My Splinterlands Self Challenge #25 - An Abbreviated 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 February is a short month, the second season this month was, a shorter than average, 12 days. I spent this season competing in Bronze League.

I probably should have still split this up into multiple updates, but here's a breakdown of the season:

Daily Quest # 169 - Win 5 with Death. For completing this daily quest, I received a Legendary potion.

Daily Quest #170 - Win 5 with Fire. For completing this daily quest, I received a Gold potion.

Daily Quest #171 - Win 5 with Fire. For completing this daily quest, I received a Gold potion.

Daily Quest #172 - Win 5 with Earth. For completing this daily quest, I received a Gold potion. I had also put up a bid for 3 copies of the Dragon splinter summoner card, Brighton Bloom. Someone dumped 3 for 397.5 DEC each, allowing me to combine my copies for a level 2 version.

Daily Quest #173 - Win 5 with Earth. For completing this daily quest, I received a Gold potion.

Daily Quest #174 - Win 5 with Fire. For completing this daily quest, I received a Legendary potion. I also won two auctions on CardAuctionz.com, getting a Goblin Chef and 4th copy of Captain's Ghost for 20 Dark Energy Crystals (DEC) each.

Cards I won at auction this season, paying a lot less than the going rate.

Daily Quest #175 - Win 5 with Fire. For completing this daily quest, I received a Gold potion. I spent 174 DEC on 4 Legendary potions to open an Untamed pack I won in a tournament.

I play Unicorn Mustang a lot, less so the other cards in this pack.

Daily Quest # 176 - Win 5 with Life. For completing this daily quest, I received a Gold potion.

Daily Quest # 177 - Win 5 with Fire. For completing this daily quest, I received a Gold potion.

Daily Quest # 178 - Win 5 with Fire. For completing this daily quest, I got an 8th copy of the Neutral monster card, Sand Wurm.

Daily Quest # 179 - Win 3 with No Neutral. For completing this daily quest, I received a Gold potion. I also won another auction for a Grim Reaper for 21 DEC. I bought 5 more copies of Serpentine Spy, for 875.25 DEC, to combine with my existing copies to get a level 3 version and I bought a level 3 copy of Serpent of Eld for 1406 DEC.

Daily Quest # 180 - Win 5 with Death. For finishing this daily quest, I got 10 DEC.

Daily Quest # 181 - Win 5 with Earth. For finishing this daily quest, I got 10 DEC.

Tournaments:

Sunday Kobold Mining Novice Tournament, no legendary cards and Untamed set only. Finished 17-4-1 coming in 8th place for 400 DEC. I accidentally lost a match by surrendering one that was pending when I combined my Serpentine Spy cards.

Monday Kobold Mining Novice Tournament, no legendary cards and Untamed set only. Went 17-5 to come in 9th place for 266 2/3 DEC.

Monday Madness, real-time Bronze league rules tournament, with no legendary summoners. Lost in the 2nd round to the eventual winner. Still came in 21st place for 400 DEC.

Thursday Bronze Blunderbuss Tournament, no legendary cards and all sets. Went 17-5 to come in 13th place for 600 DEC.

Player-run Novice tournament, no legendary cards and Untamed set only. Went 16-4 to come in 3rd place for 1,000 DEC and the Untamed pack from Daily Quest #175.

Sunday Bronze Blunderbuss, no legendary cards and Untamed set only. Went 10-10-1, coming in 46th place for 100 DEC. I was 7-3-1 after day one, but had a poor day 2.

Monday Kobold Mining Novice Tournament #2, no legendary cards and Untamed set only. Went 7-4 to not make day 2, but still coming in 55th place for 50 DEC.

Thursday Bronze Blunderbuss Tournament #2, no legendary cards and all sets. Went 5-6 to not make day 2, losing to a lot of higher League players with higher level Epic cards.

Friday Madness, real-time Silver League rules tournament, with no legendary summoners. Made it to round 4 with my Bronze league leveled cards, coming in 16th place for 400 DEC.

For the actual season, I played far too many games. I ended up coming in 12th place, which is quite frustrating. I was in 9th place, but managed to knock myself back out of the top 10 by trying to even out my number of games. Then I couldn't play enough to get back up to 10th before the season ended.

My season end rewards for being in Bronze I. Potions seem to be coming up a lot more often this season.

I got a 9th copy of Sand Worm, a 16th copy of Wave Runner, 3 Legendary potions, another Gold potion, and 76 DEC. I still had to spend 78 DEC to get 2 more Legendary potions to open the one pack that I won for coming in 12th in Bronze. On the bright side, it had some decent stuff in it:

My second gold Undead Badger.

For having played over 900 games of ranked during this past season, I'm pretty sure that I didn't play anyone else that ended up in the top 20. I keep a record of my matches for each article, in case I want to refer to it for anything. Looking back, I played the Espni bot a few times, which ended up coming in 21st place this season. But, I had no games against anyone else close to my ranking.

It certainly feels like most of the players that I was up against in Bronze were probably bots. A few may not have been, and it can be hard to tell with the lack of interaction in matches, but the same names come up again day after day and seem to be playing with a basic collection of level 1 cards.

I played so much that my DEC per match percentage dropped down to a point where I was getting 2-3 a win instead of 10+. I did make a lot of DEC, for Bronze, both from the number of matches and tournaments this season. But, I think I'm going to spend the next one taking it easier in the Silver League again.

After all of that playing, I do have a bit over 7,000 DEC left to spend on my deck. I can probably pick up some cheaper legendary cards to qualify for Silver II, and get the three daily reward chests this upcoming season. If you made it this far, thank you for reading! If you have any questions, feedback, or suggestions on future updates then please let me know in the comments below!