Hello World!

This is my first post as I join this vibrant and welcoming community. I recently became very interested in play-to-earn games and have been looking everywhere for a good opportunity for me: a mix of both having fun and getting paid. Looking online, I quickly realized that most well-established games require an insane amount of money to even get started.

I needed something affordable so I could dip my toes into the world of NFT gaming - and I think I found it with Splinterlands. With only 10 bucks i was able to get started and from the first games played I could already see some cents coming in. Of course, it started slow but I can definitely see the potential. Here I am going to describe my experience with the game from the past 5 or so days.

Ranking climb

Starting out in the novice league, I was able to blaze through most of the opposition, and, with some luck involved, I quickly climbed my way up to bronze III. At that point, I was mostly getting a feel of the combat system and how the abilities from the cards worked. It was mostly experimental and I was watching basically every match to more thoroughly understand how the many cards would interact. I was having the most luck with fire and water type decks for some reason unknown to me.

Searching online, I learned that these deck types are pretty good on the leagues I'm in, being the most dominant with the free ghost cards with which I started out.

Getting close to Bronze II, I realized my win rate had dropped significantly. Without getting too desperate, I started looking for cards I could rent with the DEC I had acquired on those first few days. Trying to build upon my water deck, I came across the great Captain's Ghost.

I was able to rent it at level one for just a few DEC a day and it was definitely worth the investment.
Now, bear with me... I already know most of the community will hate me for this, but I started using a cheesy magic heavy deck for most of my matches. My game plan was the following:

1. Put a shielded high health tank in front;
2. Fit all the remaining mana with squishy magic casting monsters;
3. Profit?

This is definitely a cheesy strategy and won't be very useful if your opponent knows what they are doing. It can easily be countered by using cards that attack the last or weakest cards on the team. Nevertheless, most of my opponents weren't accounting for this and I was able to rank up pretty fast to the top of Bronze II.
Now I am limited by my power and I am going to try and get it up with card rentals for the next week. What would you guys recommend I do to pump up my power as a new player?

To sum it up

I've been really enjoying the games so far and I quite like the gameplay system in this one - couldn't say the same for most NFT games I came across - I was able to get about 200 DEC on my account, and, after rents and whatnot, I'm sitting at a comfortable 180. It might not be much, but it's definitely very rewarding to see your balance go up this fast. For my next week on the game, I plan to test with the fire cards. What would you guys recommend I use? Are there any must-have fire cards for the Bronze level leagues. Any tips for a new player like me are greatly appreciated.

I'm very much looking forward to my next week playing Splinterlands! I haven't been this excited with a game in a big while!!