Hello! This is going to be my weekly entry into the Splinterlands Social Media challenge - I will be trying to, every week, find something positive in my Splinterlands journey; or just Splinterlands in general. There were many potential subjects this week, such as the Validator Nodes getting shown or getting closer and closer to the new revamped reward system and further on the Modern and Wild modes. Instead though, I chose something more personal, as that felt fitting for my first entry.

This one will be about my first ever successful tournament. I do not generally play many of them and usually I play the ones where I am lacking a lot in terms of collection, so I am happy to just make it to the top 30% and then lose all the games there to legendary summoners or untamed/beta cards. The one type of tournaments that I am not priced out, however, is the novice modern tournaments - I am missing just a few key Untamed epics, but that can usually be offset by rulesets, mana caps and so on.

The Tournament

The tournament in question was the N00B MODERN KOBOLD MINING EXPEDITION from the 17th April 2022. While my perfect tournament is the same one but Chaos Legion only, I really like these - they allow me to be very competitive because I have nearly all the cards that can be used. On top of that, they are really chill to play - Novice league tends to be quite random in its outcomes, as there are not that many ways to outplay your opponent, so overthinking your lineups is ill-advised.

One more upside is that most of the players who have full collections do not actually play in these tournaments, meaning that even the missing Untamed epics are pretty negligible. This is for two reasons: first of all, there is little incentive for them, as even the top rewards are 20 SPS - which isn't bad, but certainly not the most lucrative. One more reason is that anyone who finished above Silver has to pay 400DEC to enter, which is a really high amount - so pretty much no one from those leagues enters these tournaments.

As for myself, I own all the epics from Chaos Legion except Gem Meteor, but also miss EVERY SINGLE Untamed Epic. This means I am slightly disadvantaged, but not enough to really complain. Usually, I only really feel like I'm missing Azmare Harpoonist, Mitica Headhunter and Soulstorm in all rulesets and cards like The Gorlodon, Hero of Beyond and War Chaang situationally. The rest would be nice to have, but is also fairly replaceable. I will talk more about cards and strategies in the next paragraph though.

My Favourite Cards and Strategies

The thing with Novice tournaments is that it is pretty simple to choose the best teams, especially with as limited of a collection as this one allows. On top of that, missing all of the Untamed epics simply means I have it even easier. This is why I have some go-to cards and strategies which I like to use the most across certain mana caps and rulesets.

High Mana

My favourite individual cards for high mana battles include Wave Brood, Grund, as well as Nerissa Tridawn. For the Water ones, it is just so easy to play high mana with these two. I can combine them with high damage cards like Deeplurker and Serpent of Eld, which are safe from the opponent's attacks because of Wave Brood's Taunt. This is just such a simple, tried and true strategy that rarely fails to deliver. Grund with Mycelic Slipspawn works in a very similar way, where Slipspawn takes the opponent's attention to the backline, while Grund works his way through the frontline with Double Attack.

That said, my favourite strategy in those is Life! If I have access to a lot of mana, it feels good to just jam Shieldbearer and back him up with cards like Prismologist, Pelacor Arbalest and have them rip through the opposing monsters. This is especially nice in Even Stevens, as all the best Life cards are even mana.

Mid Mana

I find mid mana to be the kingdom of Death, at least when it comes to my preferences. My absolute favourite card in that range is Magi Necrosi and it is especially fun to combine with Cursed Windeku and a few other cards in between - the likes of Weirding Warrior or Soul Strangler, maybe even with Riftwing as a secondary tank.

Fire is my secondary choice, especially if Water is not available, where I can use Serpentine Spy, Spark Pixies, as well as powerful tanks with Shield, such as Antoid Platoon and Living Lava. Cards like Fire Elemental and Tenyii add variety to the possible choices and make it so that Fire can be used across multiple rulesets.

Low Mana

In lower mana caps, I feel like the choices are actually aplenty. Water has a lot of great cards that can stall the opponent, such as Albatross and Hardy Stonefish, while your backline does its job - this can be Deeplurker, a combination of Igor Darkspear and Kulu Swimhunter and many more. I have to admit I usually gravitate towards this splinter.

That said, I also like to vary my teams in low mana games the most when it comes to novice play. Death is a strong contender with Soul Strangler being the most damage you can get for 3 mana, while Life is a great choice if you know your opponent won't play magic, due to having Truthspeaker's Protect as an option.

The Final Result

So I mumbled a lot about Novice tournaments but how did I do in this one? Well, sadly I did not quite win it, but I did make it all the way to top 3! As usual with Novice tournaments, the win ratio required to be among the top players was not that high, with a mere 16-6 scoreline giving me the abovementioned position.

I am quite happy with that result, but definitely could pinpoint some small mistakes that could have possibly given me the top spot. That said, there were also other battles where I got lucky with my opponent picking a lineup weak into mine through nothing by chance, so I really can't complain. Getting just over 17 SPS is also a nice boost that puts me closer to being able to meet the staking requirements for participation in more tournaments!

Closing Words

Overall, I am really happy with my performance and this success really made me want to play in more tournaments. It also made me want to expand my collection in order to be able to participate in more tournaments with smaller restrictions as to what cards can be used - so perhaps it might be a little dangerous for my wallet.

Since it's a gaming-related post, here is a bunch of referral links of mine - if you're not playing any of the games I've written about, give them a try! I wouldn't write about bad games.. well, not without saying they're bad anyway. So, here they are:

SPLINTERLANDS - Splinterlands is the poster child of the HIVE blockchain. Join now through my referral link to get a few cards from me!

RABONA - Join the football management game through my referral link to receive a small RBN bonus!

RISING STAR - Here's the referral link to Rising Star. Start your way to mega stardom now!