The graphics aren't anywhere near the level of detail and sophistication of Gods Unchained, but the team behind Splinterlands hasn't had the money thrown at them either. The team started with two guys who built what they could and paid others themselves to help build the game. It runs in your web browser (mobile hopefully coming soon) so you don't need to download anything.
The best thing about this game is the actual earning potential.
Using the website built by an entirely different team Peakmonsters, I can see the various values of my cards. I have spent money on this game. There is a $20 starter pack which is totally fine to play with.
The above account has only used the starter pack and has really only played minimal games. You can see that the common cards in the starter pack don't hold their value as well.
On my account, I've spent $220 USD. I honestly didn't mean to spend that much, but you know how these things are, I got excited and wanted to level up... but from that $220 USD investment, my card collection is probably somewhere between $266.97 and $350.85. The huge variance in value is due to the market and how hungry it might be for the cards you hold.
I say the potential value of the tokens is one of the best things about the game because once you start winning rare or legendary cards, other non-blockchain games start to seem a bit pointless.
How does Splinterlands work?
Okay, so basically the lands have been splintered into 7 elements
Fire, Water, Earth, Life, Death, Dragon, and Neutral.
Your cards are divided into these elements. You need to collect a summoner (I think the beginner pack ensures you have a basic summoner from Fire, Water, Earth, Life & Death) before you can field a deck of an element.
These are the summoners that I have. I've got 2 for Fire, 2 for Water, 3 for Earth, 1 for Life, 3 for Death, and 2 for Dragon. Neutral doesn't have any summoners... the Neutral cards will fight for anyone mercenarily.
All the cards have a mana cost, including the summoners, and when you are ready to battle, the different battles provide a mana amount.
So.. in the game above, the mana cap is 18. If I use an expensive summoner that gives good abilities to my whole team, then I have less mana available for my actual team. If I use a cheaper summoner, then I can use more expensive cards for my team.
I've chosen a 3 mana summoner above... who gives an extra bump to my melee cards.
Not all cards are fighters, but the fighters are divided up into melee, ranged, or magic. Since my summoner gives a bump to my melee cards, then I want to use as many melees as possible... but the downside to that is that melee cards can't always reach the opponent, so you might have cards sitting around doing nothing.
In the above battle, my melee cards are against a player who is using the Water summoner. The Water summoner gives a bump in the stats to the magic cards... but in the battle above, my opponent only has one melee card and no magic cards... so the summoner in this case has been wasted.
It's probably not a huge surprise that I take him on and take him out in record time...
So, with this win, I've increased my rating, and I've earned DEC, which is the game currency.
Why did my opponent use a sub-optimal summoner?
I'd say it was because he was trying to fulfill a quest. They probably had to win a certain number of battles with the Water element...
You can see above that I've nearly completed my own quest to win 5 battles with my Fire element cards.
Ahhhh, there's so much more to go into... the beauty of the different battle types, the DEC, the bots, the ridiculous market cap, the current Kickstarter, the alpha, beta, reward, gold foil, and the new Untamed cards... I'm definitely going to have to do a Review Part 2.
For Coil subscribers... there's just a Lil bit more...
I show you the buying and selling side, and show you my favorite card.
Thanks for reading. If you're interested in connecting, being my friend, or just want to tell me I'm all sorts of wrong, please hit me up on the Tweets.
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