My Splinterlands Self Challenge #12 - The End To Another Season

Welcome to another update on my attempt to challenge the Splinterlands ranked leagues with only the initial set of cards!… Plus, whatever I can earn or win. Since I was already relatively high on the leader board by the middle of the week, I did make a last minute run at trying to get into the top 20 in the Bronze league to win a pack. But, before I get into that, here's a break down of my the past week:

Daily Quest # 71: Win 5 with Water.. re-rolled to Win 5 with Life. A bit unhappy with this, as I feel like Life and Water are both my weakest sets. But I managed to win 5 out of 8 games and got a Gold Potion for completing the daily. I also won a 2nd copy of the Fire Common Ettin Spearmen from @cryptofiloz's PeakD giveaway.

To start off the week, I picked up the Epic Water card Azmare Harpoonist for 600 Dark Energy Crystals (hereafter, DEC). There were a couple of Untamed Kobold Mining Expedition tournaments starting, and this was one of the four Epic cards in the Untamed set I still didn't own. I'll go over the tournament results after the rest of the daily updates.

While this is a solid card, so far I have had very few situations where I played it.

This was a fairly eventful day, as @MarcusWahl also did a Twitch stream. I beat him in a Novice rules challenge and won 500 DEC. I also then won an Untamed pack as a random giveaway to viewers. I bought 5 Legendary potions for 194 DEC and 3 Gold potions for 146 DEC, actually finding my first Gold card after popping all of these potions for them!

All around a very solid pack!

As if this day wasn't already long enough, I decided to try using the bidding system on Peakmonsters, instead of just buying some of the cards I needed outright. The price of cards seems like it has been going up of late, so I put in some bids on the other Epic cards I still need for the Untamed set. Someone sold me a copy of the Epic Death card Soulstorm for 477 DEC, a significant discount on what it was selling for at market price at the time.

This card has seen quite a lot of use since I got it.

Daily Quest # 72: Win 5 with Earth (Finally on to day 2 of the week!) This took 6 games to complete, though I did play a number of other matches not using Earth due to some match rules. For completing this daily I got a Gold potion. I also won a copy of the Rare Water card Serpent of Eld from @robinsonr810's PeakD giveaway!

Daily Quest # 73 - Win 5 with Fire. This took 7 games to complete and I received 5 DEC for completing the daily quest. This is about the amount I would get for winning a match at this point in the season. @MarcusWahl also ran another Twitch stream, where I picked up 100 DEC as a consolation prize for losing a Novice rules challenge against him.

Daily Quest # 74 - Win 3 with no Neutral. This took 4 games to complete and I won a Legendary potion for completing the daily quest. @MarcusWahl was doing daily Twitch streams at this point, and I picked up another 500 DEC and Untamed pack from a combination of showing up early and random prizes to viewers. I spent 144 DEC on 4 Legendary potions and 194 DEC on 4 Gold potions, which was also worth it as I got my first Legendary card out of this pack!

Cornealus has been great in matches where ranged monsters can attack from the front line.

I also decided to spent some DEC on a few common cards that would improve by Bronze league set of cards. I spent 354 DEC picking up 3 of the common neutral monster Creeping Ooze cards, to combine them to a level 2 version, and 2 more copies of the common Dragon summoner card Delwyn Dragonscale, in order to combine with my existing card to get a level 3 version.

Daily Quest # 75 - Win 3 with no Neutral. This took 6 games to complete and I received 12 DEC as the daily reward.

Daily Quest # 76: Win 5 with Earth. This only took 5 games to complete and for the daily reward I got a 6th copy of the common Water card Wave Runner.

Daily Quest # 77: Win 3 with no Neutral. This took 4 games to complete and the daily reward was a Legendary potion.

Outside of my daily quests, I also entered three other tournaments: 2 Untamed Kobold Mining Expedition tournaments for 10 DEC each, and a free Bronze league rules Friday Night Fight on Friday the 13th. I went 6-5 in the first Kobold Mining Expedition tournament, just failing to make it into the 2nd and final around.

I did better in the second one, going 7-4 to squeak into round 2 and then ending up 15-7 to finish in 26th place and winning 400 DEC. The free-to-enter Friday night fight was a single elimination tournament. I, surprisingly, managed to last to round 4 of 9. Most players in the actual Bronze league don't have max level cards, but since a large number of players in higher leagues joined, this competition was much tougher than typical Bronze league ranked play.

Coming down to the last few days of the season, I was around 50th place in the Bronze league rankings. I played a LOT of matches to try to make it into the top 20, which would win a single Untamed pack. However, the problem was that almost no high rating players were playing at that point.

I played over a hundred games the last day, where wins would typically give me +3 rating and losses would cost me -32 points. Despite winning over 90% of my games, I still only ended up grinding up to 23rd place before running out of time. Apparently the way to get into the top 20 is to get there a few days before the season is about to end and then stop playing.

Some Peakmonsters provided proof of my win rate.

I was not amused at being unable to climb the ranks as high as I wanted, even though I put in a lot of effort the last couple of days. Granted, if I was playing more actual opponents. instead of a vast array of bots, I might not have won quite so much. It is a tough problem to solve, though it could probably be addressed by an overhaul of how card power is counted and how the leagues are split up.

My final standing at the end of the season.

I'm not sure that I'll make another push for the top of the league again soon. Maybe once I've got a lot more competitive Bronze cards, i.e. mostly level 3 monsters. For now, I think I'll just focus on doing my dailies and the occasional Kobold Tournament. Oh, and here is what I got for the season end rewards for being in Bronze I:

The Onyx Sentinel is a neat new addition to my collection.

For now I'm back down to 400 rating in Bronze II as the new season gets underway. I have about 2,000 DEC burning a hole in my pocket, so I will likely pick up my last 2 Epic cards for the Untamed set. Anyhow, I'll be back in another week with a mid-season update!