Summoners are the name of the game now.

I have some summoners.

Lots of summoners but you don't feel going through them when a loss takes it from your deck. Especially once you move up the levels and match with players rocking 20M plus power in their decks.

They might have unlimited summoners to use but while i have lots on display, very few of them are maxed which is the most important part.

In the early days of the game i loved collecting gold foil summoners which looked great but getting them maxed out cost a lot of money. In hindsight i wish that i had maxed all of the beta ones instead of leaving them at level 7 but what can you do.

Take the GF ZINTAR for example.

At level 7 he is powerful but you can't use maxed monsters with him. It would have cost me about $50 more to max him in those days but now your looking at $300 plus to get the extra ten cards needed for max level.

At those prices it's just not worth it to be able to summon the extra few levels that it will give you. I can still summon up to level 4 legendary so it will only add an extra level to common, rare and epic cards.

The problem is that most cards get an extra ability on their last level so if you can't summon a maxed version your not getting full value from the card.

It's a tough dilemma.

The same goes for a lot of my other beta summoners and then the rest of the collection are low level spare cards. No good in survival mode other than sacrificial pawns.

I can't sell them though. I've held some of those GF beta's for almost 7 years and have gotten attached to them as collectors items.

That ZINTAR has only 411 cards left in existence and I have four of them. It would hurt to sell at this stage but i need funds for more maxed out summoners to earn more rewards and buy more cards. It's a vicious circle.

Every one of those GF beta summoners could get me a maxed out modern summoner which would help me to win more matched in survival mode but they don't have the collectible or sentimental value the OG cards have. Even if they are no actual use to play with.

Other useful abilities.

Since starting to play survival mode I've noticed two abilities that are very useful to play and that have been showing up a lot lately.

• Taunt
• Weapons training.

Taunt is a personal favorite for me since you are trying to win games with as few card losses as possible. If you can direct all of the damage towards one card and try to pick off the opposite number quickly then it's a good win.

Revive can work too but it tends to just delay the inevitable if you don't have the team set up properly in the first place.

Weapons training is an interesting one as I don't come across it too much in general play but in survival mode it's a great way to bring some unloved cards into play. Lots of us have zero ability cards in the deck that don't get much play but now when you're trying to stretch your deck as far as possible, weapons training makes them useful again and can cause a lot of damage if used correctly.

Some oft he older cards have great stats to make up for their lack of attacking ability but now that we can add some attack as well the become very powerful to play with.

It's been a fun few weeks since the new mode dropped and i'm really enjoying the challenge to stretch out my deck and keep it playable on three fronts at the same time.

Try for yourself.

If you haven't played the game before then now is the best time to join. Today is much better than tomorrow and a lot better than later.

Link to the game here,

https://splinterlands.com?ref=niallon11

Posted Using INLEO