Splinterlands - Community Engagement Challenge: 2024 'Wrapped'.

Hey everyone, this might very well be my last Splinterlands post for this year, but many more will come I'm sure!
It's time to make another Challenge post!

Splinterlands Community Engagement Challenge: A Year in Review and a Glimpse Into the Future

So, this feels a bit like the 'Spotify Wrapped' campaign and I like it a lot, looking back at where we came from, what the year has brought us and what our plans are for the new year, so let's go!

Challenge Theme: Share Your Most Epic Battle and Splinterlands Goals!
For this challenge, we want to see your best battle from the last year and hear about your goals for the upcoming new year.

To find out how you can participate in the challenge yourself, check out the Splinterlands post here.

So first, let's focus on what the team has gave us to get the post started, and answer some question to reflect on ourselves as a Splinterlands Battlemage;

Q: What was your most memorable battle from the last year? Was it a close call or a dominating victory?

A: Well, I make so many posts already covering my epic battles, and I'm manually playing two accounts every single day for the last months to prepare for the rotation in Modern League next year so it's A LOT of battles!

I tend to save links to my most favorite battles, with the shift to modern tech the team made, many of my older links don't work anymore, but I had a battle last week where I was testing out my new summoner Elias Max Pruitt that was really awesome and I already made a post about it.
That's the best thing in this game, this battle was on a small alt account but it's fun at every level!

Let's get on with the next question!

Q: What strategies or card combinations worked well for you?

A: Again.. there are so many, but in general I like the Retaliate ability a lot and I like to use it on rule sets like Melee Mayhem or Explosive or at Super Sneak to put it in the back.

Q: What are your goals for the new year? Are you looking to improve your gameplay, expand your card collection, or connect with other players?

A: Well, I'm working my ass off to prepare for the new rotation in Modern League in April next year for when Chaos Legion rotates out and makes room for Conclave Arcana, I play two accounts and decided what to do with them, and switched my gold and diamond deck between them, basically switching my main account with my alt account so it get can farm enough glint to have close to max silver level reward cards for when it happens.
Improving gameplay is always a work in progress and is always evolving as well because of the change in meta, and yes, I'm expanding my card collection a lot in the last weeks, again to prepare for the new Modern League, and I just bought two awesome summoners to have tons of fun with!
My goal is basically to be competitive in the new Silver Modern League, so this will be a change from Gold 1 - Diamond 3 where I'm fighting now, but not less fun! I've been a Silver player for most of my Splinterlands career anyways.

How do you plan to achieve your goals? Will you be focusing on specific card combinations, practicing new strategies, or participating in tournaments?

A: Grinding, like... REAL HARD every single day to earn as much glint and SPS as possible with my two accounts, and yes sometimes I like to toy around with new strategies, sometimes they work and sometimes they don't! 😅
When I have spare time, I join tournaments as well but the last weeks they're really competitive, I like it that most participants are receiving a reward tho and not only the top players.

And now it's time for the other part of this post, to share a great battle, and I was actually going to share another one with you all but then I got an in game notification one of my opponents was fighting my team in an ongoing tournament I'm taking part in, it's the Tidalring Modern Novice Invitational Tournament.

With 10 hours left in this tournament and two battles left for me to fight, I'm having a pretty good tournament but not great with a 6 win / 3 loss, for the time being at place 36.
I did have a really nice battle just yet I want to share with you in this post.

This player is from one of the larger guilds, has a title and a LOT more battle power, a whopping 3.5 million vs. my 650k 😅 also the rating difference is a lot, more than 1000 higher, and yet I managed to beat this player, pretty cool!

The battle I have saved for this post is a Enrage / Equal Opportunity / Ferocity battle in a Modern Novice tournament, so it's ONLY level 1 cards! The only splinters open to be chosen from are Water, Life and Dragon. For enrage I like to use forcefields, but in Novice there aren't any, be sure to stick a martyr in the team to boost the adjacent cards in Opportunity matches! I didn't had a clue what to expect from my opponent so I just made myself an awesome team 🙂

First look at the battlefield:

Well that was a coincidence, I just got the notification I'm in the second round for this tournament! 😁

Damn.. Tofu! I have to admit I was a little intimidated when I saw this team, Tofu is too expensive for me and there's a reason, it's awesome! Mantaroth is another expensive one I don't have, focusing my funds on the new modern now and I can't have it all... He did use a taunt unit in ferocity so my team will deal double damage, not the smartest move maybe, but then again I think that many times and still get my ass kicked, let's see how this goes!

My Line-Up:

• Summoner: Franz Ruffmane - reason: Access to a Gladiator card, bloodlust is very dominating
• First position: Halfling Refugee - reason: Great card for 1 mana!
• Second position: Drybone Barbarian - reason: High damage, high HP.
• Third position: Venari Marksrat - reason: Martyr, meant to die and boost adjacent cards.
• Fourth position: Marisol Contuma - reason: High damage, fast, bloodlust.
• Fifth position: Jared Scar - reason: High damage with bloodlust, low health though!
• Sixth position: Dr. Blight - reason: He's camouflaged so he's the sneaky attacker dropping affliction to stop heals.

The Battle:

Round 1: Whoah! that was an intense first round! Iziar and the Martyr both died, so did my Martyr. That Mantaroth combined with thorns against my melee team isn't making me very confident in this battle though...

Round 2: This is a really FAST battle! Only Mantaroth is alive, but with 21 HP and some armor left, he has shield and thorns... My team IS doing a LOT of damage though and my Barbarian is faster so the armor will be gone before he can attack, so no Armored Strike for you, Mantaroth!

Round 3: He's only down 5 HP.. damn... My Barbarian barely survived but he's at least able to attack and them be killed by thorn damage. Barbarian 4 damage, Contuma 3 damage, Jared 5 damage and Blight 1 damage.. is 13 in total so I won't kill him this round!

Round 4: Exciting!!! This is going to be close, the scavenge brought his HP to 8... but he can't kill my Contuma if he lands the attack, this is going to be close!

Round 5: HE MISSED!!!

Round 6: AND HE'S GONE!!! Wow this was an exciting battle! 😁

Low level tournaments are fun, it's less about owning the most OP cards with every max ability and more about strategy (and a little bit of luck of course)

You can watch the battle unfold for yourself here.

That's it for this post, I'll soon be out, scavenging for cans and bottles to collect the deposit money, I'm using this to buy more SPS with, #freemoney!
I'll make a post about it later 😃

Thank you for reading!!!

If you haven't made an account already, please consider using my referral link to sign up, I'll happily send the amount I get for your signup back to you in DEC or SPS to help you start.

Also, when you require any help to get you started,let me know, I'm here to advice and guide new players and maybe I can help you with card delegations too!

Have a great day!