Splinterlands: Rag to Riches, Week 2

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(Edited)

Hello everyone, it's me again and back for week 2 of my Rag to Riches diary. This has been a busy week for me so I think I actually missed my intended submission time for this entry, but no worry, I can be late but I will try to stay up and write this every week. I can admit that I have failed a lot of long-term projects due to my tendency to procrastinate.

Week 2 Rewards

Rewards in the lower ranks are nothing special, which is understandable. I can understand why everyone said the potions are abundant and rather useless unless you are a huge pack buyer -- like there are too many of them with the 33% drop rate and a low budget - or in my case, no budget - player like me has absolutely zero usage of them.

I do like the variety of card rewards that I am getting. Are they very useful cards? Not all of them for sure, but I am not getting 10 more Ant Miners, which is already a plus in my book. Of all the rewards, I had certainly won with Undead Rexx, Grim Reaper, Ettin Spearman, and Sand Worm. At the lower level, raw stats are dumb but effective. You can win plenty of matches just by throwing a big dude in front, which is why Goblin Mech a premium card. When I don't have a lot of ideas in a match due to rule sets, or limited active colors, or my mind is simply blank, I just slap the Mech up front and hope it delivers.

I also bought a few cards at the weekend to have fun with (mainly) Water: Sea Monster, Water Elemental, Crustacean King, Captain's Ghost, and Wood Nymph. All level 1, of course.

Also, special shoutout to @kiokizz who gifted me a Furious Chicken - a great card if used well at the lower level - to go along with my first giveaway win of 400 DEC! This is a great part of this lovely community. If you are willing to enter the giveaways everyday, you are bound to win one eventually. Maybe they like you enough to give you something extra too!

But these rewards are boring compared to the season chest:

Yay for my first legendary! And another pack too! Speaking of packs, I don't know if this is the right move but I am holding them - I had 2 including the one I didn't touch from last week - for now. I want to wait and see if the September ranking update(Collection Power) does indeed increase the value of our collection. I don't think the pack price is going way down either, but I could be wrong. As of now, I will take the gamble and hold on to them -- but if you all have a better idea of the market, do feel free to leave a comment.

The soon-to-come Collection Power implementation

I think the collection power is an interesting idea and I hope it solves the bot problem. However, I also see another way to abuse it. A player can easily hold their collection just a few points short of the next tier and dominate said tier. Like you can manipulate your power level by putting all the cards you don't use onto the market with an extremely high price so no one buys them, and then cap your power level to the tier you think you can do very very well -- that is assuming the season-ending reward is worth far more than the daily reward of the higher tier, of course. You can also do the reverse and buy the cheapest epic or legendary to hard-bump your collection point if you believe the daily reward is worth the price. It's a quite easy system to manipulate and I have seen a system like this being manipulated hard in other games. If the season-ending rewards are great, I can totally expect hard grinders targeting a certain tier, set his power to said tier, and just dominate.

With all that said, I think this collection power update is going to hurt my F2P plan. Now my power is only worth it to hit Bronze 2 -- and that's only because I opened a legendary. Without it, I am lower than 1,000 and would be playing all sorts of bots at the lowest tier. But, we will see how it goes, I guess. For now, I am trying to grind back up to Silver 1 or Gold 3 and get all the rewards I can until the end of this season.

Here is my result by the middle of August 19 in my time zone, so a little bit over the intended week 2, but hey, I don't think my profile is interesting in any way, I am just recording it down for the sake of tracking my progress.

Meta Deck at the Low Level?!

I have seen some interesting cards like Stonesplitter Orcs, Cerberus, and so on being used in the lower levels, but there's only one meta deck that I frequently see and has been one of the toughest to beat -- White Tyrus Paladium deck with a core of Silverback Paladin, Divine Healer, and Air Elemental at bronze maxed out level - so level 2 summoner, level 3 commons and level 2 rare and above. I think the most important upgrades, besides the summoner, are level 2 Air Elemental(for the 3 ranged attack) and level 2 Divine Healer(for the 1 magic attack). You can run other cards at level 1 and still see solid results. The core idea is to have one of the best budget tank-heal combo at the low level (at least they are the best I have seen so far) and then have the Elemental just destroy everyone from behind.

After you have the core, you can pair them up with whatever cards you want, but most extra monsters I see are efficient creatures like Feral Spirit, Centaur, and Peacebringer. The idea is to pile up the attack count and damage per turn mana-efficiently.

I think it is truly one of the toughest decks to play against unless you go in with a plan at hand. Like I don't think you can win against this lethal combination of damage and tanking with just the default cards, or random pairing. Like these players running this deck don't even have to think about positioning, it's the same order nearly every time. Paladin in front, Healer at second slot, everything extra at the middle and Air Elemental on the very back end. They will give you the same order, knowing that you can't beat them anyway.

As a fan of countering the meta, which I do in almost every game instead of just joining the meta, I have brainstormed a couple of strategies to try to counter this combination. Nothing is 100% working right now though and I will have to continue to test them when I meet them. I am thinking of writing an extra post where I break down the strengths and weaknesses of this deck, and how to fight against them.

That's all for this week, see you again in my next report (or possibly the extra post within this week about the Paladin deck) and thanks for reading.



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3 comments
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If you can take out that Air Elemental, that team has no real attack left.
Also, your back line is safe; as they have no snipes or sneaks.
Alric Stormbringer + Coral Wraith = 3 magic sneak dmg per round.

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Thanks for the tips. Although respecting the challenge I don't have the money for Stormbringer just yet. I guess I can rent it but it seems like a lot to track the renting money.

One plan of mine as of now is to one-shot the Air Elemental with Sand Worm, but sometimes it needs two shots due to the summoner's +1 armor. The Wizard of Eastwood + Goblin Thief + Sand Worm is a sure one-shot(assuming the two hits connect) no matter if the armor buff goes first or second. If my WoE debuffs goes first, the elemental will have 1 armor, then my Thief can cut it for the Worm to hit for the 5. This plan only works for high mana matches though. I will look into Coral Wraith and etc and try to find a low or mid mana plan.

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