Hey everyone and welcome back to my Splinterlands blog, I hope you all are doing well.
So much has changed since the new set called Conclave Arcana launched, with so many new cards, abilities and synergies to study to see what works and what doesn't, and also adopt strategies from opponents who kicked my ass of course and see what cards I'm missing.

The arrival of the new set also made the oldest of the two sets, Chaos Legion being rotated out and that was an even more significant thing than the new set I think because many players where playing with the cheap max cards, now the playing field is evened again, it's the start of a new era for Splinterlands.

When we look at the amount of daily battles in the Modern league, it went from a 19k average before the launch of the new set, to 13k average and while the drop is significant, about 30% it's not bad I think, considering you now need the Rebellion or Conclave Arcana set, which are a lot more expensive to play in Modern.

Also, we need to consider that this season, the Wild League is free to play, where it would cost 2k DEC normally so probably next season, more players will decide what they're going to do, pay for the Wild Pass or get a modern deck, I have to say, modern is a lot of fun!

Another nice stat is the daily new signups from new players which is still above 100 every day, and although most of them are not buying the spell book for now, I think that's perfectly fine because players can also enjoy Splinterlands as the free to play version, not everyone is in to the crypto side of things.

Have you found the new meta already?

Well, the above was just a prelude of course, let's get on with the main topic of today, let's talk about battles!

In the first days fighting with the new cards, I really felt like a new player again, needing to learn so much, not knowing what splinters were strong in certain situations, and needing to memorize the abilities and mana values again, it's good brain training!

In the preparation for the big change coming to the Modern League, about six months ago I started building my Rebellion deck, buying everything I needed including some of the legendary summoners, but I missed one very important thing: how important magic was before the Chaos Legion era.. the older players remember how strong Alric was, the Water summoner who added +1 magic to the team.

Shout out to my buddy @estebam who did recognize that, and bought Lorkus when he still was relatively affordable, he kicked my ass about an hour ago with an all magic team, well done!

One conclusion can be made, magic is back!

At least for now because we still don't know what the legendary Conclave Arcana summoners will bring us, probably shifting the meta again, with the arrival of the Chaos Legion legendary summoners Grandmaster Rathe and later, Immortalis, magic plays were countered hard but now, at least up to Silver where I am playing I can't do a whole lot against that, but I can at least try when I expect my opponent to go magic.

When I expect Lorkus I like to bring my double Silence team from the Death splinter with Cryptic, and use the Expose ability to remove any shield my opponent brings, it works really well, at the start of the season I used Elias a lot but I'm now using Cryptic a lot more.

battle link

Is Lorkus the only option?

Nope, it's not, and I'm sure there are more options when using more of the Conclave Arcana team, for now I am skipping the summoners from CA, since it's complicated enough already and my Rebellion summoners weren't cheap so I need to put them to work! 😄

What I like to do when Dragon / Water is available is to use Akane and use the Ambush to do heavy damage, using Shock Trooper and Venka the Vile as my ambush opening move, and when my opponent brings a shielded tank, I'm changing the ambush from Venka to Night Reaper.

Time to show a battle!

Time for some action, the battle I have saved for this post is a fresh one I played this morning against @charok, shout out them, I meet this account regularly and sometimes I win and sometimes I lose which makes meeting accounts like these exciting, it's the same with @estebam and @imknutte since we all play with Silver level decks, it's a lot of fun! Because I'm still learning all new cards, and I know Charok is using the CA summoners, I can't predict very well what plan they will make so I'm just concentrating on making my own kick ass team.

First look at the battlefield:

So, since I'm still learning the new Archons abilities (I have to learn not to call the summoners anymore, lol) I now know this fire guy brings void to Dwarves, but the good thing is, the main tank is not a Dwarf, Mana Warden do give the main tank the Shield ability so that will take some time to eat trough that, also, that Molten Elemental is a very nice card and is also on my wish list, the Silence and Void counters my Night Reaper, so the Ambush goes to Shock Trooper and Venka.
The double Enfeeble I brought works nice too, making the enemy tank less dangerous.

My Line-Up:

• Summoner: Akane - reason: Ambush play.
• First position: Commander Slade - reason: Awesome tank, evasive, high damage, Enfeeble.
• Second position: Kei - reason: more Enfeeble!
• Third position: Night Reaper - reason: High HP and great against Flying units.
• Fourth position: Venka the Vile - reason: High damage with piercing, Charge makes it able to strike from any position.
• Fifth position: Tidal Tsunamist - reason: Good damage sneak attacker.
• Sixth position: Shock Trooper - reason: High magic damage with Swiftness, great for Commander Slade. The electrify, giving 1 damage to my entire team is the drawback but I think it's more important to punch trough the main tank's defense a.s.a.p.

The Battle:

Round 1: That was a fast, and great start - first bringing the enemy tank's damage back to only 2 before it was killed, without its protection the rest of the team is pretty vulnerable with low HP in the middle, I think it's better to have at least one high HP unit on position two or three as a backup.

Round 2: Well this is a fast battle! Charok has bad luck with the burning spreading out quickly, and my Commander Slade dodged two attacks in a row. With the Battle Mage on the first position, unable to fire and the other two units being damaged with burning, this will be easy.

Round 3: Night Reaper made the killing blow, winning the battle.

A nice 8.8 SPS reward is awesome, it amazes me I'm still earning about the same as I did before the changes, playing with my Diamond level Chaos Legion deck, where I can I try to focus more on Gold Foil cards now to boost my earnings.

You can watch the battle unfold for yourself here.

Well, that's it for this post everyone, because I had a busy workday yesterday I wasn't able to play, when I'm tired my battles aren't going well so I decided to skip the day, so now I still have a lot of energy to use so it doesn't get anywhere near 50. 😄

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!