Hello, everyone! In my last post I talked about my gripes with the game, namely the state of ranked play, as well as my focus for the current modern cycle ( very exciting times for Splinterlands ) and my plans for my collection of cards going forward.
Today I want to share my experience for this first season with Conclave Arcana.
I'll start with the tournaments since those were my favorite.
Scholar Showcase Tournament : Adept Modern
This is a ghost card tournament, meaning all cards in the game are available for play here to all players. It's a nice way for people to get their aggression out and at the same time refine their skills in a competitive environment. It's also an extremely convenient way to try out strong cards one might want to buy in the future.
Entry is free but there's no prizes and the point of the event is for skilled players to get noticed and possibly become scholars of richer players who have cards to spare.
There's literally no downside for participation so I took a chance on it and submitted my battles.
In total 134 players participated and after the first round of battles the top 30% advance to the next round. Cards are all maxed out for the bronze league.
The following are some battles from the first round.
Link to the battle against
I think this battle is a nice example of how exciting it can be to participate in such a tournament as you get to use some premium cards. My opponent opted to use a Runi and I can't really blame him as you get an opportunity melee attack of 3!
I chose to field Venka, an extremely powerful card to the surprise of absolutely no one..
One of the modifiers for the battle was scattershot and luckily for me Venka received a hit.
Venka being an orc received the enrage benefit from my summoner going all the way up to 6 attack and taking out the Runi in just one hit thanks to piercing. Quite lucky for me!
Link to battle against
Once again, extremely strong cards being used here. The most impactful ruleset for this one was forcefield being applied to all units. The opponent chose Tofu as a summoner but thorns being one of his main assets makes it not the ideal choice for such a battle so I was able to get away with the win here. I went for a much more straightforward and violent option with EMP as a summoner and I put a lot on emphasis on melee attackers.
Link to battle against
In this other battle there were no special modifiers and I chose to pick Tofu myself this time around. I went for a focus on *Ulund+ synergies and magic attacks. Thanks to some buffs making me more beefy and some healing I was able to win before the venome effect from the opponent's summoner did too much work on me.
I definetely lost battles too, here's some instances of that.
Link to battle against
In hindsight I could have probably leveraged the opportunity modifier more here.
In this top-heavy battle my opponent was smart to pick the molten elemental that put in some very ddecent work.
Link to battle against
Here, between my two heals and the cleansing effect of EMP I would have expected to do better.
This was a battle where only magic units could be used and my opponent leveraged well the fact there was also a snipe modifier. I think the most important choice were the units we put in second place.
My opponent used the warborn shaman, an incredibly strong unit that was able to dish out a lot of damage while resisting some. Maybe it would have been a closer battle if I didn't overlook that amazing card.
Link to battle against
In this one the modifier forced us to only use melee units so we both opted for Tofu as a summoner and we had identical units in the first two spots too.
I decided to use the divine shield effect which allowed me to withstand more damage and work through his frontline.
However my opponent picked Gramel, the Hunger and was able to do a lot of damage with it.
He chose to apply scavenger and triage and when it came down to the last few units my opponent was still in decent shape so he was able to take me down.
I have to wonder what would have happened if I picked Gramel too but still went for the divine shield choice. Definetely could have chosen my backline better there.
At the end of first round I won 8 matches and lost 3. This result was good enough to allow me to keep fighting in the second round. Here's some more battles from it.
Link of battle against
I like this battle because it features one of my favorite units, owlking geodesist, putting in some great work with his execute ability. You don't always need to be an elf to harness powerful magic, it seems like.
Of course using Tofu helps 😉
We had the melee mayhem ruleset for this battle but the extra health and thorns were still too strong for me to be overwhelmed with this lineup.
Link of battle against
Here we had the holy protection and keep your distance ruleset.
This was another instance of my opponent picking Tofu in a situation where it wasn't as effective since we couldn't use melee units.
I figured I could use the strong effect from Akane to overwhelm my opponent and stya haead of the curve while benefiting from the divine shields and slowly work down my enemey.
I chose the fire splinter as an ally in order to use the chaos evoker. Thanks to multiple instances of double strike and blast attacks I put out a lot of damage.
The rest of my team was chosen to provide some solid damage while staying healthy and protected.
Sometimes things don't go according to plan but it wasn't the case here and the win was quite satisfying.
Akane might be a slightly underrated card and I definetely need to experiment more with it in the future.
Link of battle against
My opponent here went for this bold strategy of using Nidhoggr.
Lord Thalanor and Tofu make for an overwhelming combo and each melee attack was costing 3HP to my opponent once the might elf got to the front. That, combined with a lucky scattershot hit, allowed me to take down my opponent's Gramel prematurely and seal the deal.
Overall I completed the tournament with 16 wins and 5 losses which netted me the 10th place, a result by which I was a bit surprised.
I think with some more attention to details and focus I could have done even better but these considerations are always easy in hindsight, of course.
This was definetely a very interesting and fun event. Virtually nothing was on the line but at least everyone had equal opportunities, which is rarely the case in Splinterlands as well as in life in general.
Like in all tournaments some people did not submit their teams in time. This is quite common and I've committed this mistake myself in the past. However in this particular case I noticed it was happening perhaps a bit more often than usual and this was probably due to the fact that there were no entry fees or rewards involved.
Notably, because of forfeits, I missed my chance to compete on an even field with 
I don't think the forfeits are a significant blemish to my permormance as it ultimately affected me just as much as other participants.
Just above me, in 9th place, I noticed 
I plan on participating in similar tournaments in the future as there's not really any downside and you can learn some interesting strategies in a competitive environment.
Tidalring Modern Bronze Invitational
I also decided to try and participate in this other tournament.
To my surprise I survived the first round with a result of 8 wins and 3 losses but in the second round competition was indeed much tougher and I could only manage to achieve two more wins from the rest of my battles.
Quite tough, with a mix of good strategy and strong cards many of my opponents decisively defeated me.
Here's one battle where I was barely able to come out on top.
This tournament was indeed tough but as I'll buy more legendary cards I'm still missing I should be able to improve on my performance and get better prizes.
For this one I was able to secure 63 SPS which amply covers the admission fee of 100 DEC and will allow me to try my luck in many such competitions in the future so overall I can't be too disappointed with the experience.
The guild brawls weren't exactly too interesting but there's still some that are worth mentioning.
In this one we had the target practice, noxious fumes and counterspell rulesets.
Since the mana allowed was only 15 I decided to use the dragon splinter in order to field the redwyrm dragon and with the remaining mana I used Orella Abadon, possibly one of the strongest gladiator cards in relation to the mana cost ( even now that Tarsa is gone she's still quite useful ).
My opponent couldn't choose an appropriate team to tackle this very specific ruleset so I easily won.
This other battle was much different. Very high mana cap and it really came down to the last few units to determine the result.
Rulesets were earthquake, equal opportunity and even stevens.
The venom from my opponent did a lot of work but ultimately the effects from Lorkus are still too powerful, especially when paired with magic units.
Not much to say, it's hands down the best card I own and it has carried me throughout this whole season.
Lastly, I wanna talk about my experience with ranked games this season.
Just like in the previous months the whole thing felt rather dull and it really is just more like a chore I have to accept to do.
I spent most of my time going back and forth between Silver III and Silver II but with just bronze level summoners to rely upon it was of course extremely hit or miss.
I do have quite decent death and fire silver level cards so maybe in the future I will at least try to rent an appropriate summoner to even out the playing field a bit and see how that goes.
In general though my plan is still to focus entirely on Bronze and Novice tournaments and I don't really want to spend much for ranked play.
In a perfect world.. one that existed not too long ago.. I'd be able to decide my budget and what level I'd be playing at and choose to face just opponents of the according level.
Please, bring leagues back! Make ranked games fun again 😩😩
As reported by Peakmonster the modern core cards I own are worth 211$ currently and I have 9k of staked SPS. Plenty for Bronze and Silver.
I was able to get 57 SPS this season. A significant stepdown from my days of playing in Gold and Silver with Chaos Legion cards. Back then a season would usually net me 200 SPS.
With glint it was a different story! I was able to get about 58k glint this season which is plenty for my usual standards. I'll definetely be able to purchase more legendaries before the new reward cards will be released, which is an exciting prospect!
Of course this season was an unsual one as a lot of people must have still been playing in wild, taking advantage of their cheap Chaos Legion cards and the free pass.
Next season might indeed be a bit different and in general the next few weeks will still likely be a period of adjustment. Curious to see how it'll go.
Now I'll share some interesting ranked battles I've been playing this season.
This one was a nice win by me. My opponent was maxed out for Silver play but I was still able to compete thanks to Lorkus.
Barashkukor exploded the enemy taunter in just one hit. Incredibly satisfying!
Arachne weaver did a lot of work for me too with its healing.
It was a bit surprising to me since the void ability from the opponent summoner is definetely a counter to magic units but Lorkus is so absurdly strong that I was still able to overwhelm him.
It wasn't always Lorkus that carried me. Here it was EMP that saved me instead.
This is not a summoner I outright own as of now, so I had to rent it instead.
2$ for 21 days so hopefully I will still be able to make some use of it in upcoming tournaments.
When I saw the opponent lineup I wouldn't have expected to win but the repair and the heal were enough for my tank to work through the opponent's Mantaroth in time and so I secured the win.
Of course the cleanse was the perfect counter to the opponent summoner but I would have still expected Mantaroth to come out on top.
In this other battle I was again to able to stand my ground against a Silver level deck thanks to a legendary summoner.
The magic attacks from the opponent were extremely effective and perhaps in hindsight I could have chosen a different lineup but to my great surprise it really came down to the last few units and I was still able to win here.
This other one here was quite different though.
Prophet Rosa allows us to use some very cheeky strategies.
I did, indeed, bring out the cheese for this one 🧀🐀🧀
I think what's interesting is that currently it's a bit of a guessing game when going against the water splinter.
They have a strong melee tank in Commander Slade. They can try to blow you away with magic cards like Darg Deadblast and shock trooper. And lastly they can heavily rely on the ranged buff from Propher Rosa to carry them.
One can never really know what's going to happen and it's difficult to cover all three strategies at once. Very tricky.
I hope you enjoyed my recount and some of these battles. I've still got a long way to go and I need to acquire some strong cards that I'm currently missing.