<center>![](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmXB6qrYF2ptox6Ya8cjNZKLM4tEdGLrBvcFKY5ZXgenHs/image.png)</center>

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Today I've finally taken the time to read the [Steem Monsters](https://steemmonsters.com/?&ref=daan) game guide and battle a little bit. I've got to say that it can be a little bit addictive to try and collect all the right cards and level up your monsters. 

At first, I wasn't sure if I really liked the game-play, since this was the first time I had played this type of game. Once I had figured out how to put together a good team, I started to see the fun in it. Below you can see one of my games, which I lost. 

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<center>![mmmoo.gif](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmYLCjja4Rp92TjwiTcuPbh9cwxUQMPSfLkKYT7GPVmffT/mmmoo.gif)</center>

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<h3>Pay to Win?</h3>
<p>One thing I've noticed is that you need the right high level cards in order to win consistently. I've been looking into leveling up my current deck to level 10 and found out that I'll need more than 100 USD to get there. Heck, fully leveling up my Serpent of the Flame Epic card will probably put me back around 100 USD alone.</p>

It's of course possible to play with lower tier cards as well, but I've noticed that the matchmaking system still puts me up against players who have their entire deck leveled up. 

Now, I don't really mind the pay to win aspect, just because we're talking about a trading card game that could also be seen as an investment. You actually own your cards and can resell them at any time. This makes it more interesting than spending money on something like Hearthstone for example. 

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<center>![](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmeXgRbsxDAQpS7dcv2L6a3bQy3VfJZP9kzHFpVHZRgcET/image.png)</center><center><sup>[Link to battle](https://steemmonsters.com?battle=dcaa5c1b70f00cd15c82df290ee0df1f94422f98&ref=daan)</sup>
</center>
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<h3>Bugs</h3>
<p>While my first couple of matches went pretty smooth, I did encounter some issues later on. I've been stuck in the matchmaking process for more than 10 minutes and sometimes my 'transaction' wouldn't register on the Steem blockchain.</p>

I guess that the amount of active players just isn't that high during certain times of the day. The quality of the matches was great sometimes, but at other times I was stacked against much higher level players. 

It is to be expected that they still have to do a lot of balancing, so I'm not too worried about this. Overall I think the game itself is very playable and I've not encountered any bugs during the actual game-play. 

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<h3>Conclusion</h3>
<p>I've had a lot of fun trying to put different decks together with the help of the game guide. Definitely check out the guide before you start playing! It's like a fun little puzzle where you try to balance different monster cards, so they enhance each other. You basically need to match monster cards that have certain abilities, with other monsters that make the best use of those abilities.</p>

I can definitely recommend [Steem Monsters](https://steemmonsters.com/?&ref=daan) as it stands now, for me it's already worth the investment at this point. Card prices have been rising since the launch of the game-play features, so I doubt that you'll lose much if you just buy your cards from the market.  You can always sell your cards again if you decide that Steem Monsters is not for you. 

### [Check out my entire collection on PeakMonsters](https://peakmonsters.com/@daan/collection)

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