Lately there has been a divergence between the gold foil cards and their regular versions. They is a large gap when looking at how much collection power you get for the amount you pay. This is for a good reason however...
Ever since the reward update has launched many people, including me, have started playing the game at a higher pace than usual to get as many daily chests as possible every day. Anyone that has played a lot in a single day knows that you can still play on a low ECR it will just take more games to reach the amount of chests you want. Wether it is better to play at a low or high ECR is up for debate, however that is entirely different topic.
Time is what you will always need to invest and for people that want to get as many chests as possible in a short duration that is proving to be difficult. This is where gold foil cards come in. Recently I have been renting as many affordable gold foil cards as I can for my daily focus, resulting in my battles consisting of mostly gold foil cards. As a result my reward points per game are skyrocketing. Just including a few extra gold foil cards can already increase your rewards points by 50%. Keep in mind that I have been renting most of them for less than 1 DEC. The only gold cards I rent at a higher price are summoners, since these are gueranteed to be in every single one of my games. Using these gold foil cards results in me getting much more reward points for using the same amount of my ECR and I can achieve my reward chest goal in less time.
Finally there has been the problem for me of playing for chests in the same league as my chests are from. I have noticed that unlike my alts, who can play in silver for bronze chests, my main account is having a hard time getting a decent (10+ ideally) amount of chests, without completely draining my ECR. As I said before these gold foil cards allow me to get that amount of chests, while barely draining my ECR more than can regen before the next daily focus.
Thus to sum it up, gold foil cards are incredibly undervalued at the moment in the rental market. Many of these cards are renting for the bare minimum of 0.1 DEC per day. So if you are like me and feel like sometimes it is taking too much time or you are not getting as many rewards as you would like. These gold foil cards could be the missing link to achieving your goals in Splinterlands.
On a final note I do want to say that this does increase rental costs, possibly spending more DEC than you will get back, however I have always gotten enough DEC/cards to recover rental costs from the extra chests. It is up to you to decide what you are willing to pay for the convenience of saving time. For me I will at least get any card that I use at 0.1 DEC and after that only cards that I know I will use in most of my games if theyre at a reasonable price (<10DEC).
Let me know how you feel about the new reward update and if you have any other tips to maximise the reward points for each battle.