So, my current strategy (no diamond, some steps I already did)
1) get cards - I finished questing fast and did the tournament to get the 50 cards (think I got 2 hits on the 50 cards)
note: 2nd day I did about 6 or 7 tickets got a farm kit
2) I liked the sentinel upgrade day 2 in training so I did 3 goals to get 50 card prize
I want to keep my player in the win column (versus ties) for the medium chest. Now, I can try and hold tickets for the nightly reset.
1) save some incidents, they give tickets once in a while
2) Can have quest done for 1 ticket but collect when I want to use it...can even have a few quests to do, tickets are every other quest. you can find out the quests and make sure you can do them fast, most you can
3) use the alternate special too.
At some point I will have to do some tickets bcs I want my timer running all the time to try and get silver rank (holding silver isnt easy either). I would say you will need to spend diamonds to get gold rank for sure, not my goal. I want to bunch up as many tickets as I can while keeping the timer running so when I get a tournament special I like, I can give myself the best odds (no guarantees, get used to it). The medium chest is 12% so if I can do 6+ (3-8hr previous 24 and 3-8hr current 24, some quests, say +2 to 4, maybe get a lucky incident), it will give me a decent shot of getting a DS I want via tournament.
You can get specific cards in training based on position, this is new. I like this addition versus random cards. So, if you pass the ball to an attacker and get cards as the prize, you will get attacker cards. I am not doing it, way to detailed for me. I will advance the ball based on getting the best special of the day.
I didnt dissect the event building versus other attacking army defense building like Olympic treasury, Carceres, Druid, etc but the farmland selection kits, the paths, have some nice properties. Specifically Olive Tree path 4% attack 4 tiles, and Rocky path, 5% defense for 4 tiles (pretty good versus most all chain buildings, nothing beats a L2 sentinel).
Likes
knowing the results of the match helps with some planning for specials
winning position cards in training