Splinterlands | My Most-Used Soulbound Reward Cards!

I have been accumulating the Soulbound Reward Cards for a while in Splinterlands to the point where I'm getting some of them at max Gold level. These are the ones I have been using the most and why...

1. Death: Ravenhood Warden

This card is the missing link for the Death Splinter as it has 2 abilities that it was missing and synergizes very well with some other cards. Armor is really key in the game in order to stay alive but it is hard to come by when playing a Death Deck. The Ravenhood Warden provides exactly this and also on top the Inspire Ability which gives Melee Monsters +1 extra Attack. I love the Nightmare + Corrupted Pegasus combo and the Ravenhood Warden synergizes really well with these when putting it in 2nd last position so it's protected from sneak attack. This is an all-around strong and useful card.

2. Neutral & Earth: Venari Marksrat & Fungus Flinger

The Martyr Ability is a really fun one especially when game rules give all cards resurrect or when all monters have opportunity, Snipe. With both the venari Marksrat & Fungus Flinger having 4 health, they are quite easy to get killed of first providing a strong buff to cards. I really like situational cards like this which are not so strong in most situations but powerhouses in others. Whenever I get the ressurect game rule I instanty lean toward the earth Splinter because of these cards.

3. Water: Swamp Spitter

Once of the Decks I love to play the most in Wild League is a Possibilus Deck with The Kraken as my main tank along with a strong 2nd tank and a Opportunity Monster (Deeplurker or Runi) In the back there are 3 spots left tp provide some big healing and the Swamp Spitter is one of those cards that fill this role along with the Medaali Guardion and possibly 1 more heal card in either the Albatros or the Crustacean King. While the Swamp Spitter is not an absolute must by any means, It's a card that I really appreciate and use frequently.

4. Earth: Lob Lowland + Gladius Card

I only have these summoners Leveld to my rank on my Alt account so I haven't used any on my main yet. However, both the Quora Toweshead and the Katrelba Gobson are absolute powerhouse cards on may situations since their Bloodlust ability can easily trigger multiple times. It does get quite tight on the mana cost at times though but it's just about worth it to play these in the right situations. Especially the Quora is overpowered to the point where many guilds have it as one of the cards that they block for the opponents to use which says it all.

5. Water: Musa Saline

Legendary cards are quite hard to come by and there are multiple that I haven't gotten a single copy of yet on my main account. The Musa Saline unfortunately is one of them. I do have it already at Level 3 though on my alt account where I'm using it quite often. Since Magic is the most powerful attack in the game and the Arlic Stormbringer Summoner gives +1 Magic Damage, it's quite an easy strategy to just spam Magic monsters especially when having the Ruler Of The Seas available. The Musa Saline with 3 mana cost and the Scavenger ability is often a choise in these decks for me and I hope to catch at least some of them soon on my main account.

Weapon Training Ability
The other new ability aside from Marty is the Weapon Training which gives adjacent monsters half of the attack in case they don't have any. This ability exclusively comes with the Legendary Soulbound Reward cards and I simply haven't gotten the chance yet to properly try them out. This said, the ability looks less powerful compared to Martyr but I'm sure one way or another it can be made into a deck that actually works well. This is also one of the things that makes Splinterlands Fun.

The Future of Soulbound Reward Cards

Making Reward Cards Soulbound was a change that needed to be made if anything it is providing a lot of fun as just collecting and leveling up is a really enjoyable experience about the game. At the same time though, it feels like another maneuver to just kick the problem down the road for some time. They are fairly easy to collect and since they include summoners it will be possible for bots to mass exploit them in the future without having any extra intention aside from milking rewards.

Easy Solution: While it won't be a popular idea, making Soulbound reward cards equal to starter cards in that they don't earn any reward points when used unless they are fully unlocked would work. The entire unlock mechanism to make them tradable for players can be another major catalyst for DEC demand. It sucks that it isn't known yet how much they will cost while there was a proposal to require some DEC in order to make them available to be used in land.

Suggested Cost For Making Soulbound Card Tradable

1 Voucher for every 50 Collection Power

2x The Card DEC Burn Value

Vouchers can be burned in order to get some kind of credit which is used up when unlocking Soulbound reward cards and Half of the DEC gets burned while the other half gets locked into the cards. This way a Legendary card would cost 10 Vouchers (currently ~0.4$) and 1000 DEC (1$) which combined comes at a cost of 1.4$ for a single copy. Maybe add a system where over time they become more expensive and a date where it's no longer possible to make them Tradable.

Soulbound Card	Mint Cost
Legendary Gold	~35$
Legendary Regular	~1.4$
Epic Gold	~7$
Epic Regular	~0.18$
Rare Gold	~1.4$
Rare Regular	~0.072$
Common Gold	~0.35$
Common Regular	~0.01$

At these prices, a Max Level Set of all the Regular-Foil Soulbound reward cards would cost a total of just 350$ to mint If I calculated things right with close to half of that still as DEC value inside of the card in case it would get burned again.

Conclusion
The Soulbound Reward cards have been quite fun to collect and some of them I'm also using regularly now. I'd say there is still quite some time left before they go out of print and the next set is here. I do believe a measure needs to be taken in order to avoid bots from exploiting the system in the future. A somewhat affordable price to make them tradable burning a ton of DEC and Vouchers in the process seems something acceptable. Regardless, I'm looking forward to how it all will work out and I do trust the devs to make good calls on it.

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