After weeks of holding back and saying I will not give in to my desires, here I am opening one booster pack after another after blowing my wad of SBDs and Steem!

I promised myself that I would have control but the thrill of opening a pack and hoping that 1% would kick in and you get yourself a shiny Legendary!

What is Steem Monsters

It is a Steem Blockchain based collectible card game created by @aggroed and @yabapmatt where it will pit players against others to be the very best (cue Pokemon Theme)

You will have summoner and monster cards in your deck and each time they fight they will gain experience thus giving it an RPG element to it.

You can also use duplicate cards to give experience to your cards and make them stronger.

You will begin by going to the website https://steemmonsters.com/# and log in using your posting key. Most people at this post are hesitant because of all the phishing and scams but fret not both @aggroed and @yabapmatt are trustworthy Witnesses in the Steem Blockchain and they will not do anything bad with your posting key. They will most likely develop Steemconnect access.

Currently, you will need to have an existing Steem Account so that you can buy, trade and eventually play Steem Monsters. Everything will be in the blockchain so an identifier account is needed.

The Starter Pack is priced at $5 USD which contains 15 cards which by chance will give you various rarity of monster and summoner cards. The Booster pack is priced at $2 USD and contains 5 cards.

The aim of any Cryptocurrency and Blockchain is utility. Utility will drive the usage and the prices. Steem Monster's aim is to keep people coming back to the Steem Blockchain and grow the daily active users.

To quote @aggroed

That said. This game is about fighting. This game is about rewarding users. This game is about keeping people coming back to the Steem ecosystem and growing our daily active user base. I think as we grow our ability to engage and reward users will be the highest out of all of these games as we're specifically designing the game to do this. My goal is to be the most actively used app on the Steem blockchain and to drive new users and bolster user retention.

This would be like what Cryptokitties did for Ethereum and we will not have to worry about congesting the blockchain because Steem blows up Ethereum in speed of transactions and how many it can process!

The Game

Currently, the game is in alpha stage and we have our initial list of monsters and cards.

There are six factions or splinters as we call it.

• Fire (Red)
• Water (Blue)
• Earth (Green)
• Life (White)
• Death (Black)
• Dragon (Gold)

Each Splinter have different rarity of cards

• Common
• Rare
• Epic
• Legendary

Legendary cards are pegged at being having a 1% draw rate!

Each Splinter would have a different play style according to its attribute

• Black-Zerg (lots of creatures summoned to fight at once)
• White-Protection
• Green-Tanky with healing
• Red-High damage output
• Blue-Lots of abilities low stats
• Gold-Extra big stats

So this is where Aggro and Yabamatt want to make things fair. A lot of games lately are play to win. Everything from MMORPG to MOBAs and shooters that you burn enough money you will have a distinct advantage.

Creating inherent strengths and weaknesses will make it that you just can't put all Legendary cards and plow through the competition. You will still need to create a balanced deck.

Trading and Marketplace

Since this is a collectible card game there will be instances that you get the same cards over and over again. You've maxed out the level and stats of the cards so what can you do?

You can sell them to other players or trade for other cards! Since it is in the Steem Blockchain everything can be tracked!

This allows transparency and a trail of transactions. Bad players out to scam can be found out and dealt accordingly!

Mechanics

So, the basic mechanic works as follows: you'll get summoners and monsters. Summoners will summon monsters. Monsters will fight using four key stats of attack, defense, speed, and health. They gain experience as they fight and learn new skills and increase their abilities as they go.

So for example you using a Death deck and go up against an Earth deck. You know that you have an advantage and you roll out your summoners and monsters and expect it to be a cake walk. Until you get your ass handed back to you because they are of a higher level and was made to counter the advantages of Death. Tactics and strategies will be a factor here because they might have higher level cards and more abilities that negates some of the weaknesses it has with Death.

Tournament

Each day you can play 10 games and will be a simulated battle.

Once there your monsters will be run through simulated combat and we'll put out reports of how the fighting went so you can see who you smashed and who REKTed you. Then you can make some changes to your lineup and find the best bracket for your team.

Quoting the website

Win or lose, your cards will gain experience points, making them stronger for your next fight!

Prizes

The plan is to create tiers of prize pools. Low level tournaments will likely only give XP and a booster deck. Higher level tournaments will likely have hundreds if not thousands of steem, SBD, and rare cards to enrich you and your deck.

Developments

So there you are with your legendary Gold Dragon ready to kick butt and take names! Then the card is empty. No description or stats. Sure you can level up your cards but you don't see any abilities or stats being added!

Well, we are in the preliminary stage and this is the time a lot of the groundwork is being created.

@aggroed and @yabapmatt have the concept, made the site and the first edition of monsters and summoners.

The world is being shaped, the stories being told and a lot of the abilities are being fleshed out.

I think it was rather savvy that they did this. They made the concept and got people involved in it, work on different parts of the project and give life to it.

If people believe in your project then they will put time and effort to see it succeed.

So that was how I found myself going down the rabbit hole. I wanted to be part of the project because I believe that it can increase the utility of the Steem blockchain and the daily number of active users.

It is rather ingenious to use Steem to look for the artists, writers, developers, gamers, investors to make this vision a reality.

I found myself in the Steem Monsters Discord channel https://discord.gg/g6WM23P and being one of the teams in writing the lore of Steem Monsters. It would be so awesome to have something I created to be a part of the narrative of the game. I would be happy if it is even one card.

Here is my first stab at creating the backstory for a monster.

Steem Monsters Common Card Fantasy Story Contest! // Week 3 | Flesh Golem

My goal is to be the most actively used app on the Steem blockchain and to drive new users and bolster user retention.

Steemit is not Steem. It is but one aspect of this platform.

People can use Steem to create an account and play Steem Monster and never really do blogging or other stuff. This opens a new market for Steem and is a step towards mass adoption.

So far I aside from buying my own cards and boosters, I have also been joining contests and giveaways but sadly still no epic or legendaries for me!!!

I am open to being gifted please or I need more Steem and SBD to buy more. So if you liked what I wrote give me an upvote please hahahaha