This isn't a fancy blog post today. I'm not even hiring that fancy AI fellow for custom digital art wizardry.
Because this didn't start out as a blog post.
Yesterday I was just pondering to myself while my kids were swimming.
I thought "Wow, those new Land cards sold out so quickly. 
Sometimes it feels like things move slowly in Splinterlands.
But that's not not really true, is it?
So I started to think, and jot down a list of all the "stuff" that was released in 2025.
And do you know what I realized?
It's not a short list.
Not at all…
2025 MAJOR SALES INITIATIVES:
We saw new sets with brand new mechanics, fantastic promos, the first ever Land cards, and hot off the press - Holiday Gift Boxes!
- Conclave Arcana was a huge new release
- with it, we saw Chaos Legion escape to the Wild
- Voucher Promos
- Mana Warden and Ulfga were both 2024, so we saw 3 new voucher cards release: Kelan Gaines, Tashoshi Drakamoto, and of course, Gottem!
- there might still be one more squeaking in before year end?
- The Infamous Yaba's Pickle!
- Land Cards
- Holiday Gift Boxes
EXCITING 2025 MAJOR GAMEPLAY UPDATES
In the past, gameplay updates usually meant a few new rulesets, with maybe one or two major developments a year.
But not this year!
We got
- YES some new rulesets…
- also; Special Temporary Seasonal Rulesets! Pretty damn cool!
- improved Training and Challenges (kitchen table with friends mode)
- Not one, not two, but THREE NEW GAMEPLAY MODES!
- Campaign as tutorial
- Survival
- Frontier
2025 NEW IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCES
- New Art
- New match waiting screens
- Lobby Redesign
- More control over speed and openings
- New Seasonal events and chests (okay, so maybe a few were reused from last year)
- New battle backgrounds
- Card Specific sound effects (Pickle! Gottem!)
2025 - LAND HO!
Sound huge land updates this year! Think about it - last December we had only grain, research and SPS....
- Land 1.75: we discovered vast stores of wood, stone and iron on Praetoria
- The League of Vericho authorized the first Aura permits
- Aura really showed us the power of crafting:
- midnight potions
- auction marks and fortune tickets
- wagon kits… ultimately
- paving the way for Land Cards!
- plus lots of dev work to clean up the land code infrastructure (some of my favourites below):
- land resource transfers through the LP
- regional harvest all resources with a click
2025 and the RETURN TO MEANINGFUL REWARDS
Frontier mode reminded us what it felt like to get tradeable cards from playing…
- New non-Soulbound reward cards
- An updated conflict system to encourage the chase for modern card investors
- New Frontier draws and Ranked draws
- Raffle entries
- Luckiest Longshot mechanism to take the sting out of losing raffles
- Twitch airdrops
- New tradeable Skins
- Fun, rare and often valuable jackpot prizes
HMM... 2025, ANYTHING ELSE?
Oh, you know, maybe a couple things here and there:
- released Android and Apple apps
- Rediscovered the fun of the flywheel, burning Millions of SPS
- Migrated to the SPS Validator chain and launched the validator network
- Set up more DEFI paths:
- new bridges,
- DAO funded LPs,
- Raised our profile with Coin Market Cap data enhancements,
...AND... - Won 2025's Best Card Game award by PlayToEarn Blockchain Game Awards
2025 FINAL VERDICT?
What a year!
Amazing work to the whole 
ONE LAST QUESTION:
Today, just over a year later, do we have a response for this cheerful thinker?
The chase IS real...