It can be done man.  No really.  You won't even have to use your credit card, much.  They really do not design these to tap your bank account, it can be done!

But just incase you can't get it done without a credit card, Plarium will give you another chance by offering to sell you those fragments you were unable to get.

 You don't have to get all the fragments from the second champ training to get Vlad, in fact depending on what you've done so far you may not need any of them. Champion Chase and Summon Rush are the key events. I got Demytha last time and I'm well on my way to getting Vlad with my 10 week old brutal clan boss account, anybody using some strategy can do this.

I believe there is 115 fragments you can get from the events/tournaments, so you do not need to do the second 5 from champion training. 

Basically you either need to max Champion Chase AND Summon Rush, or you do need those champion training fragments, plus max on one of the two summoning events and 5 fragments on the other. So yeah, it's pretty tough, I'm also pretty annoyed about it. 

Always assuming you don't win any tournaments, of course, since most non-whales will never win any of those unless they are going very hard at it AND get lucky. 

if you are f2p, forget about most of fussions..look on Summon Rush...3500 points...thats are 7 sacred shard...you can get One in monthly quests, once in a month...and may be something from CB, but may be (if RNG gods give you Unkillable and Mass CS champions, near 6-7 heroes from 700)...and thats it...so for f2p players choise is easy, fussion 2 times of year...or just many incopleted fusions, like me i  and list of heroes with 60-70-80-95 fragments...if you are lucky for this year waiting you can even see missing fragment event, altrrough thats happens 1 or 2 times for this year, with no warning, so you can miss them too...i just pull all my shards, which is mistake, because i know i cannot get second fragments with only one Sacred...and from this sacred i get, can you guess, an epic DUPE...and for the end of my second year, i finally get my 6xt void epic - Haarken, which is basically crap...i already stop spending anything, there is no point to play f2p after level 90, all rewards are taken, no more shards, mission became projects for an year...and no more shards from monthly reward, because as Plarium says, thats bad, bad RNG...i will not save any from all this Dupes i pull...because im care less and less for comming "dupe system"...as i saw ideas on clips, well, it is awfull, complicate and will give us nothing, than little power-ups for heroes we will never use...more probably im start searching some game either fo f2p, either for monthly fee (like WoW), because here potential is over, whats left is just prays to RNG gods to give us mass CS or Unkillable hero and grind, grind, grind....

Where would you get the idea that they "learned a lesson"? I don't recall them ever saying anything about Demytha fragments being a mistake. It's all carefully planned to make people spend money (or grind their butts off and hoard shards).

Nailed it.

Spend money

Or play for fusions -manage resources and hoard for fusions.

Or play for fun and know you are not missing out by missing fusions.

Or do a combo of any of the above.

The only fusion champ that in think was game changing was brogni. Some since have been nice but most have sat in my vault.

Maybe the only recent one, sure. *looks at Tormin and Rotos*

I will probably get this champ after all since i got all the frags from champ chase and 5 from summon rush

I really resented pulling during a 10x for it but hey ho.

Gosh the tournaments have been rough however, utterly impossible to win.

Not sure if thats just been me.

Fusion is easy, f2p or not.  Those that struggle won't spend money OR time.  Only need to do one, and not that much of the latter (auto-clicker required lol).

12.3 Brutal (during and between fusions) and patience is all that is required

 I pulled 1 sacred shard for the Summon Rush. You don't need counter attack or unkillable either, you can build a nightmare clan boss team using all rares.