Yes, I am an axie player too!

I am an axie-scholar of Axie Aquatic Fighters(AAF) managed by my friend @mindblast.

I started playing this P2E game last August, during the peak season of the game itself. And since then, I've accumulated a decent amount of SLP tokens that I rerolled to other NFT games and DeFi platforms. Considering the valuation of axie's slp at that time, it really gave me the best head start to fund my NFT investment on top of my HIVE earnings.

Now, I'm thinking of stepping up the game - for the next few weeks, I will try my best to accumulate more and save up in order for me to buy my own team or to start my Axie Scholarship Program. This will probably be realized earlier next year. But plans like these will never be as easy as they may seem.

The struggle is real for aqua users, and is harder than before.

The first weeks of my axie journey were wholesome experiences of competitiveness against other scholars in the game. I had a great run with my AAP lineup most especially against the BBP lineup and other AAPs. The only struggle for me at that time was taking up a hard lineup of Plant and Aqua/Beast comboed with a Reptile. The highest rating I got during Season 18 was 1.6k MMR.

There follows a series of changes in the game where the Sky Mavis Team cuts the SLP rewards and changes the breeding costs of every axie. This alters every game style of every player but boosted the competitiveness in the game.

But this time, during the off-season, prior to the kickstart of Season 19, I struggled a lot in the arena taking opponents that are rampant in my bracket. That time is considered as the rise of the Reptiles or commonly called terminators. It was all surprising to know that there are now more reptiles on starting bracket of 1.2k MMR than the regular Aqua and/or Beast Combos. Not to mention the hybrids present in the starting bracket. The off-season was a tough road for me, the highest rating I got was 1.4k MMR coming from 1.6k.

The survival mode begins

Season 19, the season we never expected to bring unreasonable changes to the game. Not only they did nerf most of the skills of the Aqua axies, but they also buffed the skills of the Reptiles and Beast which were regarded as OP axies from the start.

At the current state of my rating, I'm barely touching 1.2k MMR. The abrupt changes in the game really change the pace of my gaming techniques. Also, I was earning 150 SLP during the off-season but since the start of the new season, I struggled a lot more in the arena and couldn't even complete the 5 wins in the arena using my 20 energy.

To maintain my current rating now, which gives me at around 105 SLP or more a day, I changed regularly my axie lineups. Before I was using the AAP lineup but now, I am using the PAA and APA lineups.

The P-A-A( Plant Aqua Aqua)

This is my favorite lineup. This is so effective against other aquatic users. The plant behind gives you the upper hand of the game even against 2 aquas on the later part of the brawl. Basically, I saved up my skills for my plant for the later rounds and try to kill the opponent's plant earlier as possible. But even if I cannot kill immediately the opponent's plant in front, I still have a higher chance of winning since the opponents' chance of getting the cards is widely spread among his/her abled axies.

Here's one of my fights using AAP against PAA. Surprisingly, I lost in this match. I started using this lineup since this match. Always bear in mind that in every matchup using this lineup, the goal is to take the game to bloodmoon.

The A-P-A(Aqua Plant Aqua)

This one's a little bit complex lineup but can go against a variety of axie combinations like BBP Hybrids and RBPs and some Pure AAPs. I usually play with this kind of lineup when my gutfeel tells me that there are more Reptiles playing on a particular day. I won most of my battles against Bird Beast combo using this APA lineup. I also switch my backline Aqua to anti-Reptile/Plant from Burst Aqua against other aquas. The only drawback of this lineup is whenever I got a small chance of having Plant cards on early rounds. This is quite a challenging lineup than my favorite one which is the PAA.

Here's one of my battles using the APA lineup. As you can see, I got no cards on my plant for the round 3, how unfortunate.

Final say

The above-mentioned lineups do not guarantee wins on your arena battles. There will still be some moments where you use the inappropriate lineups against hybrids or even pure combinations like BBP and RBP. This does not include the chances of getting good cards vs the opponents. Taking your tank axie on either middle of back would take you to a longer battle time. I tell you, it's really time-consuming. If you are a Pure AAP user like me, I suggest you experiment on your lineup and combination. In my case, I basically get close to 60% winrate on my 20 energy using PAA and more or less 50% using APA.

But soon, I'll have my own axie team with my preferred axies and their skills.

What is HIVE?

If you want to know more about Hive, visit some links below.

• What is HIVE and how does it work?
• Where does the value of HIVE (the token) come from?
• Where does the money on your posts come from on Hive?
• What are the different ways to earn HIVE?