Hey everyone and welcome back to yet another Splinterlands blog post, it's a Thursday today and today I have a lot of spare time because I've catched a cold so it's better to skip my cycling training today and conserve the energy for my body to fight the cold instead of the wind of my bike, so plenty of time to make a nice Splinterlands post today!

This weeks Social Media Challenge is the same as last weeks:

🔥 Share Your Most Remarkable Splinterlands Moments: Do you possess a battle of epic proportions that deserves to be seen by all? Have you crafted something extraordinary within the Splinterlands realm? Maybe you've got profound thoughts, insights, or strategies related to stats, cards, abilities, or gameplay that are waiting to be shared? We want it all, and we want it to be nothing short of AMAZING!

And today I actually have TWO things to talk about in this post that are both very cool for different reasons but first, when you like to know how you can participate in this challenge yourself, to hopefully earn a little extra to put in to your account check the official Splinterlands post here.

Back in to Land!

Yesterday, I had a long drive for work and I like to listen to podcasts or YouTube video's instead of music and before I left I saw @aftersound has made a deep dive video together with @azircon explaining the land tool @beaker007 made, so when you have land defintely check out the video because this tool is awesome and so is the explanation so thanks to all three amazing Splinterlands community members for this! 👏

For the last four months my Splinterlands land project had come to a halt because I started a real life hobby my monthly 'fun money' went in to, namely cycling gear for my mountain bike and when I bought the bike, I didn't knew it was such an expensive hobby but after a couple of months deciding what I need to be able to go out in every weather condition I now THINK I completed everything I need, so watching this video was a perfect timing to reignite the flame for my dormant land plans and although I was a little late with selling my excess of wood, with this video I learned how I can easily see when a resource is under- or over valued and a good moment to buy or sell it.

Selling the wood on my biggest land account, I earned 21k DEC I could stake on another region and buy a power core to slowly start it up.

At the moment I own 15 land plots spread across three regions and two accounts with about half of them active and they definitely need some work.
I also found out my second land account in region 81 has only ONE grain plot versus 7 other plots so I'm hoping to find some sellers to buy two or three more but if not I might just need to transfer grain between regions and just have to accept the transportation fee.

The first plot that will get attention is this rare wood plot, it only had three workers on it but I could combine two of them in to one max copy... I just need to wait three days for the cool down to be able to put them back on land.

I understand why there is a cool down, else you can take your workers off of land, use them in ranked play and put them back when you're done playing but it would be nice is the cool down worked in a similar way as when a card was delegated to another player, the cool down is not active when you re delegate that same card to the same player. So when I take two workers from my land, combine them and put them back on - why do I need to wait three days? 😌

So, this weekend, the cool down is over and my next monthly fun money can be spend so I will probably make another post about my land by then! 😎

Welcome to the family!

So, on to the more 'exciting' part maybe, not everyone is in to the land expansion I understand that because it's an expensive part so it's not for everyone.

In the last weeks I was saving my blogging earnings for a new card I decided I needed to aid me in my battles, it's Zyrx the Emberglace! I wanted it at level two where it received the Reach ability so it could be positioned in the back and strike with both of it's attacks from a safe spot and the price wasn't even that high for this amazing card at around $6.30 per card copy.

I usually swap the HBD I earn to buy more SPS but this needed to be paused for this Dragon.
Yesterday, I was at $14 HBD but when I logged in to my account and found 16k DEC in my account I had no clue where it came from! 😅

Using Peakmonsters explorer I found out I sold a Gold Foil epic card I kinda forgot about so now I could swap the HBD I needed for DEC and buy three copies of Zyrx and combine them in to a level two! 😍

I'm buying all cards I want on Elmo Burns because on this market place you get the highest fee rebate PLUS they burn SPS with any profits they make, how cool is that!?

The remainder of the DEC I swapped for a little more SPS, tiny drops make a shower eventually so I try to pick up as much SPS as I can, even if it's tiny amounts.
The easiest way to swap splinterlands tokens around is by using the Hive Keychain swapping service in case you didn't know. 🙂

Sharing a battle

Of course I need to show off my ferocious dragon!

I own two Modern Dragon Archons in my Silver level deck: Akane and Sheng Xiao, there was a time when I put Akane up for sale but in hindsight I'm glad it didn't sell, the Ambush is very strong on high mana battles, using high damage attackers like Barashkukor and Rage to give that Ambush to. On lower mana battles or with rebirth rule sets I like to use Sheng Xiao so the poison burst can drop multiple times with rebirth.

So, yesterday was my first day using Zyrx and I was still testing out what I can and couldn't do, of course the burning is something I have to think about because in long battles it can really ruin your own team.

I met a player which liked to play Elias in the previous battles, Elias is strong and I own it myself as well but countering another player was difficult and I usually ended up playing Elias vs. Elias but it really had a 50/50 success rate and ended up in close wins or losses.
The available splinters in this battle made the chance very high my opponent would play Elias again, so I made a team to counter it just to test out my new card and strategy as a Elias counter.

With 83 mana we can both make really strong teams, the Dragon splinter especially have high mana powerful monsters in it so the choice was easy this time around, it would be Akane with a magic heavy team since most Silver level players don't have a lot of Water / Life magic counters besides Endura Brune with the Silence ability maybe.

Nalara Geinek is a great Neutral card for this purpose but it was pretty expensive and it's why I don't own it and I just checked, there are only a couple of higher level copies on the market to be bought at the moment.

So... let's make a nice team!

First look at the battlefield:

I was right in anticipating Elias so that's a good call, there is Silence indeed and a lot of HP to eat through, so let's see how this goes, after all, it's only a test!

My Line-Up:

• Archon: Akane - reason: Access to Dragons and Ambush tactic.
• First position: Commander Slade - reason: Great tank, fast with high damage.
• Second position: Rage - reason: The King of Dragons, high HP and damage with Void.
• Third position: Night Reaper - reason: Good magic damage with Wingbreak.
• Fourth position: Shock Trooper - reason: High magic damage.
• Fifth position: Zyrx - reason: High damage double attacker.
• Sixth position: Desolation - reason: High damage archer.

In hindsight maybe it's better to put Zyrx in the last spot because of the burning...

The Battle:

Ambush and Tactics round: Zyrx and Shock Trooper received the ambush, obviously the enemy Slade received the Armored Strike / Piercing.

Round 1: My team was able to kill the Taunt in round one, very nice! Not much else has happened yet.

Round 2: My Slade got killed, but Rage is a nice backup tank and the enemy meat shield is gone as well, soon the other Slade will follow their fate.

Round 3: Putting two debilitation (I hate that word) units in my team is kinda dangerous and the burning is starting to spread, but two more units on the other team got killed.

Round 4: My entire back line is about to be wiped out by my own damage but both dragons in the front will survive, it's almost done.

Round 5: Rage finished the battle, another win for me! I really need the wins because this season is very hard for me with a win rate of only 45% until now. 😒

You can watch the battle unfold for yourself here.

That's it for today's post 1600+ words so it became kinda long, sorry for that and thanks for reading if you have made it until the end!

Thank you for reading!!!

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Have a great day!