Hello, this week I will be participating again in the Social Media Challenge and as usual I will update you on my tournament results. I will also bring up a topic related to the game that I've talked about in some of my old posts too and I hope this will be fertile ground for productive discussions.
Let's start with the battle I'd like to share
You can find the link to the battle here so that you can spectate and replay it at your own leisure.
My opponent was 
As you can see the peculiar aspect of this battle is that we bot chose the same exact summoners, units and even order of the lineup. This is not necessarily something you see too often in a battle with a 37 mana cap.
Great minds think alike, perhaps.. but this was no coincidence
This being a tournament restricted to just the Conclave Arcana set, it isn't so surprising that there would be only a couple of summoner choices that made sense, given the available splinters.
This was further compounded by the very restricting "Might makes right" ruleset, significantly excluding most units from play.
I think we can all appreciate how this wasn't exactly an edge-of-your-seat kind of battle and it was just a 50-50 lucky tie-breaker that turned the battle in my favor.
You might think I'm cherry-picking an absurd example..
..but in reality most tournaments that are restricted to only one set are bound to be relatively unexciting compared to what the much wider Modern and Wild format have to offer.
There's a particular nuance and elements of design that get completely lost when you isolate these sets, such as Conclave Arcana and Rebellion, that have been engineered to be played together for the best experience possible. When you take that away the playing experience is rather dull.
Now, this was a tournament hosted by kryptogamers. They host these mini tournaments with a pretty fast cadence (there's one every 3-4 days) and even though the rewards are fewer compared to some of the official tournaments they're still a fun opportunity to test your skill in a competitive environment..
..or they'd have the potential to do so if the format wasn't so restricting and unexciting.
But it isn't just kryptogamers that organizes such tournaments, the DAO funds such tournaments too in the form of the "Scarred Hand Novice Cup".
The reward structure is juicier and some staked SPS is required to participate but the game format is exactly the same. Rebellion isn't usable and it's just Conclave Arcana cards. I am genuinely curious as to why is that.
Is this really something people look forward to and enjoy? Wouldn't those funds be better spent to finance even more tournaments in the Modern format instead??
Anyway, let's step away from the whole thing for a moment.
I'd like to give some context and talk about why I'm focusing on this topic today.
One of the catalysts was, of course, the funny mirror match I shared above and to a larger extent the whole experience in the tournament. However there was also a recent YouTube video made by 
You can consider this post of mine my reaction to the video 😉
As you can see it's a video on the topic of player engagement and retention in Splinterlands, something that is often discussed and looked critically at both in this Hive community as well as by the team during their Town Halls.
The issue is, of course, complicated and there's no easy solution. There's even people that suggest that the game doesn't necessarily need that many new players and it might be sustainable in the long run even with its current player-base.
I don't intend to argue on that point but rather just offer my two cents as to what the team is doing right and wrong in order to keep the game fun and engaging.
Here's what I think :
⚠️ Some things can't be changed
By this I mean that Splinterlands needs to remain both a game and an investment.
Aftersound states in his video that "you need all the cards" in order to climb the ladder.
This is something that it's true right now, as you need both cards and staked SPS to progress effectively, and it should absolutely remain the same.
No new player should expect to get significant returns or "climb the ladder" without any investment and I think in that sense the game is in a good spot compared to a few years ago.
😡 Bring leagues back!!!
Seriously, it baffles my mind every time I think about it and it's really the meat and bones of what I'd like to discuss here.
This is a topic that is sometimes brought up by the players but not often enough and definetely not in Town Halls. I don't know how people are not clamoring and protesting about this more.
To me, the game used to be much more enjoyable when there were league restrictions available.
Ranked mode has always been the main activity to do within the game and up until the second half of Chaos Legion it was highly enjoyable. Each player could pick the league he might have wanted based on the economic level of commitment he was more comfortable with.
Back then the game was almost indistinguishable from tournaments and it felt like every battle was a puzzle you had the potential to solve, granted you had the cards and skill necessary.
This is no longer the case now, without league restrictions in place ranked feels like a joke.
It's not just a matter of money and returns. It truly just feels like a chore.
I only participate because I need to justify the ownership of my cards by earning whatever SPS and glint I can.
My experience is without fail the same every season. I play with my modern bronze cards until I can creep into Silver III or Silver II and from then every match is just a crapshoot on wether or not my opponent will outmatch me with his silver cards. It's not fun or enjoyable, there's no one that would find this enjoyable.
We need leagues back and I don't know if the team is just too jaded or disconnected from reality for this not to be one of their priorities.
I really hope there can be some critical discussion around this as the game really is at its best when it's competitive. I think in terms of player retention prospects the game was just as healthy if not more so when we had the leagues.
I don't think it's a good look when we present to new players a version of ranked mode, the main mode of play in the game, that is essentially just a big endless hamster wheel of spending to improve your collection whereas at least with leagues there were some restrictions and more structure to it. The system that we have now is also particularly instulting to old players that remember how it used to be since the inception of the game and now have to settle for a version that is not designed to be competitive.
🎮 The leaderboard "argument"
The justification for leagues being taken away was that many players with high-level cards were having too hard a time in their ladder progression each season and they were essentially being "gatekept" in the lower leagues by strong tournament players who had all the key meta cards for that level.
I don't see that as a problem as only the most skilled players should be able to compete in the higher leagues anyway.
But even if we were not to agree to on that, there might have been so many better fixes to the issue that didn't compromise the competitive integrity of the game altogether.
The issue essentially presented itself at the beginning of the season. One simple way to circumvent it could have been to have players opt into a specific league at the beginning of the season and just have them fight to begin with.
That way players with high-level cards could have just spent the season in the league that fit them best without having to spend the first few days fighting in the lower leagues.
The whole concept of leaderboards doesn't make sense, especially with the way they're currently designed after the seasonal reset and more in general with the current state of ranked with no leagues.
In a perfect world there'd be no leaderboards and the money would instead be spent on better and more frequent tournaments. That'd satisfy the more competitive people at all levels.
If you combine this with my previous suggestion you could envision a world where players with various budgets and different ambitions could both enjoy ranked mode all season long at a reasonable level.
🏆 Tournaments
Speaking of competitive play, and going back to Aftersound's video, I think tournaments are in a good spot.
This is currently the game mode I like the most, along with brawls, and it's what I really look forward to every week. It's what kept me spending money over these months, ever since leagues were taken away.
There is a bit too much emphasis on Gold foils only tournaments, which as a budget player is not something I really look forward to. There might be some hunger for this type of format but it is not my case.
But on the whole the tournament scene is fine. They could be a bit more frequent but overall the structure is good. No need to reinvent the wheel there.
As I said in the first part of my post, it wouldn't hurt if some of the wackier formats would be converted into something else. Conclave Arcana only is not fun to play in.
But the point I really want to make is that players shouldn't have to go too much out of their way to find a competitive mode when we already had once since the inception of the game and it was called "Ranked mode".
Ultimately I can echo Aftersound's suggestion for some added focus on tournaments.
👻 Ghost card tournaments / Practice mode / Challenge mode
These are different things but they somehow satisfy the same need in the sense that it's fun to give new or budget players an outlet where they can experience the "premium" version of the game with all the fancy cards and stylish tactics at their disposal without having to pay.
Ghost card tournaments can be fun, I participated in a few in the past.
However there's not really any economic incentive for players to do well in them and I think it should remain that way. It should be something that it's just for fun.
You can try on new clothes before buying them and similarly you can have fun with Splinterlands cards before renting or buying them. Ghost card tournaments allow you to do that.
Aftersound also envisions some sort of free mode where new players could play, without receiving rewards, with all the cards as much as they want to until their heart's content.
I don't know if there'd be a high demand for that or it'd be instrumental in retaining new players but I doubt it.
Ultimately the game is exciting because there's a puzzle element to it but there's also money on the line. No one would be as excited to play Splinterlands if it were just for the game itself.
It's the combination of strategy, real ownership of assets and potential to earn that makes it truly unique. Because of that I don't think there'd be a free game mode with no rewards that would keep new players engaged for a long time.
🏃 Survival mode
This is another under-utilized game mode. I personally haven't played it much and for me it fails in the same exact way that the current iteration of ranked also does.
Without any competitive restrictions it really just becomes a game format for people that spend a lot of money on rentals.
However, while that is a pity, I don't see it as something crucial. Survival mode could very well remain the same and perhaps give people some use cases for Chaos Legion and other over-printed cards.
Ranked is really where the change should happen.
To go back to some content that is usually featured in my Splinterlands posts let's forget about the silly Conclave Arcana tournament and focus our attention on the more recent edition of the Tidalring Modern Novice Invitational 😉
This was a fun win I had where I used Sheng Xiao to great effect.
As you can see the mana cap was rather restricting and we also had the beefcakes ruleset so we had to be extra picky with our choiches.
At only 5 mana, and just two extra mana over my opponent's chose summoner, Sheng Xiao brings incredible value to most low to mid range mana battles. It's a summoner I recently bought and I'm already starting to enjoy a lot.
I don't like that there's built-in randomness in its poison burst effect but I'm not the one designing these cards.
What I want to highlight is how cost efficient it to use this summoner and just adopt a passive approach to potentially take down stronger lineups.
The rest of the first round was otherwise relatively straightforward and I managed to pull off a score of 8-3, with a good chance at some juicy rewards. Here's one of my key losses in that round.
I clearly adopted a much more agressive approach in this other battle, I figured my opponent would have gone for Tofu and I might have been able to overwhelm still with Rage and Akane's ambush effect. It was close but in the end Tofu came out on top!
Perhaps by using Sheng Xiao again in a passive way or by going Tofu myself I could have had better chances there.
Here's how I did in the second round!
This was a battle I submitted somewhat tentatively knowing full well that it'd be a Tofu mirror match.
I was very relieved in seeing that my opponent leaned so heavily on the melee units there, which spelled doom for him.
This time around Sheng Xiao failed me in a matchup against Lorkus.
RNG was even on my side there as I managed to stick the venom on the enemy's Barashkukor early on but it still didn't help. I figured my Rage would make a bigger stand but it was relatively quickly dispatched this time.
I also got my revenge against Pipipetra, who bested me in the first round. You can watch the battle here.
We had this restriction to ranged units which made forming a team difficult, especially in a low mana fight. My opponent chose Prophet Rosa and I mantain that it is an underrated surprise summoner that can guarantee some cheeky winse. However in this case the lineup chosen wasn't adequate and especially not against my Sheng Xiao so this was a sweet and straightforward win.
In this battle me and my opponent had the same idea but he brought an Eleanor Bravefoot that definetely gave him an edge in the mirror match.
After some thought I decided to go for Lorkus in this battle.
A lot of the same cards here but also some notable differences.
Sadly my arachne weaver didn't get to heal Mantaroth in time and he got cut down by magic attacks.
However the quality of my cards was still superior here and that got me a relatively easy win.
I don't think the blazebeard mercenary did any favors to my opponent there, it's a very double-edged unit and essentially not needed given that ruleset.
Against 
It was a cool battle but I completely forgot that Aranduriel and Tasoshi Drakamoto don't get their special painforge effect until they're leveled up a bit. I was anticipating Sheng Xiao and hoping to get some mileage out of the venom going out on me but I missed a crucial detail and in general I think my frontline was more brittle than what I'd hoped for.
As usual the battles in the second round were much more exciting than those in the first since competition is tougher.
My overall score for the tournament was 11-10 and I stand to win either 48 or 96 liquid SPS but regardless, I had a fun time 😎
I made a YouTube video featuring my favorite battles, you can find it at this link.
Keep up the grind, in Splinterlands and on Hive 😉⬆️