Mabuhay!
It has been 7 days since I started playing once again. I assumed that everything is pretty much the same: same mechanics, same meta, same cards... but NO!!!! What I realized the past 7 days of playing the game is somewhat "different but familiar" and I hope I can still grasp that idea...
- Opponents automatically drops matches - I don't know about it, since I guess that I'm in the Novice to Bronze 2 bracket, but it somehow annoys me that there are times when you're looking to complete your daily quest and you have your cards, all of a sudden your opponent withdraws. Sheesh... To be honest, I was happy that I get to quickly reach Bronze 3 from Novice during the first 2 days, but when I recognized that it became a trend, it felt annoying, especially on days 4-6 when I only had limited time to play. I do hope the developers have seen this concern... are these players bots or something?!?
- New starter cards = new strategy - The new expansion, Chaos Legion, and its inclusion in the new started deck was the 2nd most shocking and intriguing realization that I had returning to the game (of course, I will save the 1st one as the last item hehe). Gone are the usual meta-cheese starter picks from August 2021 and here comes a new set of monsters and summoners that, from my perspective, made it feel more like the usual TCG/CCG aspect, where a new expansion takes over the scene. It was a familiar territory, having played competitive games such as M:tG, L5R, VS system, WoW, Pokemon, Yugi-Oh, and a bunch of others, I relatively had no problems with it... its just that I'm no longer seeing my favorite Fire or or Water cheese starters, and it will take time for me to get over it haha...
- The DS-SPS/Airdrop and SPT - This is the one that most shock me. I never thought that my SPT kept me going after I practically sold my entire collection in this game for my medical needs. Returning to the game, I found a chunck of SPS in my airdrop. To my suprise, my SPT from posting on Splintertalk still was active and I also got some SPT rewards from @monster-curator, in which I am very thankful! Seeing that I had some SPS on my Airdrop allowed me to convert it into DEC so that I can rent some cards as I go back into this crazy journey...
There are other notable things, such as the guilds and tournaments, but I haven't explored those bits yet... I'm just thankful that I get to play once again and hope that I can build my collection once more.
I hope that these things I mentioned will help returning players and newbies as to where the direction of the game has evolved, and as a player and support of this wonderful world, I hope that I can also inspire new splintertalk entries!
Until next time, Happy Holidays! Cheers!