Hi all,
I decided to try Splinterlands again after watching this vid from 
https://twitter.com/bulldog1205/status/1690162590477893632
- bulldog1205
Barrier #1 - No Spell Book
I joined their discord and he graciously gave me a promo code for a free spell book (normally $10 USD). This removed one of the (many) barriers to entry into the game.
Barrier #2: No Resources
I had no cards except for starter cards, but you don't earn any rewards with those. No chests, no SPS, nothing. How to get cards? Buy with DEC. I don't have DEC. I need to swap HIVE for it.
Done:
You can also buy cards with credits (which you can buy with Paypal or a credit card). That's the "0" on the left above.
Barrier #3: No Cards
OK. So now I have some resources. How to get cards? Everyone (and I mean everyone) has said to rent cards instead of buying them. For that, I had to head over to https://peakmonsters.com/.
(dear god:)
What are good cards? How do I build a deck? How much will this cost? Luckily, bulldog built a starter deck that you can rent all at once. It only costs ~$0.12 USD per day to rent.
Unfortunately, my renting experience wasn't a great one. It takes a while to load 100+ cards into your shopping cart, and during that time, several of the early cards got rented to others. This made my shopping card invalid. By the time I figured out how to clear those cards, more had gone invalid. Then can I rent the remaining cards? I press the button. It says I did. No cards show up. By this point, I'm starting to realize that you have to REALLY want to play this game to get to any actual gameplay.
I decide to rent a cards from bulldog's deck one at a time. I grab Llama & Kron and a few other super cheap earth (green) cards. The rest are still all starter cards.
Barrier 3: Staking SPS
As bulldog explained in his video, SPS staking can be used to boost the amount of SPS you get rewarded for playing. I staked around $10 worth of the stuff. I didn't realize, but you do earn 15% APR on your staked SPS.
Finally Game Time
OK! That stuff up there ^ was not fun, but now it's game time! I win a bunch of games and jump from Bronze III to Bronze II just by using the LLama/Kron combo. Half-way through Bronze II, the rulesets prevent me from hardly ever using him. Each game has a random set of rules and restrictions on cards you can play. For example, if Earth (green) cards aren't allowed, I only have starter cards. I quickly got into the habit of surrendering these games. Even in bronze 2, these cards weren't cutting it. Plus, I get no rewards from winning. I decide instead to just focus on winning the games where I can play llama/kron and to rush through my 50 energy.
I can't find an overall win %, but as you can imagine, it wasn't very good. This wasn't bulldog's fault. I only rented 10% of the cards he suggested! I also had no idea how to play (and still only having a very basic idea). The good news is that the 50 games flew by. I'd be surprised if it took me 2 hours all told to play them all.
In that time, I earned 7 season chests! No idea what's in them, but I hope it's cards.
I earned a few focus chests, but there weren't any cards in there. Mainly potions and things that (I think) you use to boost your pack opening rewards.
I also earned a little over 2 SPS tokens. That's roughly 44 DEC at current market prices. This almost covered 1 day of my 2 day rental (each row is a card. the 40 and 20 cost cards are LLama/Kron):
Unfortunately, SPS earned through battling is staked. This means you can't trade it for more DEC. (You can, but you have to unstake it first, which takes weeks.)
I also learned a lot about the game itself. I probably learned the most by watching the cards/comps other people used to crush me.
Conclusion
Overall, I can't say I'm thrilled with my experience. It's easy enough to make an account and play some of the practice games, but it felt like work jumping through all the hoops to play the real game with NFTs enabled. Also, I don't love that cards level up simply by paying more money. Buy more cards, power them up, and then they get bonus stats. I don't know enough to speak with any authority on this, but I can't imagine any real path for budget players to reach the highest leagues with cards they own. Renting is the only option.
The gameplay itself is decent. The strategy is all about putting a strong team together given the current ruleset you are facing. However, for me this just came down to praying Earth cards were allowed and that I had at least 17 mana so I could play my combo. More (and better) cards will alleviate that.
At the end of the day, I'm on the fence about how much further into the game I want to go. I'm going to let my energy recharge, and then I'm going to rent bulldog's full deck (no matter how painful!) and try again. I may also go ahead and rent for 3-4 days instead of 2 just to avoid the pain of re-renting them so often. The earning is certainly not worth playing a game that you don't find fun, so if the fun doesn't pan out, I can't see myself grinding. I'm hopeful that a full deck of good cards will make the experience much more fun. I also want to learn more than just Earth!
Special thanks to 
