Are you playing Steem Monsters yet? It's getting better every day.

If you didn't already know, @yabapmatt has decided to open up the testnet and make it available for everyone to play on! Now things are starting to get interesting. You can test your skills and prepare yourself for the upcoming changes to be expected with season 3.

As usual, I've spent a majority of my time playing. Enough that I've managed to make my way to 1st place. w00t!

Things will be a lot different compared to season 2. You will definitely want to diversify your collection, as I have mentioned before in previous posts. Only using one high level team is going to leave you with very few, if any options. You will certainly want to at least have one of each card, if possible.

There is likely to be a lot more people playing lower level cards now since having only one or two maxed teams won't get you very far anymore. Since there are new rules and they change with every match, the chances of you being able to use the same splinter over and over aren't as good.

For example, I have two (mostly) maxed teams, the Water and Fire splinters. Since the rules are different each time I will either have to hope that at least one of my only 2 summoners are available to use, or surrender and look for another match.

In the picture above you can see that the match I played was a Standard match, so there were no adjustments made to the rules, other than the Dragon splinter not being available (that's the reason the dragon eyeball symbol isn't illuminated like the rest)

The image below shows a silenced summoner rule, and the Earth splinter has been disabled.

"Silenced summoners" means that you might as well use the 2 mana summoner instead of the 3 mana one because your summoner will not have any effect on your monsters abilities.

If you're familiar with Steem Monsters, you should recognize these rules, but the difference is now these rules will change with every match! It won't be a bunch of copycats spamming the same team over and over again just trying to get to the top of the leaderboard. The game now requires actual skill and critical thinking. Yessss!

This simple change has made the game 100% more fun, and is sure to appease those of us who were getting a bit annoyed with the way things were going before. This is a huge step in terms of making Steem Monsters fair and balanced. I don't think it will be long now and there will be tournaments where everyone will be able to compete for some pretty awesome prizes!

In fact, I just watched a great interview by @coruscate who was talking to one of the lead developers for @steemmonsters, @yabapmatt. They touched on some very important aspects of what is to come with tournaments and other possible features. You should take a second and right-click & open THIS LINK in another tab so you can watch the interview yourself.

Here's a sneak-peak at the screenshot that is shared during the interview!

This looks pretty freaking fantastic to me! I am so excited now! Tournaments have been the #1 reason most people have invested in Steem Monsters, so to finally see some light at the end of the tunnel is very positive for the community. There is sure to be loads of FOMO going on now! If you aren't already plucking the deals off the market, you should be!

Many inexpensive cards remain on the market, well under their $0.40 original price. You can even get legendary cards for under $3.00! What more could you want! lol

Look! If you go and buy 10-20 booster packs, you aren't guaranteed to get a legendary. Far from it. There have been many times that I spent $50 or more on cards and didn't get anything good at all!

So, if you are inclined to have an inexpensive set of cards, I would advise checking out the crazy-low deals people are dumping their cards for!

Come join us on Discord! For more information, to hang out and make friends, to buy and sell cards, or whatever else you can think of! If you want to be a part of the testnet, you're going to have to join Discord and DM @yabapmatt so that he can give your account access.

Well, I could go on forever telling you guys about how fantastic this game is but I will cut it off here so I can save it for another post.

Until next time!

Ps. You can help me out by using my Steem Monsters Affiliate Referral if you sign up!

Aloha!