If you have been playing Splinterlands and are having trouble maintaining a good win rate then you probably are not taking full advantage of your opponent. Everytime you start a ranked battle you can see the last 5 splinters your opponent used and can turn this to your advantage.
You can also rent cards if you don't have the cards you need. Winning a few battles you may have lost without the rented card can soon pay the rental fee.
Let's look at the battle below from one of my battles in bronze 1
Looks like this opponent favours water and earth. So what are my thought processes here.
I am presuming that in mid to high mana battles then Alric Stormbringer will be used for the +1 to magic buff combined with magic cards and in a low mana battle he probably has Mylor Crowling for the thorns. With a mana cap of 26 I am thinking he will be putting in a magic team, so let's look at the line-ups below we both chose.
As you can see my presumptions were correct. He has gone nearly full magic.
I went with Owster Rotwell for my summoner as he has magic reflect. As you can see I have led with a tank that reduces damage from magic attacks, my 2nd card is a self healer in case he gets through my first tank. 1 to debuff health and 1 to debuff speed. I've put a high damage in the middle and a reasonable fast sneak in last place as I guessed the last card would have higher hp. The idea behind this lineup is to let the opponent kill themselves with the magic reflect. You can watch the battle here:
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_91b92dec3208f64e0ed3c2a16b5d825e&ref=nozzy
As you can see he pretty much killed himself and I just had to mop up. An easy victory.
Let's look at another example below from bronze 1
Looks like he favours fire so I can expect a lot of melee damage. As you can see from below I guess wrong on this battle.
He actually went with magic. Luckily I had covered my bases a bit here. Although I went with thorns and a retaliate in position 1 because I was expecting Fire, as you can see I have put in the Unicorn Mustang for reduced magic damage and the failed summoner in the rear to reflect magic, along with a healer. If he had have gone melee I would have still triggered the thorns off these cards. I still managed to win this fight because I diversified my defense although it was a bit closer. Diversification can help turn battles. You can see the battle here:
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_ae09dfc7b259d127d76e0f752d4d2842&ref=nozzy
Here is 1 more battle from bronze 1
Not much to tell here from his recent games except he doesn't really favour magic, he could play anything, but always pay attention to the rules. In this match everybodys health will be the same as the highest health card on the board. Here I am putting in low mana cards and not worrying to much about hp on my cards so I can get the sandworm in to do some serious damage to his back line. Also going to use thorns to help my damage output and a tank that has reduced damage from melee. This is our final lineups.
As you can see even though the highest health card I played was only 5 health all my cards have 12 health because my opponent played a 12 health card. The sandworm did most of the work here, taking his cards out from the back, this card is still pretty cheap right now and is a good investment for mid to high mana battles. You can watch the battle here:
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_dafcbee82f3c9e2ea711ece5695bef9b&ref=nozzy
Being aware of the special rules for each match and using them to your advantage can create wins.
Of course you can't win every game and you will also come up against whales with a lot of high cost cards, just shrug and take the loss and move on to the next match. I actually sold the 1 game changing card I had. Best decision I made for my gameplay, I sold it for 46,000 dec. cashed out 10,000 dec which more than doubled my investment in the game and spent the rest on dice card packs. This gave me some more options to play with and actually improved my win rate as well as ensuring I can never make a loss as I have cashed out more than my investment already. Currently I am reinvesting into my cards, to try and move into higher leagues and grow my daily rewards from the SPS airdrop, but going forward i will probably go for a 50/50 split on taking profits and reinvesting in cards/packs. All my SPS I have received from the airdrop I have currently staked. The APR is still to good to be withdrawing SPS.
Not playing Splinterlands yet? It is not to late. Sign up here: https://splinterlands.com?ref=nozzy