With today's update, Splinterlands released a new campaign mode and foundation cards.

Official Update Notes

Here are the comments from the release notes.

• An 11 chapter tutorial campaign has been added to the game! As well as a new Foundation set of cards, replacing the Rebellion starter cards. You can receive an initial common and rare set of Foundation cards by completing the initial chapters of this campaign, as well as some starting Glint for use in buying reward cards.

• The Novice liquidity bots will now use Foundation cards.

• The minimum mana for Novice and Bronze has been raised to 24, at the Foundation cards tend to have a higher mana cost.

• Numerous rules that restrict card selection have been removed from Bronze ranked play to ensure new players with only Foundation cards can field teams.

• Currently Foundation cards are account bound and can not be combined, put onto land, or burned.

• Note: We plan to add additional ways of getting more Foundation cards, as well as allowing them to be traded and combined in a future update. Additional chapters will be added as well giving more lessons on different parts of the game!

Campaign Mode

Immediately after the update, I tried the campaign mode. I'm curious to see what it's like and also check out the new foundation cards.

Here is the campaign selection screen. Currently you can only select book 1, waur medge academy.

After selecting book 1, there is a list of chapters. Only chapter one is unlocked to start.

This is the completion screen after finishing chapter 1. The tutorial is simple and fast and introduces various concepts from the game in each chapter.

Chapter 2 introduces card types and explains the difference between archons and units.

Chapter 3 shows new players how melee attacks work.

This is the completion screen of the final chapter in book one. It took maybe 10-15 minutes to play through the first book. For new players, it should take a little longer if they are carefully reading all of the prompts and instructions.

Here is a look at the selection screen for book 1 after completing the tutorial. Each chapter covers a different aspect of the game and I think they did a good job of covering the basics.

Foundation Cards

Here are screenshots of all the foundation cards in my inventory after completion of book one of the campaign.

Notice that there is no "stats" page for the foundation cards (yet?). I wonder if this will change in the future and if players will learn how to combine and level cards.

The new Campaign Mode is a nice addition to introduce new players to the game. It's good to see this has been added and is a great step in the right direction for onboarding new players.