Hm, I wonder where to start! Oh boy!
Let me go back to the beginning. I've joined hive. Started writing about the things I care for and got myself acquainted with a few communities that are likely to agree with me. Joined their discord servers. One of them was BDcommunity, consisted of my fellow countrymen who speak the same language, share the same culture and its nuances. However, among the chitter chatters, I saw a lot of commentary about Splinterlands. There are some really passionate players there who talk and theorize about the game every day. But the game itself didn't feel like much to me. I'm more of a single-player, action-adventure, open-world game kinda guy. But since everyone was talking about the game, I got curious and started playing. And after a day or two, I thought, hey this is not bad ! The game actually pushes me to think for each and every single match and that is wonderful!
I went searching on the web for explanations of game mechanics and found Costanza's posts. He seemed to me like a welcoming and helpful guy and I signed up (for real this time) with his referral link. It was on August 8, 2020—exactly 22 days ago. Upon buying the spellbook, he delegated some cards a new player does not usually have. Also one of the prominent players of the game and a frequent face of bdcommunity @Hossainbd sent some cards over (I actually didn’t realize how much that helped) and I started playing the game with a newfound enthusiasm.
I had six days till the season was supposed to bring down the curtain and I reached Diamond III. Thinking back, I had about 7000 collection power worth of cards then.
Seeing me playing a lot, another player and probably the face of the entire bdcommunity 
However, you can’t go on playing the game on the gifts alone and that is not viable (or practical) in many different ways.
I was reluctant to invest just then—seeing the collection power update was imminent. I wanted to see how things go first. With the cards I had, I couldn’t even play in the Silver league following the new rule.
But I wanted to keep playing. So what I can do? At this point, I was made aware that I can lease cards and use them in battles. I will admit I’m not that crypto-savvy so I sought help from another marvelous player of bdcommunity 
Now that I was on peakmonsters and seeing how easy and convenient it was to lease cards — I lost myself in the game! I started leasing cards and playing some more. I lost a lot of battles and studied what cards the opponents were using and how. Every now and then I hit walls as you cannot always win with Zaku even when the game allows.
Yes, the first card I rented was indeed Yodin Zaku, and seeing the subsequent matches I laughed like a maniac! How Zaku was butchering the opponents! But my excitement didn’t last very long as I moved to higher tiers and had to focus on other splinters, monsters and summoners alike.
On 28th August, the day before yesterday, I climbed to Champ II with 60K collection power. This felt really really good! My friends in bdcommunity were praising me and I thought then, hey, why stop there!
I’ve leased more cards for the new tier and Prince Rennyn surprised me a lot! Playing with him is a delight all by itself!
I want to share one of my favorite matches.
https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=fc89bb5ce6f0e738377c4a4f0ffb9dbd8a6700a8
It was a match of 48 mana and I took cards that required only 29. Suspected that the opponent might use magic attack and voila! How magnanimously my cards dominated the battlefield!
But then I hit the final wall. Reaching Champ I started feeling like an ordeal. With more leased cards, now my collection power is at 103K.
Not quite what the new rule advocates, but I need 200 more points to reach the tier. I don’t know whether I will be able to attain it before the season ends, but this journey has been an enjoyable one!
I like the game, I like the excitement it invigorates in me. But I don’t think I’m ready to play those mundane games in the silver league anymore. Let’s see what the new update brings about and if I can adapt myself with it.
Thanks for stopping by and reading all of this.
Have a great day!