Spring Training Season I

Spring training is a (Splinterlands approved) WAX NFT fan art project created and run by @davemccoy of the Splinterlands guild Team Possible. The "cards" are fan art NFTs on the WAX blockchain, not playable in-game. It is an ambitious and cutting edge NFT project, which has been very rewarding those of us involved! We had lots of fun playing several free Splinterlands tournaments, got tons of free NFTs, and helped test various aspects of the program as it evolved. Spring Training season 1 has now come to a close but make sure to keep an eye on this project as there will be future seasons.

I was having so much fun that I did buy and sell a few NFTs along the way, but most of these came from tournament winnings and airdrops. I got over 2000 NFTs with a current value of $795. Not bad for a free project, huh?

Here are some handy links if you want to check in on this robust project:

1. Atomic Hub Market:
   https://wax.atomichub.io/market?collection_name=springtrain1

2. "nft-room-spring-training" channel in Team Possible discord:
   https://discord.gg/5yfG339sz3

3. NeftyBlocks link for pack opening and NFT blends:
   https://neftyblocks.com/c/springtrain1/blends

4. Spring Training stats and leaderboard:
   https://springtraining.azurewebsites.net/

My Spring Training Journey

I was lucky enough to get in from the beginning!

The "Spring Training" (baseball) theme was due to starting the project at the same time as the Topps MLB baseball card pack NFT release on WAX, which was a huge partnership and one that we wanted to leverage to potentially bring some of the new influx of WAX fans into Splinterlands. It started with just a few folks trying out the test packs...

And then there was a series of several free tournaments, where everyone won Jumbo Packs containing 10 NFT's each:

After each tournament there was an airdrop raffle of some of the nicer cards for all participants holding a raffle ticket:

Jumbo Packs contained "point cards"...

...which were the only way to participate in an auction for some of the rarest and low mint cards in the collection like the Premier edition legendary cards.
Some of the auctions got pretty heated because the cards were just awesome and very rare with only 10 of each legendary minted:

The whole season led up to a Fourth of July extravaganza... the Super-Mega Raffle, which very much lived up to it's name. 1000's of NTFs were air dropped to all participants holding Super-Mega raffle tickets. Over the season, I accumulated quite a few of them, so I received over a hundred Jumbo packs, and tons of other great rewards from the airdrops. I felt like a kid in a baseball card shop cracking open cases and cases of packs. It was a blast!

Post Season Fun

The season is over, but we are now in post season, and this seems like the best part! NeftyBlock blends allow you to burn existing NFTs to create new NFTs. There are two programs. The first is electrification, where you can combine several vintage edition cards into one very limited "electrified" version of the NFT:

https://wax.atomichub.io/explorer/asset/1099542688205

And last, but not least... the crown jewel of the project will be an auction for "1 of 1" mint version of each card in the set, which requires "splinter chips" to bid on. These again use NeftyBlocks blends to burn Vintage cards to create "Splinter Chip Machines" which will air drop splinter chips every week through this fall. Then there will be a series of auctions where the splinter chips are used to bid. I have a pretty good army of Splinter Chip Machines, so once I get a few of the 1 of 1 NFTs I will make an update post showing them off!

https://wax.atomichub.io/explorer/asset/1099549371460

This was an incredibly fun and rewarding project. It was like a game inside of a game with all of the tournaments, pack opening, auctions, raffles, and cutting edge NFT blends. We also have a lot of fun over in the Team Possible discord, where all the talk about the project takes place. It will be very interesting to see how the market for these NFTs evolves, and next season should be a blast!

I can't leave without saying thank you so much to @davemccoy for for all the work and creativity he put into this wonderful fan art project. It was clearly a labor of love! I know that the program has already brought new WAX NFT fans into the Splinterlands, and I think one day folks will look back on this project with awe !