My Splinterlands Blog #40 – An Inglorious Return To Bronze
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).
As I mentioned in last week's article, I decided to drop back down into Bronze league to make another run at the leaderboard. Even though I've spent the last several seasons in Silver, my deck is essentially just a lot of Bronze-level cards. As expected, it has been a bit of a tedious grind to play lots of matches for ranking.
It's halfway through the season and I went from 5th to 11th place during the night, as several accounts managed to jump up hundreds of points in a day. Any loss means having to win another dozen games just to make up the point loss. To advance to first place, I'd also have to win over a hundred games without getting any losses, which is fairly difficulty when there's low manna matches where a random miss can cost you the game.
Unlike last time, there's not really much in the way of Splinterlands news. WAX was just added to the Hive-Engine platform, so it should be much easier to convert WAX to DEC, if people provide liquidity to the market. Other than that, here's the usual breakdown of the past week:
Daily Quest Rewards:
Daily Quest # 287 - Win 5 with Death… re-rolled to Win 5 with Water. For completing this daily quest, I received an 18th copy of the common Death monster card, Nightmare. Sad to go back to the single daily rewards, but easier to type up.
Outside of the game, I won 1,000 DEC from @Stever82 on Peakd. He does giveaways contests about once a week. I also opened pack 13 of the 50 I had gotten with my potions from the end of the prior season.
The gold foil Albatross is a nice find, and one I didn't have a gold foil copy of already.Daily Quest # 288 - Win 5 with Life. Lost one game and re-rolled to Win 5 with Death, which may be easier in Bronze. At any rate, for finishing the daily quest I got a whole 5 Dark Energy Crystals (DEC).
Daily Quest # 289 - Win 5 with Sneak. For finishing this daily quest, I got a Gold potion.
Daily Quest # 290 - Win 5 with Life... re-rolled to Win 5 with Water. For completing this daily quest, I got a 19th copy of the common Death monster card, Nightmare.
Is it a bad sign when the only card I'm finding is Nightmares?Daily Quest # 291 - Win 3 with No Neutral. For finishing this daily quest, I got 13 DEC.
Daily Quest # 292 - Win 5 with Life.. re-rolled to Win 5 with Fire. For completing this daily quest, I received 15 DEC.
Daily Quest # 293 - Win 5 with Water. For finishing this daily quest, I got a Gold potion.
Tournaments:
Thursday Bronze Blunderbuss, no legendary cards, Untamed set only tournament: I went 10-1 on the first day, but had a worse day two going 15-6. This seemed to be the theme for the week. Anyhow, I came in 31st place for 155.5 DEC.
Friday Spring Training #14, Bronze League rules tournament: I did much better than the last Silver league tournament, going 8-1 to come in 10th place. As usual, WAX NFT packs were the reward for this tournament.
Sunday Bronze Blunderbuss, no legendary cards, all sets allowed tournament: I went 9-2 the first day, which still qualified for day two. I finished an unspectacular 15-7 to come in 33rd place for 159 DEC.
Guild Brawls:
Guild Brawl #17, playing Gold foil Bronze, Untamed set only. I had more opponents than usual, getting a whole three matches in this time around. The guild overall did not do great, as two people forgot to submit their matches.
Vs PACHU4 of SL - SPANISH ÉLITE
Vs LovingTheMoo of SAMMYSNAKESPLINTERLANDS
Guild Brawl #18, playing Gold foil Bronze, Untamed set only. I only had one match again, but on the bright side our guild handily came in first place in our brawl. There were a couple of people who apparently quit playing, and were removed from the guild. Some new players were brought in and they seem to be working out well so far!
Vs JUDIBANA of SL- SPANISH SCHOOL
Trading & The Rest:
No real trading of note this week. Cryptocurrency prices have been in a bit of a dip, except for DEC. I don't really want to spend my small amount of WAX while it has a low U.S. dollar value, so I'm just sitting on it for the time being. Card prices are still also up quite a bit from what they were only a few weeks ago.
Overall, this week has just been grinding out matches and waiting. Waiting for the SPS governance token to get released next month. Waiting for land tokens to be turned into actual cards. Waiting to see if card prices go back down to levels where I might consider buying some again to improve my deck.
Other than that, it has been a fairly uneventful week. So, if you made it this far, thank you for reading! And, if you have any comments, suggestions, or feedback please let me know in the comments below!
I hear you about the grind. I usually give it a break for a few days if I'm doing a ton of battles and am essentially either sitting in place or even going backwards.
I'm actually trying to drop down leagues myself. I made it to Champion III barely... and dropped to Diamond III at the restart... and even that's a struggle. I'm in Diamond II but I'm honestly hoping to drop down to gold next season so I could take a run at the DEC rewards. Usually I'm sitting in 200th(ish) place in whatever league I'm in.
Did you say that you won 50 packs with potions last season? What do you mean?
I didn't know that @Stever82 did giveaways... thanks for the headsup. I'm following him now.
Good luck this week!
"Did you say that you won 50 packs with potions last season? What do you mean?"
No, I didn't say that exactly. What seems like many seasons ago now, I got 50 packs as a reward from reporting a bug with the WAX integration - as opposed to trying to exploit it. (12 weeks ago, looking back at my old postings). I've been slowly opening them as I get potions, and I've still got about 37 left. I have gotten some other packs in the interim, and before they sold out, so I'm sitting on closer to 60 in total.
It does seem like there should be some sort of better system for ranked. At least in Bronze, it's 95% playing against bots to grind out +3 points at a time. In the hundreds of games I've played this season, I think I've only played one or two against anyone else in the top 20. Granted, with governance, Brawls, and land I don't foresee the developers having a lot of time to do any big revamps to anything else coming this year.
Ah I see... thanks for clearing up my misunderstanding... that's a great reward, well done with that! For a long time I had 100 legendary and gold foil potions and it seemed that I'd always have more than I'd ever know what to do with... and now I'm in the same position as you, I only ever seem to have a few (not that I've got any unopened packs, but y'know, it's a thing to manage now).
I'd say you're absolutely right... Yesterday I actually started playing with an old starter account I haven't touched for years, and was shocked to see that once I entered bronze I was in 1500th place... in the higher leagues you usually come in around the 200th mark. It is fun playing with (and against) level 1 cards, it feels more strategic, but man, it definitely feels like a grind too.