I was mindlessly playing Splinterlands (Bronze 1) when I noticed a pattern in my recent losses.
The Build
It's a Water deck that's anti-magic, with Bortus as the summoner, Sea Monster as the tank, and Crustacean King and Water Elemental at the back, and mostly Gold Foils (GF).
Sample order of deck (stats not accurate due to Summoner/League limits)
I had free time so I decided to open a few browser tabs and dived into my presumption to be a Splinterlands bot rabbit hole. It is important to note, however, that I may be wrong and this is just my confirmation bias acting up from the lack of coffee.
Three tools I utilised: Peakmonster's Cards page and Explorer page, and the Baron's toolbox.
I chose @/gootkit and explored their history and it led me to @/kitakiki. Kitakiki was gifted by ~81 users, 37 of which have active card rentals similar to the ones I've pointed out, ranging from 140-170 DEC/day rentals. There's one user who kitakiki gifted, which I assume to be the owner of all these accounts, as it's the only one among the users involved who has a lot of owned Rewards cards and has ~12,000 DEC. I don't feel like disclosing their name because I respect their hustle.
So what now?
Yeah, yeah, it's none of my business but I'm naturally curious (or nosy, hehe) and given that everything's in the blockchain, I gave into the temptation of knowing or having an idea on how these bots operate.
Interestingly, a few days prior, I chanced upon a blogpost of 
Which raises the question: Could bots possibly contributed remarkably to kalkulus's data? I think it's highly likely. Of course, I don't wish to underestimate the human players who must have thought of countering the current meta in this league (Venari Wavesmith waves ha ha) but they could have effortlessly automated this by using bots.
Is it profitable?
Effortlessly might be appropriate if they own the bot programs for playing ranked games and renting their deck.
If there are costs involved, however, I'm not too sure. I tried to do the math but I'm coming up with a negative profit, considering the 1)fees for the bot ($1 to $2 per account) and 2)daily DEC rental fees (140-170 DEC/day). What's the catch for running these many accounts? Chance of getting worthy Rewards cards, eventually? Are they profitable due to use of Alpha/Beta and GF cards?
What's next?
I'll try to come up with a strategy to counter this anti-magic build, and share with you if it's successful or otherwise.
If you've already tried countering it but keeps losing, perhaps it's time to do your best and climb up to Silver 3 and beyond. Personally, I enjoy Silver more due its varying rulesets.
Send tips my way please if you already know of a build I can use to go against it!
That's enough ramblings for today. Cheers!
Note: This is my first attempt at writing a blogpost about Splinterlands. Constructive feedback are welcome! Thanks to 