I'm assuming everyone found it tougher to rise up the rankings this season... I made diamond III this time around, compared to diamond I last time around.
Most of my gains came in the last quarter of the season - I did play a few matches earlier on for the rewards, but it was too soul destroying losing all the time. Easer to wait until later when you're playing lower ranked decks who have struggled to get up to where you start from, rather than playing people with better decks who have been re-levelled along with you.
Like many other people I focussed on levelling up one deck to L6 (summoner) - the Life Splinter, but even this was only enough to get me to Diamond III. I was aiming for Diamond I again - i just get sick of losing after three in a row and lose interest... especially when it just comes down to level of vest, which is the case about 85% of the time.
The problem is playing with just one deck gets tedious. I'd much rather play with all my decks for variety, but just cannot afford to level up all of them.
This just makes me annoyed that the whole game is just designed to get me to spend money, which I just won't do!
(Nearly) daily giveaways
Something I have enjoyed is doing my daily giveaways - I figured that I can make a return to invest back into SM and do other people a favour..... I basically give away one card and an SBI share nearly ever day.... it takes upvoting my 
Assuming this whole project 'goes long'... the potential return on a daily SM giveaway post over 5 years is quite large: at a 0.50 cent payout, times 350 = 180/ year = $1000 dollars over five years, and if steem 10*, that's $5k, just for doing a quick post a day.
NB - I've decided that there is no real challenge in playing games of SM, the challenge is in levelling up without blowing your hard earned steem on the game, hence these giveaways!
SM - best played in 15-20 minute chunks
I've got into this habit of doing a quick count of the of the levels/ ranks of the cards of the two teams - if they're all L6 and I'm all L5, or vice versa, I just skip to results, normally by crude math predicts the result - I get bored, even when I'm winning.
Sometimes the battles are interesting - one in six roughly.
It's also been nice seeing a few people I recongize from around steem - 
I've settled on an approach where I only play for a small amount of time every day (20 mins), that way it's an OK compulsion and I don't get irritated.
Conclusion/ this season
Last season ended up being worthwhile when I received this bad boy in one of my reward rounds....
I'm holding off levelling up until I sell this, dunno how much it's worth, I haven't seen one actually sell yet, doesn't seem to be much of a market for these ATM.
I will carry on playing for now, although limit my time, and it's more of a compulsion rather than a pleasure!