Hey guys,
in this post I'll discuss the current reward cards, their price / value including meta cards, their print rate and the upcoming soulbound reward cards. Let's get into it!
Reward Cards
Reward cards are cards that you can earn by playing the game. Winning matches will earn you focus points. Enough focus points will earn you a chest and a chest can contain a reward card.
Based on the league you are playing in, these chests have different probabilities on what they contain. As you can see in the image above in Bronze league a chest has a 33.33% chance of containing a reward card. In Silver this goes up to 38% and in Gold it's 43%, all the way up to Champion where there's a 53% chance of pulling a card out of your reward chests.
Like all cards in Splinterlands these then also have different rarities: Common, Rare, Epic, Legendary and a small chance to be gold foil.
Print Rate
This is a sheet that tracks the print rate of the current reward cards. You can find it here.
As we can see the common cards Venari Heatsmith, Pelacor Mercenary, Pelacor Bandit, Pelacor Deceiver, Pelacor Conjurer and Gargoya Lion are all above 97%, meaning there's only so many left of them in chests, before they will no longer be obtainable through playing.
With the upcoming new soulbound reward cards this might change all together. There is now official post about it yet, but founder Aggroed said on the Town Hall that it'll be either a 50/50 chance of getting an old reward card or a new soulbound one or that they'll completely stop printing the current reward cards.
The latter would be huge, because as you can see on the second screenshot the print rate of the second set of reward cards that was released later on into the Chaos Legion set is not even at 50%. The legendaries are even at 17%! If they would go out of print in the next few weeks that would drastically reduces their supply and hence increase their rarity.
More on the soulbound reward cards further down below.
Price
With a huge supply and not as much demand currently, the reward cards are very cheap. Some of them go for less than a cent (mostly when combined) and you can get maxed out copies for 2-5$.
If compared to slightly older reward cards (but not Alpha/Beta), still playable in modern format, like the Sand Worm you can see the difference in price. $0.47 for a card might not look too expensive, but when you need 400 of them to get a max copy you are looking at $160 all of a sudden.
But the Sand Worm was very cheap at one point as well. It has been shown that assets which are in print (reward cards, packs, even land) tend to be quit cheap. Once they go out of print however their price increases, as new players come in, old players want to level them up and demand increases while supply is over.
It's safe to say that the current reward cards are very, very cheap right now and I personally think everyone should get the cards they need, before they go out of print and become more expensive.
Meta Cards
There are a lot of very strong reward cards, but with regards to their print rate these three are definitely on top. Even if they are "only" commons and don't look like much, at higher levels once you leveled them up, they each are super important. The Bandit and Conjurer slightly more than the Mercenary, which is also reflected in their prices.
Other meta cards are:
Djinn Chwala is an amazing tank throughout all leagues and Uraeus basically dominates the sneak meta, giving each splinter a second sneak attacker to be utilized. Djinn Renova is an amazing support card once she gets Triage and fits very well in Life decks.
Here is a list published by Xbot (arguably the best public bot besides Archmage) which shows the most used cards by the bot in silver league. Djinn Oshannus is on top of the list and Uraeus is third. Further implementing its strength in the current meta.
Needless to say those cards are a frequently used in battle with great success and hence considered meta cards every competitive player should have maxed for their league.
Soulbound Reward Cards
It was confirmed in one of the last Town Halls that the next set of reward cards will be soulbound. This means the cards are not tradable, just like gladiator cards. Once you obtain them through a chest they'll be "stuck" on your account. There has been a discussion about whether they might become tradable once out of print, so that players who joined the game after they ran out wouldn't miss out on potentially super strong cards and be at a disadvantage.
Just like with all other cards these cards will have different rarities and can be leveled up by combining. Also potions are going to play a role. I'm not 100% sure how it'll work, but they said something about potions being used to increase the amount of cards you can get per chest I think.
Why is all this important?
Well for starters it's great to get new cards, with new abilities, because they always freshen up the gameplay and meta.
Secondly by not being able to sell these cards, bot farms who run thousands of bots won't be able to extract value from the eco system. Also these cards will most likely be quit powerful (Matt hinted something), you'll need them in order to be competitive. Since you can't buy or trade them, this incentivizes playing on one account and as high in the leagues as possible, to get more chests and more of these cards. Bots which only run level 1 cards can't do that, because of the penalties for playing in higher leagues with low level cards.
This ultimately means that either bots need to step up their game and level up cards to play in higher leagues, which would increase demand for the existing overprinted cards and increase their price or bots will leave and the reward pool won't be farmed by them, giving all other players more shares and more rewards overall.
I personally am very much looking forward to these new cards and the team said they want to release them by the end of January, so they'll be here in the next couple of weeks!
Disclaimer
None of this is financial advice. These tips are for educational purposes only and might all fall out of date as both Splinterlands and the Crypto Market in general are subject to constant change.
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Previous Posts
Check out my push into gold league: Part I, Part II, Part III
Check out my 5 tips for new players series: Part I, Part II, Part III
Hope you enjoyed the read. Have a great day and until next time!
Pinkmank45