## Steem Monsters: Day 3
## 

It's been three days since I started playing the decentralized gaming app **Steem Monsters** and I'd like to share with you my experience and some tips that I've picked up along the way.

**Want to join the fun? [Click Here to Sign Up!](https://steemmonsters.com?ref=jeremycrow)**

## Silver II League
## 

<center>![Steem-Monsters-SilverII.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmNZgbpWwgvimZB6wQ1hEf4uhJkiN5iBJBbHLDc6cxkgQF/Steem-Monsters-SilverII.jpg)</center>

If you've been following my Steem Monsters posts, you'll know that I reached *Silver III* league yesterday. Well I manged to progress further up the leaderboard and am now in league *Silver II*. Hoping I can reach at least *Gold III* by the end of this season. I'm currently in the top 1000 players on the leaderboard and my current Rating is 1545. I'm very close to hitting *Silver I*.

Up to this point I haven't spent any money on the game and I thought it would be an interesting experiment to see how far I could get without buying any cards. I'm also lucky and very grateful to have received some extra cards as gifts from other players [See below for more details.] It's common for people to complain about games being unfair or unplayable without spending money on in-game purchases. Does this apply to Steem Monsters? What do you think?

Can a person have fun playing this game without buying cards or will they just get hopelessly crushed by players who have spent money? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

## My First Booster Pack!
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<center>![SteemMonsters-1st-Booster.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmdA7G6DRRueGDVJQb9tjciBnHh5jmKz5uDLjsFQ6v2HLx/SteemMonsters-1st-Booster.jpg)</center>

Thanks so much to @clove71 for gifting me my first Booster Pack! You have been very generous with me and I sincerely appreciate it. :) Each Booster Pack contains five cards. There is some algorithm to it that I haven't really researched but there is an element of chance that is built into it. There are four main categories of scarcity among the available cards: Common, Rare, Epic and Legendary. In any given Booster Pack you are guaranteed to get at least one card that is Rare or above.

In this pack I got four cards that are Common, which at this stage I am very happy to get (see image above.) These are all cards that I needed. But the cherry on top is that the more scarce card that I got in this pack was a **Gold Dragon** card, which is Legendary! There are only 918 of these cards in existence. This is the second Legendary card that I've been able to add to my collection and it is my first card belonging to the Dragon splinter.

## Dragon Summoner
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<center>![Steem-Monsters-Dragon-Gift-a.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmTCGgSP3GAsv9Nx1fY1oYDVmQnuBQZ1XwpDd1xVxhzRGR/Steem-Monsters-Dragon-Gift-a.jpg)</center>

After getting that Legendary dragon card, I soon discovered that I was unable to use it in battle. I inquired about this in the official Discord channel for the game and was told that I needed a Dragon type Summoner card to summon Dragon type monster cards. A member kindly offered to delegate a Dragon summoner to me so I could try it out but before that could happen @munkiioh said he would give me one to keep! I want to give a sincere thank you for this gift! The above image is a screen capture of what it looks like when someone gives you a card.

This one is called **Daria Dragonscale**. One of the differences that I noticed is that she costs 4 mana to use. All the other summoner cards that I have in my collection only require 3 mana. When you use her as your summoner you will be prompted to make a selection of a secondary shard (magic type) to use in addition to your Dragon cards. So for example, you can use her to summon Dragon + Earth type monster cards, or Dragon + Death type, etc...  She will give the melee type monsters on your team a *buff* (a temporary increase in skills) of +1 attack, just like the Fire Summoner *Malric Inferno*. By the way, is it just me or does Daria look a lot like the new version of She-Ra, but with extra armor? lol

## Tournaments
## 

I participated in my first two tourneys. I wish I could report that I won, but in both cases I lost immediately. That's just how it goes sometimes. I'll keep playing and improving my strategy and hopefully do better next time. Regardless, this is a great feature that allows anyone to host a tournament with their own specific conditions and with custom rewards. Most of the tournaments give STEEM cryptocurrency but some hosts have gotten a little more creative with their prizes. I encourage you to explore it for yourself!

**Ready to play Steem Monsters? [Click Here to Sign Up!](https://steemmonsters.com?ref=jeremycrow)**

## Daily Strategy
### The Unstoppable Force and The Immovable Object (UFIO)

Yesterday I mentioned the importance of the Rear Guard. As I have come up against teams made up of higher level cards I have become aware of just how important it can be to have an almost indestructible monster card in the front and back of your team. I usually like to put some magic users in between. The benefit of using a magic user instead of a ranged attacker is that a magic user can still attack from the front space if necessary.

Building the ideal team requires a lot of mana. Sometimes you don't have that luxury. The common approach is to try and build a full team with cards that cost less mana. The problem is that your team will be weaker and each card becomes easier to pick off. Another approach which I have experimented with is something I like to call *The Unstoppable Force and The Immovable Object* (or *UFIO* for short.) The idea here is to create a team of just two monsters. The first one will be your strongest offensive unit, hence *the unstoppable force*. Ideally this card will also have a good speed attribute. The second card will be the strongest defensive unit that you can afford with your leftover mana. This card will be your *immovable object*. The basic idea is to send your pair of titans to attack what hopefully ends up being a larger team composed of weaker units.

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<center>https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmapQvTJS14RnBKFjMH3okaTKWx4LXjBGK2yKHs2JbkiRK/JC_Header4.jpg</center>

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