Step right up and get your land here! That's right! Following in the footsteps of Axie Infinity, Splinterlands will soon be introducing a Land Asset into their game!

Land, (Huh) What is it Good For?

As with much in the cryptocurrency world, nothing at the moment. In fact, on initial purchase, you won't even get the Land. Instead you'll get tokens which will be redeemable in the future (project Q2-Q2 of 2021) for the actual Land plots. The tokens will be tradeable. But in the future, the introduction of Land will bring with it rather significant changes to the Splinterlands game.

Currently in the game, players can only set their team lineup before the fight and afterwards just sit and watch the battle play out. Which is fun in of itself, but it's also a bit of a guessing game. If your opponent just happens to field a team that directly counters yours, there is nothing you can do about it except skip to the end and queue up for another round. But the Splinterlands teams plans to shake that up, letting players add Items and Spells that affect the battle after lineups are set!

And here's the interesting part. Items and spells will not be sold in packs. Instead, they will only will be player created, utilizing resources gathered off of the upcoming Land addition! This is pretty damn cool.

Land comes in three sizes -- Plots, which are the smallest size, Tracts (100 Plots), and Regions (10 Tracts). There will also be Keep and Castle buildings on some plots that will provide some sort of bonus.

Each Land card will have a specific terrain that determines what sort of resources it might have. Lands will also have a 'Foil' (Natural, Magical, and Occupied), which determines what type of resource you can harvest. Natural materials will be used to build and maintain the harvesting equipment. Magical materials will need to be paired with Essences found by fighting monsters on the Occupied Lands to create the Items and Spells. On top of that there will be card rarities with also effect the amount that can be harvested.

In another interesting twist, you will need to use Monster cards to harvest your land, perhaps providing a use for all of those Gelatinous Cubes in my inventory (they should be good at gathering, right?)

Overall it looks like an interesting, interactive, intertwined system that should stimulate a strong player economy. I am looking forward to seeing it in action.

You can read some more details in these official posts:

• https://peakd.com/splinterlands/@splinterlands/official-splinterlands-land-presale-announcement
• https://peakd.com/splinterlands/@splinterlands/splinterlands-land-expansion-details

So where do I sign up?

You will be able to buy Land in the official Splinterlands shop, with either Dark Energy Crystals (the in-game reward currency which can be traded on Uniswap), or Credits, which can be purchased with Paypal or various Cryptocurrencies.

Note: Splinterlands always considers 1000 DEC = $1, so you may be able to save a little money with timely Uniswap acquisitions.

If you are a high roller, and interested in acquiring an entire Region (1000 plots), you can sign up for the pre-sale lottery. Twenty-seven entries in the lottery will be allowed a guaranteed purchase for a Region. Everyone else will have to scramble on opening day. There is some concern among the playerbase that there won't be enough Land to go around during this first sale, but hopefully that is not the case.

There will be other sales, later, but this is the only one that will be in Praetoria, and supposedly some sort of benefits will come with that. And like most of these sorts of pre-sales, the first rounds are cheaper than the later rounds.

Some may be put off by the fact that it will be at least a year until we actually see the Land cards on the blockchain, but as someone who spent several ETH on Gods Unchained cards two years ago, I'm willing to consider this a long-term investment.

If you're interested in playing Splinterlands but have never gotten into it, consider using my referral code when you sign-up - https://splinterlands.com?ref=cryptoznewb