match, I simply didn't have enough Mana, so I decided to play Cave Slugs in the second position.

In the third spot, I played Creeping Ooze to slow down the opponent's monsters and give me the best chance of getting in a first-round attack. For only 1 Mana, I feel that it's hard to go wrong by playing Creeping Ooze.....except in a reversed speed ruleset match.

In the fourth spot, I placed Light Elemental. Light Elemental is a powerful monster that can attack from any position with its magic attack. On top of that, its "flying" ability helps it evade some of the opponent's attacks and stay in the match longer.

In the last position, I placed Furious Chicken. Furious Chicken costs 0 Mana to play, so I like to play it as a way of causing the opponent to waste their attack and protect my "real" monsters.

The Match
As the match began, I felt confident in my team. Silvershield Knight could attack from the first position, but because Cave Slug had the "opportunity" ability and Light Elemental attacks with magic, this meant that each turn, I had three monsters dealing damage to the opponent. Although I give my opponent credit for fielding a strong team, the combined power of three monsters attacking at once proved to be the key to carrying the victory.

Analysis of Cave Slugs
Although I don't use Cave Slugs very often, it proved to be a strong monster in this match. The "opportunity" ability allows it to attack from any position while simultaneously allowing it to target the opponent's monster with the lowest health. This can be especially powerful when combined with a monster that has the "inspire" ability that raises the attack of all melee monsters. Overall, this match reminded me that even though I don't play with Cave Slugs very often, it is still a strong card that I should consider using more often.

Staking Updates
Just this month, Splinterlands opened staking rewards for the SPS token. Although I have written a previous article, detailing what the SPS token is, how it works, and how to get it, the staking rewards feature was not live at the time that article was written, so I wanted to share some quick updates here. At the time of writing, the APR for SPS staking is an astronomical 421%!!!

All you have to do to take part in this SPS staking is navigate to the SPS Management tab of your Splinterlands account and claim, then stake your SPS. Don't forget that you earn more SPS every day, and your unstaked SPS is just sitting there not earning you anything. For max rewards, it might not be a bad idea to make claiming and staking SPS part of your daily routine so that as soon as you get newly minted SPS you can put it right to work for you.

Although the APR on SPS staking is fantastic, I do want to point out that there is a 4-week unstaking period and that once you unstake, you will get 25% of that balance back per week. This isn't necessarily a bad system, but it's worth noting that staking SPS means that you won't be able to "day trade" that SPS. If the market moons or crashes and you want to sell your SPS, you could miss an opportunity as you wait for your SPS to unstake. Of course it's your choice. Do you want to stake your SPS for that high APY, or do you want to have it more liquid for trading? The choice is yours, and nothing is financial advice

Conclusion
I know that this article was a bit of a double feature as we talked about both the strengths of Cave Slugs in the share your battle challenge as well as the updated SPS staking feature. Although this article was a bit longer than normal, I thought it was important to mention the staking feature so that you don't miss out. As always, thanks for reading!!