It's a very interesting question and I'm gonna try to tackle it in a few ways.
I think Splinterlands has a good track record making some pretty good decisions so I look forward and trust they'll choose a good option for their old users, new users, funding needs and economics in general.

Untamed was 1.5 million packs and lasted just over a year.

• We had well below 5k active players during almost that entire time
• In fact pack sales ended with active player count somewhere around 5k active players and started way lower.
• We didn't have a rental market system giving incentive to buyers to buy and rent out.
• Expected value of cards was below the $2 for almost that entire time.
• It was even below the value of the 2000 DEC given a lower than 1000:1 dec par value
• Value of DEC rewards to players were much lower than they are today
• All these sales happened during a BEAR market for crypto.
• There was little to know marketing and PR during that entire time.

Now we have these things to consider we will likely be commencing sales with active player count starting perhaps at 100k if not higher.

• Rewards are much higher and incentive to play is higher
• Rental revenue is higher and incentive to buy and rent large stacks are higher
• Over all wealth of people interested in splinterlands is increased many many fold. We have people who have 5-6 figures ready to invest into cards by next month.
• We have tons more incidental marketing and paid for marketing. We have way more videos and how to guides as well.
• SPS earnings for brawls and ladder play make it so people earning a living playing is on the table and that seems to bring in tons more people.

There were ways to get those cards for less than $1.50 back in the day now they are worth at least $15 a pack just in the value of cards inside without using potions on them.

THE BIG QUESTION
How long does splinterlands want these cards to last? Do they want them to sell out in 1 week or 1 year. I have heard the owners say they want it to last 1 year... not sure if that's still the case but let's assume.

METHOD ONE - Look back at history and multiply

Just treat it like a math equation. We will likely have 20x more users at the start of this edition than the last edition. So maybe it's as easy as that. 1.5 million x 20 = 30 million packs.
Maybe
However all those same reasons I listed above come into the equation. More wealthy players because of their SPS earnings. More new big investors. A huge portion of cards having new utility with rentals.
But on the other hand a much much bigger proportion of players vs whale like investors... meaning the power of those whales is bigger to buy but whales make a much much much smaller portion of the total daily active users.
I'm not sure which side of that argument wins out... maybe they balance eachother out and the answer really is 30 million packs.

METHOD TWO - See how many cards they may need

How many packs are needed to get every player a set of chaos legion cards. But how many users will there be by the end of the year. That's another hard question to answer. Let's assume 5x
So how many packs to help 500k players ... well apparently there really isn't enough for our 60k players with what we have now. But let's 10x from 50k players to 500k players. And maybe that means 15 million packs?

Or 500k players each with an average of 80 cards that's 40 million cards or 8 million packs. But then how many do you need to level them up to leagues people like to play in. I guess that you could figure out by seeing what the league distribution is. Or look at CP average per active player and then multiply those numbers... but I don't have that data. We don't know the Collection Power average per player.

But what i could do is 500k players with an average of a BRONZE level deck of 80 monsters.

Commons - 14 bcx
Rares 5 bcx
epics 4 bcx
Legendary 1 bcx
Sub total = 24 bcx
Total = 24 * 80 = 1920bcx

Some people will get more monsters and some way less. But also maxed players who need 80 monsters will need 22x than amount of BCX.

But let's take that and maybe even cut down the number of players and say we are hoping to help about half the expected new players in the first year. 250,000 players * 1920bcx = 480 million cards or 96 million packs. hahahaha that's crazy. So what about 100k players which we can know and easily expect right off the bat. 192 million cards or 38 million packs.

So many variables
There are a ton of things you can do with the equation. For example knowing the average BCX count per active account. Harder to determine active I guess. Also will there be a lot of people who decide to NOT get chaos legion and stick with their untamed? Possibly. There are just soooo many equations to figure out that there is likely a hundred flaws in either of these methods.

METHOD THREE - Variable

So I am actually leaning towards option 3... or at least for this to be a Spark they can use to think outside the box.

Pre-sale should be a huge influx of cards immediately into the market and it can directly relate to SPS that is staked. They can put a cap on those cards or a SPS value that indirectly gives it a cap.

But then if their goal is for the cards to last a year they should just say... "These cards will only be sold for one year"

Method 3A - has issues but maybe sparks some ideas
After presale allow any user account to buy enough CL packs that represent the BCX of their league or above their league.
For example Bronze league with the 84 untamed cards equals exactly 539bcx cards which means like 100 packs. Which is gonna allow at least 10 million packs pretty fast. I think this method is super easy to abuse as people will purchase dozens of new accounts and transfer their cards to another account and play up to bronze league every week or daily.

Method 3B - Weekly allotment based on player number
Make pack sales limited per day. Of course if that's a fixed limit then might as well also have a final total of packs which brings us back to the previous issues.

DO VARIABLE

• Pack sales limited each week
• The limit goes up based on a weekly average of users using some easily trackable stat that can recognize how many cards are needed.
• Sell at $2 but not many people will burn for DEC because there is still scarcity and pack values will almost always be above $2 the whole entire time.
• Also presale is still separate and a huge chunk of cards. And relate it to SPS

So I think the answer is a flexible limit and here are some of the methods for determining it. So here's a random idea with some random numbers... the concept is not that they should use these numbers exactly but use them as a base line for the idea with their more informed numbers

**One way to determine the weekly pack drop rate. **
Take every active player that week allow them to purchase 4 packs during that week.
To keep giving SPS an incentive to be held put 2 more packs per active player into a pool that gives SPS stakers a proportionate amount of packs to the $ of SPS they stake. This makes staking a LOT really really beneficial. The whales AND the active players are all benefitted.

For example
let's assume 100k active players in a week (that's more than the 60k we have now but should be doable by end of next month).

• That week all active players get the opportunity to purchase 5 packs... but they don't have to.
• That's 400k packs sold each week for a year or 20 million total if we stay at 100k users (which is maybe about the right amount for 100k active players maybe a bit much. So maybe it's 3 packs per week)
• But also keep in mind a pre-sale to SPS stakers which already should make all potential buyers more than happy if they're willing to pay the $2 and also stake a decent amount.
• Any not sold to players by end of week will go into the pool for SPS stakers for the next week.
• Pool for stakers goes up by 2 packs per active players as well.
• So 200k packs per week or an additional 10 million packs.

You can mess with those numbers i suppose. What you're not doing is messing with the PRICE of the packs or making it a rich players only club. You're also inflating the packs specifically based on number of players and if that goes down so does the inflation of packs. My numbers may be a bit high per week maybe even if you cut it in half and say 100k users would end up being 20 million packs by the end of the year that's an incrase of $40 million to the market cap of the cards and that's what splinterlands would raise.

But keeping a limited supply that inflates systematically means the price of everything else won't crash the moment you allow unlimited CL pack purchases. That would in my opinion be really really damaging to every aspect of splinterlands economics... it' would be like a country dumping more money than has ever existed in the history of their 200+ year nation in the course of one month.

Gradual and variable is the way to go. It's fair for new users. They get to buy $2 packs that will almost always be worth than more than $2. And whales will be fighting over SPS to get their hands on the rest of the packs that week and they'll have a consistent reason to keep SPS.

Heck maybe we'll get tens of thousands of new accounts playing just enough to be able to purchase an asset they know they'll be able to sell for more than $2.

EDIT - BETTER NUMBERS

Actually I change my mind. That's way too many packs per week and if player count goes to 200k users that is just too many packs entering the market.

Each bronze level player should be able to buy 1 pack that week. Each silver 2 and up through champion. That's how many are available for their account to purchase so they have extra incentive to actually play the game.
And don't forget unpurchased packs at the end of the week will go to the SPS stakers pool where they'll get to buy a ton. I think that could just be 1 for every active player in general. That means if there are 100k players then there will be 100k packs in the pool and if for example you have 100k sps in the pool right now (with staked pool at 35 milion) that would mean you could purchase 281 packs that week. But people would be clamoring to get SPS so they could buy packs that they believe are worth more than $2.

Also another side benefit is that it gives players a bit of an advantage on owners who don't play (who are already making really good money) and it gets those players some new cards at lower rates and maybe they'll turn into owners renting out cards as well.

The alternative is add packs based on number of NEW users instead of active players.

These are all just ideas to spark some creativity the numbers can change... but the core idea is pretty solid. Gradual drop that is variable based on number of players but LIMITED on length of time.

Recap... let's try that again for the quick recap for Hive account@aggroed

1. 1-2 million packs for pre-sale based on SPS they have to have their total in by end of pre-sale... so it could end up being much lower but they can purchase in proportion to their SPS staked so actual number purchased may be only 1 million if some big stakers don't purchase.
   1b. I would say every 30 sps you stake you get a chance to purchase one pack in presale. With 40 maybe 60 million SPS staked that means 1.3 to 2 million packs IF IF IF people are interested.
2. Then allow every active player to purchase a pack every week
3. Allow higher league players purchase 2 or 3 packs... based on league.
4. Then add 1 pack to a pool for every active player and only SPS stakers can purchase from that pool that week.
5. Roll over the unpurchased player packs into the staker pool for the next week.
6. Don't roll over the staker pool if the stakers don't purchase their possible allotment.
7. Run this for exactly 1 year after the pre-sale
8. You should have about 1 million packs in pre-sale and then maybe another 10-15 million packs if we continue with 100k active daily users.

Anyway consider this round 1 of brainstorming. I hope it helps... I reserve to not have thought of something and reserve the right to not even like this idea if people refute it.