Hi everyone, it's a Thursday again - Thursday blogging day for me! Welcome back to my Splinterlands blog, this weeks Social Media Challenge is the same as last week: themed the 6 year anniversary of my favorite game, I wasn't around when it all started but I've been here for half the time, last week I already did a post for this theme and my first thought was... what to tell more about my journey, so I postponed my post for a few hours when I came up with it... make another post to help all these new players find their way trough the Splinterjungle, so here we go 😉
To find out how you can participate in the challenge yourself, you can find the Splinterlands post here.
But first... What Is Splinterlands?
So, for people who don't know, Splinterlands is an online collectible card game using blockchain technology. Every card in the game is owned as a NFT and is traded on the Hive blockchain. It's the digital, modern version of Magic: The Gathering with some extra advantages like it's much easier to rent out cards to other players for profit, join tournaments and Guild Brawls.
Cards are available to buy and sell through the ingame marketplace as well as on third-party online marketplaces like Peakmonsters and Monstermarket. Winners can earn real money in the form of Splinterlands own governance token Splinterlands Shards (SPS), making it a lucrative platform for extremely skilled players with the best cards.
With your card set you battle other players, each card has it's own mana value, strengths and abilities and every battle has another mana cap and different rule set, in the higher leagues up to 3 rulesets combined, so if you can wrap your head around the do's and don't in this particular match better than your opponent does, you'll have an advantage already, making it a highly strategic game.
On top of that there's so much to do, whether you just battle, fight in guild brawls or tournaments to earn SPS tokens, scour the card market for some good deals to further strengthen your deck, or maybe to flip them for some extra cash, become a content creator about this versatile and revolutionary game on YouTube or like me, just with blogs, making a nice little extra that way or producing items and spells on the land plots you can buy.
I'll try and keep things basic, the strategy and game mechanics are deeper but it's just too much info at once, so for experienced players reading this, I know I'm not telling things completely, but this is the basics.
I used parts of this post in another post too, but to make this complete, let's begin with the card overlook:
1. Mana Cost: Every battle has a mana cap (total mana to be used), every card has it's own mana value. So with a low mana cap (12-25) it's best to use multiple lower mana cards than 2 or 3 high powered monsters, most times, many monsters will win against only a few big monsters. In medium and high mana battles you can use stronger cards. You don't HAVE to use all your mana! sometimes a lower mana team is better and will win against a higher mana team but generally I aim at using at least 90% of the mana I have available.
2. Stats: Starting with the attack, in this picture it's a saw icon - melee damage, but on other cards it's an archer icon for ranged damage and a blue lightning cloud for magic damage...
- Melee monsters can only attack from the first position, unless it has another ability (point 7 on the image above) like reach, sneak or opportunity.
- Ranged monsters (archers) can attack from every position but the first position unless
it has the close range ability - Magic monsters can attack from any position, but in general are more mana expensive for the same amount of damage than archers
- Melee and Ranged damage will hit a monsters armor first if it has any, one exception to this is when the attacking monster has the piercing ability. Magic damage goes straight trough the armor and hits the health points right away, one exception to this is when the attacked card has void armor.
Below the attack type icon is the speed icon, base speed is 1-6, 1 being the slowest monsters, 6 the fastest. Speed determines the attack order and probability your attack will hit or miss. (note: magic attacks can not miss unless the target has the phase ability.
So at the start of a fight, all monsters with 6 speed attacks first, then the monsters with 5 speed and so on. It's not hard to understand that if you strike first and kill the enemy cards before they can take a swing at you, you're already 1 step ahead 😃
Speed is very important in my opinion, speed wins matches. hitting or missing one key attack can determine the outcome of a battle.
To the right are two more stats: a shield icon - armor, like I already told, melee and ranged hits armor first, magic bypasses armor. important: the shield ability and armor are NOT the same
Below armor is the heart icon - health points. Pretty obvious: when this reaches 0, the cards dies and cannot attack anymore.
3. Splinter / Rarity: There are four types of card rarities:
common (grey)
rare (blue)
epic (purple)
legendary (yellow)
needless to say, legendary cards are more stronger and valuable as common cards, and require less cards to combine to bring them to a higher level.
In the colored icon is a picture displayed, for the example above it's fire, every splinter has it's own icon.
In this picture, top left is fire, top center is water, top right is earth, bottom left is life, bottom center is death, bottom right is dragon.
Exception to this is the neutral splinter, that can be played in combination with every other splinter.
Every splinter has their own advantages, and you'll learn which one you like to play eventually. In the current meta (with the basic Chaos Legion summoners because they're the cheapest to start with) I think water is one of the best right now. But for every splinter you can make a counter to that, depending on what your opponent likes to play and the rulesets.
4. Name: Everyone needs a name right? Try and memorize the cards, abilities and mana value, for example when your enemy likes to play magic, you need to know what splinters have cards with the void ability.
5. Level: When you start, all cards are level 1. By combining cards, you can level them up and gain better stats or different abilities. Keep in mind you can only use these cards when you also have the summoner in that splinter levelled up. You can look in your cards stats what level summoner is able to level certain card depending on it's rarity.
when we take Kelya Frendul as example, we can see to make it level 2 we need 5 separate copies and combine them to make a level 2. 1 single copy we call 1 BCX (Base Card eXperience) but I find experience not a good name, because it implies your card will gain experience with battles, it does not!
6. Amount of cards: I replaced the 'experience' description in the image. When you combine cards and over level it this bar will fill up. So for example when you combine 10 Kelya Frenduls, and you need only 5 to make it level 2, but you need 14 to make it level 3. So in this case your summoner will still be a lvl 2 but it's displayed in this way.
Just think carefully when you combine cards and this will never happen, it's just a waste of money until you reach the next level and have it's benefits.
7. Abilities: Here you can see what abilities your monsters have, memorize them, they're very important! When you put a melee monster without any additional abilities anywhere else than in the first position, it won't be able to attack and will do nothing until it reaches the first position. You can look at the full list of abilities here.
So, now you're thinking... wait... my brand new Rebellion cards look completely different! Yes, you're right... I made a nice picture for this too:
Lots of info already right? hang on 😂 there's more!
Let's now discuss the battling!
when you click the BATTLE button, the game searches for an opponent and gives you and your opponent a mana cap and rulesets, I did a battle just now to give you an example:
So in this battle I can see I can spend a maximum of 60 mana, I can use the splinters Fire, Water and Death, and my opponent likes to use Death, probably because his daily quest (called daily focus) requires him to use the Death splinter to win games with. Using this splinter every time though, is a poor strategy because it makes him very predictable and easy to counter: So I bet he's using the Death Splinter again, nerfing my magic monsters so I'm not gonna use magic on him, I'll use Water to fight him, making a team out of all available cards, 60 mana is considered high so I can build a strong team with high mana cards, but, of course so can my opponent. Every battle you get 2 minutes and 30 seconds to make your team.
You can watch the battle unfold for yourself here.
So let's break it down... I'm expecting Death... 90% of bronze and silver players use Thadius Brood as the death summoner with -1 magic. So I won't pick magic to attack him.
Also, The main tank most players use is Cursed Windeku with the thorns ability, returning 2 damage to my melee attackers, to quickly kill of this thorns tank, I added the Axe Master, with 2 archery damage and the double strike ability it does 4 damage every turn, and won't get damaged by thorns.
I like to bring opportunity to quickly kill of any glass cannons if he plays any.
And because you never know what your opponent is going to play, I added Wave Brood with the taunt ability, forcing all enemy cards except the first position to attack this card first, protecting my more vulnerable cards like the Axe Master for enemy sniper fire.
I had one position and a lot of mana left so I put Arkemis the Bear in the rear position, high HP to protect against sneak when my taunt monster dies, Death splinter likes sneak play so expect that when you think your opponent will play death.
The enemy tank was not what I expected, so my opponent did a good job, -1 magic and a tank with shield ability, halving all melee and ranged damage (rounded up). So he nerfed ALL available attacks.
But still, the enemy team wasn't a match for mine and my monsters quickly shredded trough his monsters, this was a lower level player, so an easy win for me, getting me 0.115 SPS and 6529 Reward Points which are used to collect reward chests.
Without getting too much in depth in abilities and rulesets, because it's just too much to grasp at once here are some basics to hold on to.
For abilities
Sneak - attacks the last cards first, when you expect this, make sure to put a higher HP monster in your last position.
Snipe - attacks the first non-melee card in your team, if you're only playing melee, it will just attack your first position.
Shield - Is not the same as armor!!! shield halves all incoming melee and ranged damage, rounded up, so if you hit a shield tank with 3 damage, it takes 2 damage (3 / 2 = 1.5 rounded up = 2).
When the attacker does only 1 damage, the damage taken will be 0! To counter shield, use magic.
Good to know: Earthquake damage and Thorns damage are halved also.
Void - The magic equivalent of shield, halving all magic damage, rounded up. To counter void, use melee or ranged.
Opportunity - targets the lowest HP cards on the enemy team, if you have multiple cards of the same HP, it targets the cards the most to the front first. To counter opportunity, put a cheap card in front of your other cards, preferably with armor. The enemy opportunity monster will be distracted with this for 1 or 2 turns first.
Thorns - Returning 2 damage to melee attackers, counter this with a shielded tank to take only 1 damage or use ranged and magic attackers.
Blast - does additional damage to the surrounding cards. with blast ruleset, opportunity and snipe are great to use because they mostly will hit the center of the enemy team, damaging 3 cards in 1 attack. Counter blast with a Taunt monster in the first or last position with a reflection shield monster next to it to stop the blast damage.
Heal - In splinterlands we have 3 type of heals: self heal, it doesn't need explanation right? tank heal: will heal the card in the first position and triage: will heal any card except the first position who took the most damage.
Good to know: only use heal on high HP monsters. triage works well with a taunt monster in the backline. Counter heal with the affliction ability.
Taunt - Forces all enemy monsters except the first monster to attack this card. Counter with the Fury ability, it does double damage against taunt monsters.
For rulesets
Earthquake - all non flying monsters take 2 damage at the end of the turn. Use flying monsters, monsters with shield, monsters with armor and high HP. You can also use the summoner that gives flying ability for this, Brighton Bloom.
Poison - all monsters get 2 poison damage at the end of the turn, shield and armor won't help, poison goes straight to the HP. use the cleanse ability to cleanse your tank. or use cards with the immunity ability. (Fire has one from lvl 1, Forgotten One)
Briar Patch - giving all cards thorns, so pretty much don't use melee.
Equalizer - All monsters start with the same health, based on the highest health on either team. Always try to put 6 monsters on the board, high damage low HP monsters are perfect for this, life leech is also cool in this ruleset.
Fire and Regret - Basically, don't use ranged attacks.
Fog of War - All monsters lose the Sneak, Snipe and Opportunity abilities. You can expect magic against you most of the times.
Ferocity - All monsters have the Fury ability, basically don't use taunt.
Counterspell - Basically don't use magic unless it has void
Beginner mistakes
Mistakes are quickly made, and will make you lose the battle most of the times, sometimes you're lucky and still win though!
Just look at the rulesets every time, and think it trough! what is the best team to be played in this ruleset? and are you gonna play this, or are you gonna counter the best available team?
One of my guild mates shared this battle:
and then made this team:
Not the best solution for this battle maybe, but let's discuss it, we can learn more from mistakes than from victories.
Rulesets are Melee only, Blast, and no neutral cards.
So melee only, I want a shield card as a main tank, he did this right 😊
to counter the blast I would want a card with reflection shield in the 2nd position to neutralize the blast damage. But you can also want it in the 5th position against sneak blast damage.. choices!
A high HP as last card is also nice 👍 to protect at least a little against sneak.
Too bad neutral isn't allowed, or I would've wanted Desintegrator with demoralize (-1 melee damage).
All other cards except the first and second miss the abilities to do anything so they're useless until they get to the front.
To kill off enemy low HP sneak cards you could place a thorns card last.
In this battle, I think it would be better if he would've picked the fire splinter with Tarsa as the summoner (+1 melee damage), put living lava up front with shield, reflection shield in 2nd or 5th position and fill the team with some sneak monsters, high HP would be nice or they will die very soon because of the blast damage.
No neutrals make it a little though to make a nice all melee team because neutral has some nice sneak monsters (ureaus, sand worm..)
So just think about the ruleset, look at what your enemy likes to play, and then decide your own play, don't think too long though!, you only have 2:30 minutes 😉
Lets break down one more battle so we can learn 😃
Why I picked this team: for the enrage ruleset (well it's called what doesn't kills you now, it used to be enrage) I wanted a high melee damage monster with decent speed as a tank, because it gets multiplied when he's damaged.
for the snipe ruleset, I put a martyr card in the snipe position, to boost the attacks of my tank even further and also boost the 3rd card, which already has very high speed and flying, so will be difficult to hit for enemy archers. (note: I didn't know Yodin was to be played, the previous teams didn't had any Yodin)
My 4th card has the return fire ability, so it's a anti ranged sniper card.
My 5th card has triage, to hopefully heal my last card if it get's attacked by sneak.
My 6th card is a healer, to let my main tank survive longer. Note: when my tank gets fully healed, the enrage will be stopped also, until it gets damaged again.
What about the enemy team? (yeah it's a bot)
well... putting a void card with the snipe ruleset is pretty useless...
everything else is just a basic annoying noob Yodin play, but pretty effective, just not against my team! 😂
You can watch the battle unfold for yourself here.
My teams weakness would've been a water team with Djinn OShannus in the 2nd or 3rd spot, and opportunity to take out my healers. EVERY team has it's strengths and weaknesses, and every team has it's counters.
So I think this is enough info to let it sink in... hook me up if you have questions!
You can also join my guilds discord server for some extra help and advice if needed.
So... let that sink in a bit, I think next week theme will be the same, so I'll make a follow up on this one, there's plenty more info to share to starting players!
Thank you for reading!!!
If you haven't made an account already, please consider using my referral link to sign up, I'll happily send the amount I get for your signup back to you in DEC or SPS to help you start.
Have a great day!
