Raid You, Raid Me

tarazkp (84)in Splinterlands • 2 years ago

I got lucky in my Daily Focus Chests this morning, pulling 3x Gold Foil Legendary, Drybone Raider - which means that by combining two of them, I get a LVL3 card, which is probably enough for it most of the time, though it would obviously be nice to have a +3 melee on it too - but I will have to wait to pull another GFL, or buy one off the market once they are unbound, which means out of print.

Despite the massive Mana of 12, She (assuming from the breasts) seems like a decent addition, albeit more of a bit player for some rulesets. However, if in for example an opportunity set, with double strike it will deliver 8 points of damage, breaking breaking shields and bones, with Shatter and Cripple. It is slow though, which means it is likely to miss, unless in a Slow ruleset, but with Kitty it speeds up and has True Strike. And, it is a Neutral, so is versatile.

I haven't had a chance to play it yet.

The reward cards are Soulbound now, and while I am combining everything I get in regular foil because I need maxed versions anyway, I seem to be a bit more careful in regards to golds, because perhaps down the track they will be more saleable as singles. However, I really have zero idea about how many are out there, but going on the recently out of print legendaries, there are about 600 golds of each, with prices ranging from 40-47 per BCX.

Based on this, the open is worth around $120.

So far, I have liked the Soulbound card process, as the print rate is pretty fast on them, and some of the cards are usable at even lower levels, which means that I don't have to wait for a max to start including them into my lineups. And, they are starting to appear more and more in the battles I am taking part in, with some of the new attributes being pretty cool, and there is some jealousy playing against cards I don't yet have.

It is also going to be interesting to see what happens after the change to the ECR into daily play tokens, because that will mean that the bots will also be taking less reward cards, which could slow down the print cycle. I don't know if it has been mentioned what the print cap is on the soulbound reward cards, but I remember that they expect the print-run to last two years or something similar.

Plenty of time to build.

And then, the market opens up, which is going to be an interesting testcase for the future also and I wonder if the same thing will be applied to the Gladius cards. While I get that there is a factor of play to earn them, it is also very limiting if there are new guilds that want to go in and compete at the top straight away, as they have to recruit much older and established players, who are already likely set in their guilds.

Again, it would be an interesting testcase to see how much the Gladius cards are worth though, especially since most I know are no where near maxing any of them, even after years of brawling. I think. For me, the highest are commons L4, rare L3, Epic 2 and Legendary are all 1, except for one, which recently went to L2. I generally play in the Gold League, so I have some "room to move" in terms of card level to brawl at potential.

Would I buy if I could?

Yes.

And this is what makes the "time-locked" soulbound cards so interesting, as the good ones will be battletested by the time they hit the market. However, will the be playable in the Modern format still, or will they go immediately into retirement of Wild - or Land. I suspect that for the gold Legendaries, unlocking might push a lot of them onto Land for mining purposes.

The whitepaper is being released today, and should tell more.

There is a lot going on with Splinterlands at the moment and I really hope that there is more focus being put on the gameplay and incentivizing actually playing, rather than just the passive income generation activities. While the investment into it and subsequent return is an important factor, it falls down if no one is willing to actually invest to play the game and just becomes another DeFi project, with no usecase to support it - and that would be a shame.

And, this is why I think there should be attempts to tie staked SPS to playing rewards, where there are perks in-game for having stake. Like increasing the chances to get some GFLs, incentivizing people to not just try their luck, but also