Silent Sha-vi are entities from the shadow realm that take the form of giant snakes. They travel in darkness and shadow as if each dark corner is a gateway that leads elsewhere. They have an appetite for slow and creeping deaths, feeding off the escalating fear of the victim. If you think there might be a monster under your bed, it's probably a Silent Sha-vi.
What's going on fellow Splintermages? If you are still in the game these days then I guess you're a true Splinterlands player. It seems like lots of people have left the game because I have made it to the Champion League with ease and can buy much-wanted cards for cheaper than ever. I'm ranked at player number 1,938 so there are about two thousand people better at this game than me. I'm taking this game pretty seriously in that I don't sell cards or UNstake SPS so I'm pretty confident that the game will go on as I remember playing Steemmonsters when it only had a few hundred players. If I get to be one of the very top players then I'll start to get worried, but I think there are plenty of people who just love the game and don't care about the value of their cards or the price of SPS. Once the game is truly decentralized and has all of the gamer-led nodes running with a strong DAO, then the game will be ironclad.
The most important or bottleneck cards in this game are the summoners because you can only summon cards less than or equal to your summoner. I've been playing this game since the beginning and can't remember a time when summoners were cheaper than they are now. I've spent a good one and two dollars on each BCX of my Chaos summoners on the way to MAX only to see them a few dimes today, but I don't care. I just want to be able to go into battle with MAX-level cards not caring which splinter is allowed so I'm glad I have every splinter covered. There are so many more rare and expensive summoners I wish I had, but these basic core cards get the job done if you know your cards, follow the rules, and anticipate your opponent.
If I were rich I would buy every card and summoner both standard and gold in the game, but I'm broke like a bad joke so I must get my cards the cheapest and easiest way possible. I delegate most of my Hive Power to @bdvoter so I get a modest drip of Hive each day as well as a few pennies from hive-engine and SPS staking. I post to Hive less than once a week, but I'll usually turn my earned liquid Hive to DEC and buy cards with that too. Once in a while, I'll run across a cool Legendary card that I feel I can't live without, but I'll usually bust out the old credit card and pick those up at the beginning of the month while I still have some cash. Most of my cards have been picked up for a cent or less simply by checking the market and looking for the cheapest cards every day. I'm quite proud to have to scroll through a few dozen cards before I get to one that isn't at MAX level and today I've got my eye on the Silent Sha-vi. It's taken me a while to MAX this card because I had a high-level gold foil version for a long time so I just ignored it until now. I also remember feeling that it would be better to focus on lower-level mana cards as they come in the most handy more often and 5 mana is still a pretty expensive card these days. I'm sure that in a few years, power creep will come along and make five feel like a low number, but it's still mana expensive today.
My battle today was a Furious ruleset which means that cards with taunt will take twice the hit points so it's best not to use taunt cards. It was also a neutrals-only battle. If you want to win in Splinterlands and are on a budget then you would focus most of your card acquisition on Dragon and Neutral cards as you can use them most of the time. Since I always MAX my Dragon and Neutral cards first, I was prepared for this fight. I went with the cowardly act of just using mostly magic cards to slip past their shields. After getting beat by magic spammers so many times, I guess I just decided to become one myself. It's cool how some new cards can teach non-attack cards how to attack so a lot of cards that were weak and useless now kick ass.
Check out my battle:
https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_3790b0339e9be4e8fee4ad272fdc8368
This week's SPLINTERLANDS BATTLE MAGE SECRETS Challenge:
https://peakd.com/hive-13323/@splinterlands/battle-mage-secrets-weekly-challenge-sciexx
Original artwork at NFTShowroom:
https://nftshowroom.com/jeremiahcustis/gallery
Amazing art by the Splinterlands community:
https://peakd.com/hive-13323/@splinterlands/splinterlands-art-contest-week-290
