My Splinterlands Blog #37 - End of May 2021, New Token Incoming

Welcome to another weekly update on my attempt to challenge the Splinterlands ranked leagues! Initially it was a self challenge, to see how far I could get with the initial set of cards plus whatever I could win. But, that kind of fell apart around week 30, with the game integrating with the WAX network and users being able to buy and sell cards on Atomic Hub.

The big news that the Splinterlands team has been teasing for the past several weeks turned out to be that they are releasing a governance token on the Binance Smart Chain network. Basically, they will be giving away some of this coin to users who own Splinterlands items and at some point in the future holders of this coin can vote on the changes to the game. A website has been created here with information about this token.

This was a little disappointing to people that were hoping for some sort of big update to the actual game. While just about everything in the game gives you some points towards getting more of this new token when it's released, the amount of points isn't equivalent. Dark Energy Crystals (DEC) are worth far more towards getting these new tokens than the cards you could buy with them.

In other news, apparently an issue with DygyCon 3 caused them to lose all of the user activity information. So, they aren't going to be giving out NFT badges for fishing or finding all of the hidden stars this time around. I was barely able to attend the event due to real life issues, but did get a couple of random WAX NFTs from signing up for giveaways.

Anyhow, onto the usual breakdown of the last week of this final May Season!

Daily Quest Rewards:

Daily Quest # 264 - Win 5 with Snipe. For completing this daily quest, I received 11 DEC; a Gold potion; a 14th copy of the common Death monster card, Undead Rexx; and a 15th copy of the common Death monster card, Nightmare. Outside of the game, I won an auction for a 5th copy of the common Fire monster card, Molten Ogre, on CardAuctionz for 18 DEC. I've been casually tossing bids on a lot of stuff, but generally getting outbid by other people as I tend not to pay attention to when the auctions end.

Daily Quest # 265 - Win 5 with Water. For completing this daily quest, I got a Gold potion; a Legendary potion; a 14th copy of the common Fire monster card, Flame Monkey; and a 21st copy of the common Water monster card, Wave runner.

Daily Quest # 266 - Win 5 with Life. For completing this daily quest, I got 3 Legendary potions and a 15th copy of Flame Monkey. Since it had been a while since I opened any packs, I bought 1 more Gold potion for 48 DEC and opened packs 9 + 10 out of the 50 that I had gotten previously.

Daily Quest # 267 - Win 5 with Water. For finishing this daily quest, I received 36 DEC; an 8th copy of the rare Death monster card, Grim Reaper; and 2 more copies of the common Neutral monster card, Sand Wurm.

Daily Quest # 268 - Win 5 with Earth. For completing this daily quest, I received 10 DEC; a Legendary potion; a 10th copy of the common Earth monster card, Nectar Queen; and a 21st copy of the rare Dragon monster card, Gloridax Soldier. I also bought 5 copies of the rare Death monster card, Dark Ferryman, for 674 DEC to make a level 2 copy of the card.

Daily Quest # 269 - Win 5 with Dragon. For finishing this daily quest, I got 2 Legendary potion, a Gold potion, and a 9th copy of the common Fire monster card, Charlok Minotaur.

Daily Quest # 270 - Win 5 with Earth. For completing this daily quest, I received a poor 20 DEC (6 + 7 + 7) and a Gold potion.

Daily Quest # 271 - Win 5 with Dragon. For finishing the daily there, I got 251 DEC (238 + 13), a Gold potion, a Legendary potion. This was the last day of the season, and I made a run at the top 25 spots in Silver to try to win DEC. However, I kept treading water and eventually got fed up and just moved to Gold III instead, but after having done the daily.

Tournaments:

The Beat A Pro tournament that I mentioned last week, was recreated as a Bronze league rules tournament, instead of Gold league rules. This made a lot more sense since it was Bronze league rules to qualify. I rented out a Yodin Zaku and Scarred Llama for it, which is a big part of why I was trying to push into the top 25 at the end of the season. Scarred Llama + Kron the Undying is still pretty hard to beat, even in Silver.

Sunday Bronze Blunderbuss, no legendary cards, all sets allowed tournament: I went undefeated on day one, going 11-0. I lost one match in the second round, to finish 20-1 coming in 2nd place for 1,600 DEC.

Thursday Bronze Blunderbuss, no legendary cards, all sets allowed tournament: Day one I went 10-1, easily making the second day in a pretty good spot. However, I had a poor day two and finished 15-6 to come in 27th place for 225 DEC.

Friday Spring Training #10, Silver League rules tournament: Thanks to renting out Yodin Zaku and Scarred Llama, I had a good showing this week. I went 8-1 to come in 10th place, getting the usual WAX NFT art packs from this tournament.

Beat A Pro Grand Finalist Tournament, Bronze League rules tournament: This was a pretty ridiculous tournament, with people that play in Diamond and Champion leagues participating. Only 18 of the 29 qualified players entered, and some of those failed to submit teams. Only the top 3 won prizes, which were legendary summoner cards (spoiler, I wasn't in the top 3). Since this was a pretty big tournament, with some crazy cards being played I'm going to link to the battles:

Versus Byzantanist
Byzantanist is the support "cat" for Splinterlands, and plays two of the top Gold league accounts. I was pretty happy with the outcome of this match.

Versus HandTalk5

Versus Obvi

Versus Anubis85

Worth watching just to see one of the rarest Summoners being played.

Versus TJ70903

He ended up coming in 2nd place.

Versus Logantron

He ended up coming in 1st place.

@Catfresh and @Stever82 both failed to submit teams, so I got free wins against them. So, 4-3-1 to come in 9th place.

Guild Brawls:

Guild Brawl #13, playing Gold foil Bronze, Untamed set only. Once again, I had no opponents. I, once again, failed to note how the guild finished overall, but I believe it was 4th place with at least one unfilled Novice brawl.

Several people were kicked out of the guild for not being active participants in the guild, never joining the guild Discord channel, or contributing DEC, or participating in brawls. A few new players were recruited, and as Brawl #14 starts, we currently have most of the Novice and Bronze slots filled at least.

Trading & The Rest:

I had pulled most of my items off the Atomic Hub market due to the volatility in the WAX pricing. I did sell several Alpha Rexxie cards, which leaves only a handful of things up for sale. I also lent out some of my extra legendary cards to new guild members, rather than put them back up for sale.

I also did not end up making any big purchases. This was due to several factors: the upcoming new token, Untamed Packs nearing the point where they sell out, and card prices continuing to rise. For the upcoming token airdrop, DEC is worth more than cards. Card skins are actually the best purchase to earn airdrop points, but have no in-game utility other than being alternate art.

All of the cards I was looking at buying were either bought, had their prices increased, or were bought and then put back on the market at higher prices. Waiting turned out not to be the best move in terms of improving my actual deck. Finally, Untamed packs continue to fly out of the store at a breakneck pace.

With Untamed packs selling out, I'm going to try to do something that I've been meaning to for a while - put together a pack pool! Basically, pooling DEC to buy the 575 packs for 1,000,0000 DEC, so that people can get them for a discount. I'm looking at doing packs for 1,725 DEC each (275 DEC discount). If anyone is interested in participating, please let me know!

To wrap up the season, I once again finished near the bottom of the Gold league (1,161st place to be exact). I was tempted to stay in Silver, to drop down to Bronze and give another run at that leaderboard. But, I decided to just go for the extra end of season reward chests:

I don't have a solid plan for improving my collection. At this point, I'm going to see how the pack pool turns out. If I fail to get any interest, then I need to decide if it is worth buying up packs before they are gone from the official store? Or, should I just start saving up for when the next set gets released?

I may pick up some cheaper cards that I'm missing at Bronze league levels, like I did with the Dark Ferryman. I'm not missing a lot of those inexpensive cards, but the cost of working on an actual Silver league set of cards is fairly daunting.

That's it for this week! Thank you for reading this far! If you have any thoughts on the new token, how I should approach improving my deck, or any general comments, suggestions, or feedback please let me know in the comments below!