Prologue
A few days ago, 
For the subsequent six Conflicts, which will feature the player-designed Legendary Archon cards, the chances required for a guaranteed card will be increasing substantially.
Not just the regular, but another substantial amount to keep the amount of CC for the Aidrop-Cards in line with the ones from the packs. The reaction of many - and mine, too - was bad, as you could see all over our pertinent channels regarding Splinterlands.
While it felt very bad to have Conflicts be so much less than expected, I myself turned the page after Dave took responsibility for the bad communication and badly managed expectations, leading to many players being as disappointed as I.
Those who follow my blog know how important taking responsibility is for me, and how much I respect that. So, after a short exchange with Dave on Discord, I put it in the "bygones" category and started to think about how to make the best out of conflicts now. Here's a few of my thoughts, and I hope to get feedback on them.
Packs
There are still a lot of packs unopened, so there will be a lot more legendary cards to get into the market - but not only those, also GF and BF. That means, that card prices will drop in time.
The main fail in the Conflicts is the impact of Black Foil, whose high CP leads to high guaranteed cards. If we look at the pre-sale, the current number of Gramel is the highest of all legends with 2,077, followed by Zyrx with 1565 - far above Desolation with 1,100 CC (not sure if that's total CC, or total cards, but probably the latter).
That shows that the Airdop-Cards were printed way more than the rest, but as Dave explained, they will have the same drop rates in packs later, so that gap will remain. I ran a few numbers.
| Pack Type | On the Market | Legendary Chance | Expected w/ potion | w/o potion | Average |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | 2,624,790 | 0.8% | 210,000 | 105,000 | 157,500 |
| Alchemy | 524,870 | 0,8% | 42,000 | 21,000 | 31,500 |
| Legendary | 262,500 | 100% + 0,8%/80% | 262,500 + 16,800 | 262,500 + 8,400 | 275,100 |
| Total | 464,100 |
That's based on that every card has a chance of 0.8% to be Legendary, 1,6% if a potion is used. If we opened all those packs today, we'd get around 27k CC of each of the 17 current CA Legends, leading to around 2,500 maxed copies on top of the ones we have. If we open them after Conflicts are through, it will be 25 Legends, so around 1,7k maxed copies of each.
That's for a total of 4,800 active accounts, hopefully more, soon.
What's the problem with overprinting?
For me, honestly, there is none. I bought into the pre-sale to play the game, not to preserve the value of airdrop cards that I get as a bonus. And my frustration is that I don't get to play those cards as I had expected. In the end, the Airdrops are basically free cards (okay, $5 cards due to the wagon) that I get as a bonus, so as long as the value stays above the wagon, I personally would be fine. But I guess others are not.
What do you think? What am I missing?
Conflicts have become cheaper.
On July 14th I posted my first calculation on Wagons. Best mark was Epic GF with 220 CP/$. On August 18th, in my second post, the same card was already at 240 CP/$. Now, we're already at 290 CP/$. That's 32% more CP/$ within 3 months.
In the same time, the amount of CP needed for a GC went only up 12,5% (from 800 to 900). That means, in comparison, the Conflict has become cheaper over time. Weird, but true.
And as many packs ares till unopened, it's likely that those cards will keep falling a little more, but that takes time. I don't expect another 10%/month drop, not at all. But it has to be taken into account as a mitigation of the conflict cost.
Conclusion
It's good to see that conflicts have become cheaper. That gives the "substantial" augmentation in CP/GC a good buffer, though I'm pretty sure that it will outpace the card price dropping.
I do wish that the airdrops remained abundant, just to be able to enjoy the game-play of the cards, especially the Archons. But I get that many other people see the game more from the financial side than I do, and want to get more value out of it.
Also, comparing the cost of packs with the cost of conflicts, I do believe that the value of drops should be lower. As I stated, they only cost $5. And it would be great for new players to get cards that are great for game-play at a reasonable price.
Former posts:
Calculating Land part 1 - How to get your ROI
Calculating Land part 2 - Are pools worth it?
Calculating Land part 3 - Organic Growth
Land Plot Efficiency for non-whales
Card-Production-Coefficient - Combining LPE and ROI
Renting for Land - at what cost?
Risks to my strategy
What do refined resources cost?
Real cost of Wagons
Calculating Totem and Title boosts
Calculating Plot Rarity Boost
Setting up a Rare Stone Plot
My perfect plot - Conclusion of my calculations
Thank you very much for reading, I hope you enjoyed it at least as much as I enjoyed writing :-D If you have any comments or feedback - please let me know! And don't forget to leave your own posts for me to curate. Thank you very much!
If you don't play the game yet, you can use my referral: Click here for referral :-)
Dividers by Saydie - Click here. Always grateful for those!