1.- What is Splinterlands?
Splinterlands is a collectible trading card game (TCG or CCG) like Magic; you play against an opponent with your own cards, you don't share the same deck.
They are collectable: there are different rarities, Common, Rare, Epic and Legendary (in Magic are also 4: Common, Uncommon, Rare and Mythic); they got a gold treatment like the foil cards in MTG and the artwork is amazing.
There is a lore that describes monsters, locations, empires and history, cards have a cost, an attack, defence and life. (In this game Defence and Life are two different numbers, unlike MTG).
Colours are White, Blue, Black, Red and Green, with Neutral and Dragon acting as some sort of Multicolor. Familiar, isn't it?
This is where all the similarities with Magic end. So what made me play more Splinterlands matches than Magic games this last years? Here it is the main…
2.- Differences with Magic: The Gathering
The cards can be fused: That’s it, if you own 5 copies of a 2/2 card, you can “destroy”those 5 copies at level 1 and now you own a level 2 card that is a 2/3 . How cool is that?
Related to above: All Cards Have Limited Edition run! When fusing, each level above 2 asks for the burning of more copies of the same card, up to the point that to achieve a level 10 common card you need to burn 400 cards! Which means that, even if any given common has been “printed” 1,000,000 copies, if 2500 players have upgraded their card to level 10, there are not a single card left available in the game, any new player has to buy it from another player!
Forget about “Tier 1 decks”. While there is also the concept of “Standard””Modern” or “Vintage” formats, it is only related to the pool of cards you can use, because Splinterlands has an unique twist: Every single game is different, as there are hundreds of different scenarios and different “Mana costs”, from 12 to 99.
Imagine that every match you play in Magic starts with the random drawing of a Vanguard card for each player and a Planechase card that affects everybody.
So according to this “Field Conditions” You got to choose between your card pool about what to play and the lineup order which is crucial for the match! The goal is to kill all the cards of the opponent, there is no “Player Life Points” in here. It’s all about combat!There are no artifacts, spells, instants or lands. There can’t be mana drought! You select your whole lineup and the cost must be equal or lesser than the one that is generated for each match. If you usually struggle with land draws in MTG, you will love this!
2b.- A little history and game geekness.- Back in 1992, when Richard Garfield launched Magic (The grandaddy of the Trading Card Games), he was looking for a quick game that could be played in the waiting times that RPG players spend in the gaming conventions to form a RPG party. For those that haven’t experienced that, you basically were interested on a game of D&D, or Vampire, GURPS or Rolemaster, you name it, so you wrote your name in the table. The DM was ready, you were ready, then you two needed 2-3 more people to start the adventure. What to do in the meantime, a boardgame? Nah, too long and slow to prepare. MTG was born!
The genius of Richard (A maths teacher back then) and his partner Tim Atkins (The first CEO of Wizards of the Coast, then Wizards and now owned by Hasbro) was that cards allowed multiple different “fields”. In a boardgame, your miniature was on a tile, you got some dice and a card that gives some data. The relation between those three elements were limited. But in MTG, the action came from your hand, to the field, against the opponent, or a creature, to the graveyard, or to another card… The drawing and the deck building made each match different. There was a whole new level of complexity, but all played in a game of 5-10 minutes!
So, back to the present, Matt and Jesse saw the potential in the digital field: Even more planes, more interaction, more processes, more customization! The final nail in the coffin? Cryptocurrency that could help to quantify value, scarcity, cards, tokens and points in a decentralized, composable and useful way. The rest is history!
3.- Ok sounds interesting. Or not, but if I interrupt you maybe you will finally shut up. So what do I do now?
Well, you don’t need to go to your Local Gaming Store to get a starter pack (Although that can change some day, as a LGS owner I’m quite interested!) just log into https://splinterlands.com?ref=renovatio and buy a Summoner’s Spellbook for $10 and you are good to go! You can play with a nice pool of starter cards that will not generate money but you will be able to get a hold of the game quickly.
I suggest to start playing in Modern format, which is basically MTG Standard, so you don’t get overrun by the OG’s “vintage” players (Wild). The first matches will be fun and easy, will help you to get the gist in no time.
Also, as soon as you reach Bronze League, do the daily quests! With a few common and rare cards (Some are selling for mere cents) you can start getting chests that contain $SPS (The game governance coin) and $DEC (The game rewards token) and even Cards!
You have tons of interesting articles and videos about strategies and combos everywhere (Hive, INLeo, Dbuzz, PeakD, 3speak, Youtube…) But being a former Magic player will make you start planning yourself your 6-card lineup (decks!) and strategy pretty quickly. You have a reservoir of 50 matches that replenish at 1 per hour, so you can play roughly 20-30 matches per day without worries! I remember when there was no limit to those matches and there were weekends in which I burned the thing down, haha… Ah, those were the times!
Anyway, if you start with my referral link and you find the game interesting, just let me know and if you are not an alt account (I will check rep for that ;-) I will send you some cards to help you kickstart the whole thing!
That is all for now, let me know in the comments if you have some doubt from a Magic the Gathering player perspective,I will definitely address it, as a legitimate old guy I can endlessly talk about MTG and now about Splinterlands. The collecting side, economics, market forces and the like are probably going to be revised in another piece, if I find it fancy to do it.
Cheers,
Renovatio