My Splinterlands Self Challenge #7 - First Tournament

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! It's been a busy few days since my midseason update! With the ranked season wrapping up in another couple of days, I felt it would be best to split things up into separate updates.

I finally signed up for the one of the Untamed Kobold Mining Expedition, or U.K.M.E. for short, tournaments. I had some misconceptions about the tournament format, as apparently the first round runs over a 24 hour period. As long as you sign up in advance, you have all day to go and submit your teams. I was mistakenly under the impression that you needed to be there when the tournament started - which is true for some tournaments, but not this particular series.

The rules for this tournament are meant to be friendly to newer players. The only cards allowed are from the Untamed set, only level 1 cards, and no legendary cards can be played. The entry fee is 10 Dark Energy Crystals, with the top 64 winning a prize. There are 2 rounds of play, with only the top 20% getting to move onto the second round.

The prize distribution for the tournament.

There were about 280 players that entered (I noted 278 when the tournament started, but it shows 281 in the history). For the first round, each player is matched up against 11 other players. You can submit your deck at any time over the next day. When both players have submitted a deck the fight then occurs automatically.

Here is a breakdown of my matches, with links to watch them if anyone is so inclined:

Match 1 (Playing Earth) vs SAVAGEDUELS playing Earth. 24 Manna, no summoner abilities, no fire, no life.

Match 2 (Playing Dragon/Death) vs NUVOLA playing Dragon/Death. 42 Mana, equalizer, always hit, death or dragon only.

Match 3 (Playing Dragon/Earth) vs RRDRAGON playing Earth. 24 Manna, no monster abilities, equalizer, no fire. (didn't like my team selection, but ran low on time)

Match 4 (Playing Fire) vs CEHU playing . 14 Mana, equalizer. (This was the first match completed in the tournament!)

Match 5 (Playing Fire) vs SOULKIND playing Earth. 16 Mana, weak magic, no ranged, no water.

Match 6 (Playing Fire) vs ARIESNOMU playing Earth. 50 Mana, no neutral, weak magic, no water, no life, no death.

Match 7 (Playing Fire) vs BORODAS playing Fire. 14 Mana, super sneak, no legendaries x2, no life.

Match 8 (Playing Fire) vs CRYPTOCRUSADERS playing Life. 16 Mana, no healing, no melee, no earth.

Match 9 (Playing Fire) vs RAW12 playing Fire. 24 Mana, equalizer, knockout, no earth, no life, no dragon.

Match 10 (Playing Fire) vs PHINEUS playing Fire. 20 Mana, no healing, melee attack anywhere, fire or earth only. (Same monsters still draws apparently.)

Match 11 (Playing Fire) vs TRIBEHNUTER101 who failed to submit a deck in 24 hours. 29 Mana, odd only, no misses, no earth.

Since I was there at the start, I ended up winning the first match of the tournament which put me in 1st place. Oddly, a couple of hours later, I had won a few more matches and was still in first place! Granted, only 92 out of 1524 battles had happened at that point.

I'm fine if we just wrap up the tournament here!

Sadly, for me anyhow, my first place spot was not to last. At the end of the first day, my score was 7 wins, 3 losses, and 1 draw putting me in 57th place. Unfortunately, even though the top 64 get prizes, only the top 20% get to play on the second day. So, with my placing, that was the end of the tournament for me.

In the end, I still won 100 DEC for the 10 I spent to enter. I also technically finished in 58th place, as tie-breakers shifted placings slightly with players that had identical records. Overall, I'm happy that I finally signed up.

This is probably the only tournament I would enter right now, as I feel that my collection is too low power to compete in tournaments with Bronze or higher rules. The winner of the Novice rules tournament was at least a Bronze league player, albeit one with enough card power to be in Silver. Second and third place were Gold and Diamond league players, though there were some other Bronze league players that made the top 64.

One final bit of news, I joined a guild! It isn't apparent, unless you look into your DEC winning breakdown, but you can earn a bonus percentage of DEC for each match win reward just by being in a guild. Granted, the members need to contribute DEC to level up a guild in order to increase that percentage. Still, over time I'm sure that bonus will add up!

I filled the last open slot, at least until the guild levels up again... or I get kicked out!