The changes Supercell did over the last few months somehow really killed my motivation for playing it. There was a sequence of three totally disastrous balance updates in a row, with justifications that were just obviously fabricated after the changes had been made for some other reason. Why do months of work to upgrade a card to usable level, when it’ll be just nerfed into oblivion at Rumham’s whim? Then there was the ludicrous trophy inflation from the ladder changes, which basically invalidated all previous accomplishments and also made it pointless to play ladder before the last week of a season.
So I did what any sane person would do: started another account. This time going for a level 1-only account, which basically means never upgrading any cards at all (I mean, you have to upgrade the knight to level to in the tutorial, and could theoretically afford a few common upgrades or one rare upgrade before ending up on level 2). In practice this means playing as many base level legendaries as possible, and filling the remaining slots with base level epics.
The ladder changes actually make a f2p level 1 account a lot less painful to play. The trophy road will be constantly feeding you new cards so there’s no need to wait to progress. Most importantly at 1900 trophies you get a guaranteed legendary, and if that legendary is good, it’ll give a very nice additional boost. Previously you’d be waiting for months for the first legendary due to how crippled level 1 accounts are: e.g. no challenges and just one quest slot.
Now, getting to 1900 shouldn’t take a ton of time (I was at 2200 after one evening’s play) thanks to the constant feed of new cards. So if you get a bad legendary from the 1900 reward, just abandon the account and start a new one. I got the Bandit, which I suspect is one of the better options for the first legendary in this challenge. You really want something that can do both defense and deal tower damage, and the Bandit is great at both. On the other end of the spectrum, something like the Ice Wizard would be total garbage, since it’s purely a support unit, and your other units aren’t really worth supporting.
I’m now at 3199 trophies with that account, which should be high enough that legendaries start appearing in the shop. So it should be pretty smooth sailing to get a couple of more legendaries, and hopefully those would be enough to get to 4k and start unlocking the season rewards.
Current deck is:
Bandit/9
Witch/6
Poison/6
Dark Prince/6
Skeleton Horde/6
Barbarian Barrell/6
Baby Dragon/6
Hunter/6
The average opponent at this point has level 9 towers and around level 8 cards, which basically means their towers have double the HP and damage output, and their units have 20% more HP and damage output. So it requires pretty careful play, every single mistake will cause the loss of a tower. But at least for now I’m enjoying this more than playing with the main account.