Foundations is a limited set
Notice something about this battle? We both have identical matchups. The reason for that is actually fairly obvious. In foundations there are limited cards. When the matchup is limited to "FOREST" there are only a limited number of cards available. Throw in "POISON" and having a healing unit in the front position becomes imperative and having a "CLEANSE" unit in the backline before important as well. After that you have a limited amount of mana left (29 max for this battle) so you need to take the most damage that fits the remaining mana.
And we both knew it
Of course we both knew what we needed and came out with exactly the same lineup. The difference? I had higher level cards. When I noticed that the outcome was never really in doubt. Well, perhaps it would be a tie considering everyone was poisoned and could theoretically all die in the same round, but I doubted that.
By the time I saw this it was all over.
Some matchups you just can't win
Now I love that Splinterlands has a lot of different cards and rulesets. I love how a bad choice on one side can give the underdog the upper hand.
Unfortunately in some cases there is just no way to pull a win out of your cards and I think this is one of those times.
Luckily I spent last night upgrading my cards so I can battle through and increase rank. It is kind of funny that I'm still classified as Bronze in the ranking even though I'm already up to Gold I.
But I needed to level up cards.
When I was in bronze league I just levelled up my Archon to lvl 2 and key commons a little bit. That little push gave me a huge bonus and helped me win many many battles. Got me most of the way through Silver. I applaud Splinterlands for making a league where newbies can battle and win. The rewards are low but so is the financial curve to get in.
I did find that after Gold I the the competition was simply too stiff to be playing with under levelled cards :)
The worse part of levelling up all cards to MAX
The biggest issue I have with levelling up my cards to max (it wasn't that expensive) is that now when I open a chest there is really nothing to look forward to. No card to level up, no slots to fill and since I'm in the Frontier league / Foundation cards... there are no really expensive cards to pull from the packs.
Still I'm having fun in Splinterlands again.
Thanks to the developers, appreciate it.